The Weight of Distance

We travel to escape the gravity of our own lives. We sit in metal tubes, suspended between the earth we know and the sky we cannot touch. There is a specific kind of silence that happens at altitude. It is the silence of being nowhere, a suspension of time where the past is a receding coastline and the future is merely a destination on a map. Children understand this better than we do. They do not look for the horizon; they look for the wonder in the glass. They see the world as a fragile thing, something that might slip away if they stop watching. We lose that. We become heavy with the things we carry, the luggage of our own history. We forget how to look out of a window without searching for a reason. What remains when the clouds clear and there is nothing left to see but the light?

Moslem Azimi has captured this fleeting stillness in his image titled Flying Craze. It is a reminder of the curiosity we leave behind in the clouds. Does the view look the same to you?