The Geometry of Passing Through

We often speak of travel as a means of reaching a destination, as if the space between two points were merely a vacuum to be endured. Yet, the most profound moments of our lives frequently occur in the margins—in the transition, the transit, the blur of the periphery. Think of the way a train car hums against the tracks, a rhythmic, metallic heartbeat that detaches us from the gravity of our own lives. In that state of suspended motion, we are neither here nor there; we are ghosts passing through the backyards of strangers. We see a flicker of a life—a hand raised, a bridge crossed, a door left ajar—and then it is gone, folded back into the landscape. It is a strange, fleeting intimacy, to witness a piece of someone else’s world without ever needing to inhabit it. Does the person on the bridge feel the weight of our gaze as we rush past, or are we, too, just a blur of motion in their quiet, stationary afternoon?

Greg Goodman has captured this exact feeling of fleeting transit in his work titled Sri Lankan Train Ride. It reminds me that we are all just passing through each other’s stories at high speed. Does this image make you feel like the traveler or the one standing on the bridge?