The Weight of Echoes

I spent this morning cleaning out the back of my closet, pulling out boxes I haven’t touched in years. I found a postcard from a trip I took when I was twenty, back when I thought buildings were just backdrops for my own life. I remember standing in a place much like the one I’m thinking of now, feeling small beneath a ceiling that seemed to hold up the sky. It is strange how we build these massive, ornate spaces to house our everyday errands. We walk through them to buy bread or catch a train, rarely stopping to look up at the iron ribs and the glass that filters the sun. We are so busy moving toward our next destination that we forget we are walking through history. It makes me wonder if we ever truly inhabit the places we build, or if we are just ghosts passing through the grand hallways of our own making. Do you ever feel like a stranger in the spaces you visit every single day?

Sandra Frimpong has captured this feeling perfectly in her image titled Galleria Umberto. It reminds me that even the most solid structures are really just vessels for our fleeting presence. What do you see when you look at these soaring, light-filled arches?