The Weight of Water

We are born with a hunger for the surface. To reach into the dark, cold places where things hide. It is a quiet violence, this act of catching. We stand in the current, waiting for the tremor against our skin, a signal from a world that does not breathe our air. There is a specific patience required for this. You must become part of the water, still and unmoving, until the boundary between your hand and the river dissolves. We do not do this because we are hungry. We do it to know that we are here, tethered to the earth by the mud between our toes and the pull of the tide. The water gives nothing back that it does not first take. We hold our breath. We wait for the sudden, silver flash of life to break the stillness. What remains when the water settles again?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this stillness in her work titled Fisher Boys. It is a reminder of how we reach into the unknown. Does the river feel the hands that search it?