The Weight of Passing Time

The blue wool sweater my father wore every winter for a decade is gone. It was not discarded; it simply wore thin at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs until it became a ghost of itself, eventually vanishing into the cycle of things that are no longer held. We often speak of time as a line, a steady progression from one point to the next, but grief knows better. Time is a stack. It is the way the frost of January sits atop the memory of July’s heat, and how the brittle, golden decay of autumn rests upon the tender, unformed green of spring. We are always living in the middle of a collision between what has just withered and what is about to bloom. We think we are moving forward, but we are merely standing in the center of a layered silence, watching the seasons press against one another like ghosts in a crowded room. If you could peel back the present, what layer of your own history would you find waiting underneath?

Moslem Azimi has captured this layering of existence in the image titled Seasons Union. It is a quiet reminder that even when we feel anchored in one moment, the entire cycle of what we have lost and what we are becoming is always present. Does this view make the passing of time feel like a burden, or a comfort to you?