The Weight of Transit

We are always in transit. Between one shore and another, between the person we were when we boarded and the person who will step onto the mud of the bank. The water moves beneath us, indifferent to our destination. It carries the silt of mountains and the debris of lives lived upstream. There is a specific stillness that settles in the chest during these crossings. It is not peace, exactly. It is the suspension of the self. We wait. We look out at the horizon, or we look at the person sitting across from us, and for a moment, the noise of the world falls away. We are just bodies in a boat, held by the current. What remains when the movement stops? Does the river remember the faces that pass over it, or does it simply wash them away, leaving only the cold, dark surface behind?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has taken this beautiful image titled Wind. It captures that brief, suspended breath of a journey. Can you feel the river moving beneath you?