Texture

I wish there was a way to record the texture of a place, the way the crushed gray gravel feels against the bottom of your foot, sharp, but rough, not cutting, or to reconstruct for you the dryness of the grass between your fingers, thin, smooth, like a miniature brown flute that crumbs as your roll it and it’s carried off on the wind, or provide a way for you to feel the warm waft of humidity slowly receding through the evening as the sun fades and the temperature drops enough to weaken it, the way it is pushed back by the cool salt air rolling in for the night.

I can photograph the stars and record the sound of the frogs singing, but there is no way to make you feel the texture of a place. Perhaps that’s for the best, lest we have another reason to not get off the couch. To feel a place you must get inside it somehow and when you do, when you’ve shrunk yourself down into the cracks within it, heard the thin rumor of whispers it says behind our backs, then you know that place, in your own way, and are connected to it forever more.