The Quiet Between Us

I was driving home late last night, the kind of late where the radio stations turn to static and the road feels like it belongs only to me. There is a specific kind of loneliness that hits when you are moving through the dark, surrounded by nothing but the hum of the engine and the occasional flicker of a distant house light. It used to scare me, that vast, empty space. I felt small, like a speck of dust caught in a draft. But lately, I have started to find comfort in it. There is a strange peace in knowing that for a few miles, no one needs anything from me. I am just a traveler passing through the silence, a ghost in the machine. It makes me wonder if we spend too much of our lives trying to fill the quiet, when the quiet is actually the only place where we can finally hear ourselves think. Does the darkness feel like a weight to you, or does it feel like a place to hide?

Mark Paulda has captured this exact feeling of solitude in his work titled Third Encounters. It perfectly mirrors that moment of being a small, moving light in a vast, sleeping world. Does this image make you feel lonely, or does it feel like freedom to you?