Shul

I have always loved old stone walls such as the one in the photograph below. I love the hollows left by the stones that are missing. There is a beauty there, and the beauty is in the history and the meaning, the fact that something WAS there and made an impression. It is an emptiness that is not empty; the emptiness itself signifying something. The hollows always leave me wondering, “What was the color of the rock that was there? What was its texture? Whose hand placed it there? When did that hand place it there? When did it fall out and why? What was this wall built to keep out or to keep in?” With all of this in mind, I took the following photo, which I entitled “Shul.”

"Shul" is a Tibetan word defined as “an impression – a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by – a footprint, for example." From what I understand, it can also be used to describe such things as the hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the spaces worn in a rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where a deer slept the night. Shul is an impression of something that used to be there, but this hollow signifies meaning rather than emptiness.