The Water Remembers

The river does not hurry. It moves because it must, carving the stone not with force, but with the persistence of time. We often mistake movement for progress, forgetting that the deepest changes happen in the stillness between breaths. In the north, we watch the ice form in the autumn. It is a slow closing of the world. The water holds the reflection of the trees until the surface hardens, locking the memory of the leaves beneath a glass floor. We look for permanence in a landscape that is constantly shedding its skin. To stand by a stream is to watch your own life passing, fluid and ungraspable. You cannot step into the same silence twice. What remains when the current has carried the season away?

Hanks Tseng has captured this quiet transition in his image titled Stream of Autumn. The water moves like a ghost through the stillness of the woods. Does it feel as cold to you as it does to me?