Silhouettes

(August 12, 2020)

I kind of have an obsession with silhouettes. When hanging out with me past 6 o’clock, you’ll usually find my eyes drifting onto the edges of mountains, to the arms of trees, or to the top points of buildings. I’ll stare at humans in the distance jumping and playing, and I swear I can hear the laughter and shouts coming from them though I’m a mile away. I know not their name or life, but I know them to be the timeless spirits of human beings living their beautiful life.

A silhouette is a meek yet bold sort of thing. It is as if the spirit of the object is humbly saying, “here I am in my truest form.” My eyes notice no color or discolor, no rip or mend, no living or dead leaf, no broken or fixed window, but simply the spirit of the object itself: the spirit of the building, the spirit of the tree, the spirit of a human. The silhouette does not ask to be looked at, it does not flicker any light at your eye, and yet, when you notice it (the edges, the bold points against the backdrop of blue and yellow hues), it’s as if the object rewards you for noticing. It shows you its truest, most basic form, a timeless form, that will be taken on again by another tree, another building, or another human after it. It no longer stands as a colorful dot on the horizon, but it becomes a part of the bigger shape of this earth; it becomes an edge to this universe.