The Silence of Stone

In the quiet hours of the morning, before the kettle whistles or the house begins its daily creaking, I often think about the nature of absence. We are so conditioned to look for what is present—the clutter on the desk, the stack of books, the familiar faces at the table—that we rarely stop to consider the power of the void. There is a specific kind of stillness found in places where life has been stripped away, leaving only the bones of the earth. It is not a lonely silence, but a heavy, ancient one, as if the land itself is holding its breath, waiting for a word that was spoken eons ago. We spend our lives trying to fill every corner with noise and color, yet there is a profound, aching beauty in the places that refuse to be filled. If the world were suddenly emptied of all its frantic movement, would we finally be able to hear the rhythm of the ground beneath our feet?

Marissa Tejada has captured this stillness in her work titled A Beach of Snow White. She reminds us that sometimes, the most vibrant stories are told by the spaces where nothing grows at all. Does this quiet landscape make you feel small, or does it make you feel entirely at home?