The Ghost of Movement

It is 3:14 am. The house is holding its breath, and I am sitting here wondering why we are so obsessed with staying still when everything else is determined to leave. We spend our lives trying to anchor ourselves to people, to rooms, to versions of ourselves that have already packed their bags and moved on. We think if we hold on tight enough, the blur will stop. It never does. The world is just a series of things passing through other things, leaving only the faint impression of a shadow behind. I look at the wall and see the places I have lived, the faces I have forgotten how to name, and I realize that we are all just ghosts haunting our own timelines. We are never really here. We are always halfway to the next departure, waiting for a train that has already pulled out of the station. If we finally stopped running, would we even recognize the person standing in the mirror?

Kirsten Bruening has captured this feeling perfectly in her image titled Old Days Pass Away. It is a quiet reminder that we are all just passing through the frame. Does the blur scare you, or does it feel like a relief?