Turtle in the Road
Romina Malta: Door.link
Dear reader,
What makes you stop while running? A red light? Exhaustion? Water break? Or maybe a crossing turtle?
I did not stop when a turtle passed my running path this morning. But a running tourist did. He stopped to photograph and film the turtle as it passed from one side to the other.
It took months before I saw the first turtle here in Athens. I was told about their presence when we arrived, but couldn’t spot them. Together with Uno, I have scouted for turtles many times on the Philopappos Hill that rises from our backyard. Always without luck. Until one day, I’m up at the hill with Uno sleeping in the stroller. A turtle! A living, wild turtle, not a big one, but still a turtle moving towards us, passing by, and leaving us.
It was such a novel sight. I grew up believing turtles lived in books, aquariums, and faraway waters, not two minutes from home. I must have taken hundreds of photos, filling my phone with turtle footage like today’s morning runner.
It made me wonder: how do we keep seeing the world as if for the first time? How do we read the hundredth sentence with the same curiosity as the first?
These days, I’m less drawn to being a tourist. But I admire the tourist’s falling-in-love gaze. That capacity to care endlessly about a subject—like a parent for their child, or a painter for water lilies or swimming pools.
With care,
Kristoffer
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Romina Malta: Door.link
Romina Malta is a graphic artist and designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina
What is door.link?
door.link is a website where I share mixtapes shaped by the music I listen to daily — whether shared by friends, found on platforms, bought, discovered in magazine reviews, or while traveling. Each selection is personal and reflects moments, moods, or places that stay with me. It works as a simple archive — a personal log of listening, built over time, without algorithms.
Why did you start it?
Well... I wanted a space that focused only on music and the act of sharing it without expecting anything in return — especially in a world where we’re constantly speaking, reacting, and taking positions. Sometimes it feels necessary to escape from trends and external opinions, and just let sound be sound. door.link is a gesture of care, a quiet detour from platforms built on overstimulation and performance.
Who or what inspired you?
The intimacy of burned CDs, handwritten tracklists, and artist-run websites from the early internet were key inspirations. Those spaces felt personal, made with care, and not driven by metrics. Also inspiring was the quiet gesture of sharing music just because it moved you. door.link comes from that spirit — slow, informal, and rooted in attention rather than opinion.
Visit door.link, and follow Romina on Are.na and Instagram.
𓅰 𓅬 𓅭 𓅮 𓅯
Field notes
1.
»At the same time, as marginal notes, footnotes are always elements of dialogue. Some even say they are the original internet, with every footnote, every citation, every allusion being essentially a hyperlink to another text, to another mind.«
— Kim Kleinert in On Contamination
2.
What should I use to make a website? Excellent guide by Katherine Yang (who has an excellent website).
3.
Calls for Participation: ELO Awards are open for nominations (21/4), Lullaby Machine is open for submissions (Due 1/5), and Processing Foundation is looking for fellows (Due 2/5).
4.
Poetic Web Calendar: High on Websites (NYC, 20/4), First Original Thought (URL, 23/4), Fleuron (URL, 23-25/4), Inside Voices (Glasgow, 24/4), Extratonal: Multispecies Festival (Rotterdam, 25-27/4), Folk Computer Open House (NYC, 25/4), Chat is Real (Berlin, 29/4), Making Poetry Machine (Sydney, 6/5), A Maze (Berlin, 14/5), New Media Writing Prize Awards Evening (URL, 14/5), Adela (Ljubljana, 16-18/5), and Demo Day (NYC, 4/6).
𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧
Wayside flowers
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