The Weight of Silence

We build stone walls to keep the wind out, but mostly we build them to keep ourselves in. There is a specific pressure in a room that has been emptied of voices. It is not an absence. It is a presence that waits for you to stop moving, to stop speaking, to finally notice the way the light settles on the floorboards. We spend our lives filling spaces with noise, with objects, with the frantic business of being seen. Yet, the architecture of the soul requires only a few lines, a corner, a shadow that does not shift. When the air is still, you can hear the history of the mortar. You can hear the patience of the stone. We are small, and the ceiling is high, and for a moment, the need to be anything other than what we are simply dissolves. What remains when the echo finally dies away?

Ng You Way has captured this quietude in the image titled Sanctuary. It is a space that asks for nothing but your presence. Will you sit with it for a while?