The Story Behind “In Transit” by Christopher Woods

Today’s post is written by Christopher Woods. His series of  photography “In Transit” appears in our Spring 2016 issue.

If I do not move, my heart is still beating. Blood courses through arteries and veins through my body. The engine goes, but where?

I stand up. I am in a room. I cross the room. I cross into another room. I am in a room with my family. My parents. Brothers and sisters. If I keep moving, soon I am in another house. My own. Alone.

Soon, there are others there with me. A wife. Maybe children. We are all moving about as orbit around each other. We are solid and good most of the time, but we know it is all temporary. We are all in transit.

We are never still for long. Moving around in the womb. Later in life, we are always coming and going, following directives, from both outside and inside. Maybe we are afraid of stillness?

However it is, we are in motion, always. As humans, we have dominion over the animals. Yet we don’t know where the beasts are going. They too are in motion. Where do they think they are going?

They don’t know. Like us, maybe they think that, by going, they will find out. They will learn the answers to everything.

Where are we all going? No one knows. We can hope for a direction. We can pray. But where is it, our destination?

Living is but a part of it. But when we are dying, we are preparing for yet another journey. Friends, admit it, we are travelers, from start to finish, and on. And when we die, some think we are going to a place where our reward awaits us. Maybe that will be the time and place to be still. Perhaps.

But even then, there are clouds to wander, former relatives to go see. We can ride on the wings of angels to incredibly luscious fields of never-ending flowers. Or, a God will lead us to ultimate happiness.

Or maybe nothing awaits us, so we will keep moving, as ghosts or vapors.

Thank you for indulging my habit of capturing temporal, not yet vaporous beings in transit.

About the Author

Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Houston and Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Columbia and Glimmer Train, among others. His photographs can be seen in his gallery. He is currently compiling a book of photography prompts for writers, “From Vision to Text.”