ambiguation

The river runs downhill. The certainty of the end of the river pulls with great magnetic strength. But the river’s terrain is not only defined by the pull of its current—it is populated with moments of punctuation:

• sandbars,
• sweepers,
• strainers,
• boulders,
• plummets,
• boils,
• holes,
• eddies. Hazards and havens. The hole yearns to drown. The eddy offers pause. The eddy and the hole form on the same principle: a fixed object obstructs the flow of water downstream, leaving a void on the opposite side of the object to be refilled by the river with a circulating flow of water moving upstream and back down again. The eddy is created by an object visible above the surface and the hole by an object hidden below.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended on which side of it you were on.¹