The Weight of Being
The smell of cold iron always brings me back to the train station of my childhood, where the air tasted of wet soot and damp wool. There was a heavy, brass-handled scale near the platform, its surface worn smooth by thousands of nervous palms. I remember the sensation of standing on that cold metal, the slight wobble as the needle flickered, and the way my heart hammered against my ribs, waiting for a number to define me. We spend so much of our lives seeking a measurement, a way to quantify the invisible burden we carry in our marrow. We want to know if we are heavy enough to matter, or light enough to be carried away by the next gust of wind. It is a strange, hollow ache—this need to be weighed by the world, to have our existence verified by a mechanical tick. Does the metal ever grow tired of holding the secrets of everyone who steps upon it, or does it simply collect the ghosts of our gravity?
Willeke Tjassens has captured this quiet, heavy stillness in her portrait titled The Man with the Scale. It feels as though the air around him is thick with the history of all those who have stood before him. Can you feel the weight of the moment resting in your own hands?
