The Weight of Still Water

The smell of wet river silt always brings me back to the damp hem of a skirt, heavy and clinging against my ankles. It is a thick, earthy scent, like iron and ancient moss, that seems to seep into the marrow of your bones. When the air is this heavy, you don’t just breathe it; you wear it. There is a specific rhythm to moving through water—a slow, rhythmic creak of wood against the current, the vibration traveling up through the soles of your feet until your own pulse matches the pulse of the river. It is a quiet, solitary labor, the kind that leaves your palms calloused and your mind strangely hollow, scrubbed clean by the constant, sliding friction of the tide. We spend so much of our lives trying to anchor ourselves to the shore, forgetting that the most profound stillness is found only when you are drifting. Does the water remember the shape of the hands that push against it, or are we all just temporary ripples in a current that never stops to look back?

Greg Goodman has captured this quiet rhythm in his beautiful image titled Mekong Monk. The way the river holds the boat feels like a memory I have touched before. Can you feel the pull of the current beneath your own feet?