Whatever Happened to StumbleUpon?

Shuffling serendipity

Source: Pexels — Edited by author

I frequented Stumbleupon mainly in the small hours of the morning when nothing happened. It occupied a void in my life normally reserved for sleep.

Click.

Each stumble brought about a new webpage that I hadn’t seen before. A new concept, an idea. An alternative perspective from another author, or artist.

Click.

I remember a high-resolution image of the M83 galaxy filling my screen. It was beautiful enough that I saved it as my desktop background. Trying to appreciate the immensity of it, struggling to understand the implication of every point of light, I click again. And again. I skimmed through each served webpage as if I were thumbing through page after page in an unfamiliar magazine.

Images of an alluvium nature appeared, distant lands I’ll likely never visit. Sun-baked deserts devoid of life. Sheer cliff faces stretched upward through thick plumes of cloud.

I click again and this time, I’m not served an image, but a softly narrated poem Tis the middle of night by the castle clock by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Millions of Moments by John Beltram plays in the background. The ambient piano piece accompanies each word with an unexpected intensity.