The Spinning World

When I was seven, my uncle took me to the county fair. I remember the smell of burnt sugar and the way the ground seemed to vibrate under my sneakers. There was a ride that spun in circles, faster and faster, until the people inside became nothing more than a blur of bright sweaters and laughing mouths. I stood at the fence, clutching a sticky paper cone, convinced that if the ride stopped, the world itself might fly apart. I didn’t understand how something could move so violently and yet stay perfectly tethered to the center. I thought the blur was a secret language, a way of moving that only the brave were allowed to know. Now, I see that the blur is just what happens when you try to hold onto a moment that is already leaving you. We spend our lives trying to catch the light, but perhaps the point was never to hold it still. What happens to the color when the movement finally stops?

Kurien Koshy Yohannan has taken this beautiful image titled Whizzing Round. It captures that same dizzying, electric hum of a night spent chasing lights in the dark. Does it make you want to step onto the ride, or just watch it spin from the safety of the grass?