Chant

What it does

Write something you want to be true, as if it already is, and it becomes a stone in a raked sand garden. Tap the stone and say the words aloud, again and again. Every time, a groove is raked around the stone; every ten, a ring. A hundred is a round.

• Say it or type it. Where the browser can listen, you say it aloud and it counts what it hears. Where it can’t, you type the words out exactly.
• Same words, same stone. The words set the stone’s shape. Drag it where you like, turn it, pan and zoom around the garden.
• Soft sounds. A marimba note for each rep, a chord for every ten, a singing bowl at a hundred. One tap mutes them.
• Stones age as you go. Moss creeps over them round by round, and every 300 reps a stone grows and its rings start again.
• Five old stones are waiting on a first visit, among them Émile Coué’s “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better”: past ten thousand reps, and wearing a gold seam.
• A haiku by Issa, Bashō or Buson greets you once a day. The sand can be raked straight, smooth or in waves, by day or by night.