The Hum of Still Water

The taste of river water is not like the water from a tap; it is metallic, heavy with silt, and carries the ghost of rain that fell miles upstream. I remember the sensation of damp wood beneath my palms, the way the grain feels rough and swollen after a long season of soaking. There is a specific rhythm to being on the water—a slow, rhythmic rocking that settles deep into the marrow of your bones, quieting the frantic pulse of the day. It is a physical surrender, a loosening of the shoulders as the world narrows down to the sound of a ripple against a hull. We spend so much of our lives trying to stand on solid ground, forgetting that we are mostly made of fluid, waiting for the current to remind us how to drift. When was the last time you let the weight of your own body simply dissolve into the quiet?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this exact feeling of suspension in her work titled In the Serene Waters of the River Arial Khan. The way the boat sits upon the surface invites a kind of silence that I can feel in my own chest. Does this stillness pull you toward the water, or does it make you want to stay safely on the shore?