The Weight of Stone

We build walls to keep the world out, or perhaps to keep ourselves in. Stone is a patient material. It does not hurry. It absorbs the heat of the sun and the cold of the night, holding onto the memory of every footfall that has ever pressed against it. There is a silence in old masonry that is not merely the absence of sound, but a density of time. We walk through these corridors and imagine we are the first to pass, or the last. We are neither. We are only temporary shadows moving across surfaces that were shaped by hands long turned to dust. The stone does not care for our names. It only asks that we move through the space with a certain gravity, acknowledging the weight of what came before. If you stop long enough, does the wall begin to speak, or do you simply hear the echo of your own breath?

Tisha Clinkenbeard has captured this stillness in her image titled El Morro. The light finds its way through the stone, reminding us that even the heaviest structures are subject to the passing of the day. Does the light feel heavy to you, too?