The Weight of Stone

Why do we insist on building monuments to things that are destined to crumble? We stack stone upon stone, carving our names into the bedrock of history, as if the act of construction could somehow anchor us against the relentless tide of time. We look at the ruins of the past and see a failure of preservation, yet perhaps they are the only honest structures we have ever made. They remind us that everything we hold—our cities, our legacies, our very breath—is merely a temporary arrangement of matter. We are all just tenants in a house that is slowly returning to the earth. To stand amidst the remnants of what once was is to feel the strange, quiet comfort of our own insignificance. If the stone itself cannot hold its shape against the centuries, what hope is there for the stories we tell ourselves about who we are?

Minh Nghia Le has captured this quiet dialogue between eras in the image titled All along the Watchtower. It invites us to consider what remains when the noise of the present finally fades away. What do you see when you look at the boundary between then and now?