Refresh, and it went white

Refresh. White. Two seconds. Again: three. Once, unluckily, four.

Those pages had sat still for weeks. They had no reason to wake like someone shaken out of sleep. I stared at the blank, heard the fan, blamed my network. The dashboard was blunter: every visit was being built on the spot. Cache did not seem to know them.

The cause was almost funny in its size. The site has Chinese and English. At first the language lived in the browser, and every load went to ask. That one question meant nothing could be printed ahead of time. Pages became things you assemble on arrival. When nobody is around, the machine is cold. A cold machine lights the stove first. Those seconds were the white.

I put language in the address. Chinese one path, English another. Both printed at build. Printed pages can sit near people and be handed over. Refresh stopped feeling like waking a heavy sleeper.

A rule came with it. While a page is being printed it cannot rifle through private pockets in the browser: no marks that change per request, no layout decided in the moment for each visitor. Language comes from the path. Break that once and the white has a way back in.

Even now, from where I sit, there is still a stretch of sea. That is distance. The stove-lighting wait I can hardly stand anymore — knowing the content is unchanged and still watching a blank.

I still mash refresh out of habit. If the white returns I wonder whether language has been asked of the browser again. I will probably keep that allergy. Some slowness is mileage. Some slowness is rewriting, live, a thing that was already written.