The Weight of the Threshold

I keep a heavy brass key in my desk drawer, one that no longer fits any lock I own. It is cool to the touch, worn smooth by a hand that stopped turning it decades ago. There is a strange, quiet dignity in objects that have outlived their purpose, standing guard over spaces that have long since changed their names or their inhabitants. We often think of history as something written in books, but it is more often found in the way a person stands before a door, or the way they hold their shoulders against the pressure of a boundary. We are all, in our own way, sentinels of our own small histories, waiting for a signal that may never come. We carry the weight of the places we have been, even when the gates have been barred and the keys have lost their teeth. What remains of us when the duty of standing watch is finally set aside?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this sense of stillness in his beautiful image titled Soldiers by the Gate. It reminds me that even in the most ancient of places, we are only ever passing through. Does this image make you feel like an intruder, or a witness to something eternal?