There is a bridge in Old Ningo that carries more than people—it carries stories.
Every time I stand there, watching the tide pull and release the boats, I feel the pulse of a place that remembers. The water shimmers with the weight of history, while the air hums with movement—cars, bicycles, fishermen calling to one another at dawn. Life flows endlessly across the bridge, yet somewhere within that rhythm lies stillness.
They say the bridge has one rule: no hearses may cross.
The living may pass freely, but the dead must stay behind. It’s a belief that’s been part of Ningo for generations, born of reverence for the sea and the spirits who dwell within it. I don’t know if I believe it, but I respect it deeply. For me, it’s a reminder that some places belong only to the living—to those still learning, still healing, still becoming.
My painting, *Stillness in Motion: What the Tide Remembers*, was born on that bridge. It’s an image of movement and pause, of vehicles and boats that seem to hover between two worlds: the visible and the unseen, the past and the present. The brushwork is jagged yet fluid, echoing the chaos and calm that coexist within me. Every stroke is an attempt to hold the impossible—the moment when water reflects sky, when motion becomes peace.
Painting this scene was also a crossing of my own.
I was in Ningo as a public health volunteer, working with mothers and children. But I was also navigating the turbulence of Borderline Personality traits—learning to stay present through art, learning to breathe again. The bridge became my metaphor: a link between pain and purpose, between the woman I was and the artist I am becoming.
When I look at *Stillness in Motion*, I see more than a landscape.
I see the courage to move forward.
I see the quiet strength of a community that has lived beside the sea for centuries.
I see the living—always crossing, always remembering.
