Dear Ivan,

Time indeed appears to be slowing down. The Japanese mono no aware, the cycle of life, the acceptance of fleeting moments, is an unstoppable force, gently nudging me toward introspection.

This stock-taking also requires that we rationalise the world around us. We turn it inside out to see how we fit within it, and where we might be heading.

We can only understand what we can describe with language, and we also have an impossible draw to move in those parts of the world that affirm our existing beliefs. It is a fragile, and possibly flawed circle. Checks and balances, as  for those who govern us, are also needed for ourselves. Do we delude ourselves in blind optimism? Or do we stifle ourselves, believing in our own powerlessness? However hard I try, I cannot break out of the bubble of my own continually fluid reality.

Once in awhile, a tiny event pushes me momentarily out of my bubble and I glimpse another way of seeing. Those events are rare, and offer  a window into an impossibly complex reality; one I could almost believe to be more true.

In those moments I sense the complexity of my reality, but I cannot hold on to it long enough to dissect it, take it in, learn. And then in order to do that I have to use the same flawed rationalisation that those moments helped dispel. So I learn to accept the gentle sadness of recognising a moment soon to pass.

I can’t wait for the snow. I love the fleeting, equalising veil it lays down over reality. The colonised, the broken, the hibernating.

Oh, by the way: Hamilton or Rosberg? I like them both.

/// #image_by_image is an ongoing conversation between photographers Ivan Sigal and Anton Kusters. @ivansigal and @antonkusters on Instagram ///