On Impermanence

I travel for the purpose of being taken to yet another place where time ceases to exist, where every moment feels like the last. Each new experience, like water dripping through the floorboards. Only here, only now, I would repeat to myself, walking down unknown streets.

A slow, moss covered pain, the type of nostalgia an impermanent life provokes. The thrill of walking away from a city that you may never return to. For no other reason than to make a poem of the everyday, to exalt the ordinary. To know that when the light fades from my body, that I will be safe from the slings of memory, without a germ of regret.

I have moved through oceans and skies to escape the fear of permanence. My heart at the mercy of an impulse that reason could not control. The urge to turn infinite corners, to move through a maze that I may never find my way to the centre of. The feeling of waking up in unknown places, to the sound of unknown languages, and the gentle but profound process of the unknown slowly becoming known. This is a pleasure I will never tire of.

Memories cling to my skin like old rain, each person I have met along the way has left an immutable shimmer. I have written stories to immortalise them. I learnt that story-telling was the only ever-inhabitable island. Sometimes, in vain, I drape these stories over my collar bones, like a shawl of intricate lace, or like the skin of a hunted animal. I dance around the room of my imagination, trying each memory on, staring back at myself in the mirror, remembering the stranger I was.

I have lived many lives, held many different masks to my face. Always peering through new eyes, looking out over a world that will remain forever mysterious to me. A world with many hidden passageways and endless corridors. I never felt as though I was moving away from anything, always towards something, gathering intangible things; experiences, conversations, ideas, and stringing them together like a necklace of pearls.

The word curious is derived from Latin curiosus, which means to enquire eagerly. The eagerness to know more, to see more. The world is rich. Meaning and interest can be found where you choose to look. A life of impermanence can be found in permanent things. To remain curious is my only true wish. To develop an interest in life; all of its music and literature and people, and to forget the Self.


Words & Photography
Shannon May Powell