The Weight of Gravity

There is a moment before the fall. Or perhaps, a moment before the stop. We spend our lives moving toward a destination, convinced that the velocity is the point. We lean into the wind, trusting the friction of the earth to hold us. But the earth is indifferent. It does not care if we are upright or if we are sliding. It only waits for the stillness that follows the motion. To stop is to admit that the momentum was never truly ours. It was a loan from the slope, a temporary defiance of the ground. We are all just bodies in transit, waiting for the friction to catch up, waiting for the noise to settle into the silence of the pavement. When the board finally rests, what remains of the speed? Does the air still remember the shape of the body that cut through it? Or does it simply close the gap, leaving nothing behind but the cold, hard fact of the street.

Blair Horgan has captured this fleeting suspension in the image titled Freestyling Downhill. It is a study of how we choose to meet the ground. How do you find your own stillness in the middle of a rush?