The Weight of the Wind

There is a moment when the body ceases to be a burden. It happens in the transition between the earth and the sky, when the air becomes a solid thing, a surface to lean against. We spend our lives anchored to the ground, measuring our days by the weight of our own footsteps. We forget that the wind has a shape, that it can be held if only for a heartbeat. To surrender to the pull is not to lose control, but to finally understand the direction of the current. The salt on the skin, the roar of the unseen, the sudden lightness of being suspended above the deep. It is a quiet violence, this struggle to remain tethered while the soul insists on drifting. We are always reaching for the horizon, hoping that if we move fast enough, the distance will finally stop being a wall and become a path. What remains when the wind dies down?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this suspension in his image titled Kite Rider. It is a study of a man finding his own silence in the middle of a storm. Does the water feel the same pull as the air?