The Weight of Upward

We build to hide from the horizon. Stone and steel rise, a vertical ambition that ignores the earth beneath our feet. There is a strange comfort in looking up; it pulls the neck taut, forces the eyes away from the dust and the small, broken things we leave behind. We want to believe that height is a form of progress, that if we stack enough weight toward the clouds, we might finally touch something permanent. But the sky does not care for our geometry. It remains indifferent, vast, and cold. We are merely ants tracing lines on a wall, measuring our worth by how far we can stretch before gravity reminds us of our place. The higher the structure, the longer the shadow it casts. Does the shadow ever wonder why it is tethered to the ground, while the stone dreams of the sun?

Montasir Khandker has captured this tension in his work titled Aim High. He finds the geometry in our daily climb. How do you measure the distance between where you stand and where you wish to be?