Love Locks

I get lost. I got lost in Colorado when I had lived there for 17 years. So when I travel in a foreign country with the signs all in Czech or French or German that did not help. So while I was lost in Prague trying to find "Charles Bridge," a very lovely sight, I found these locks on a bridge. These locks are made by couples who then lock them and throw away the key.
I think about all the loving couples with the fingers interlaced throwing the keys into the river below. Some with custom locks leaving them all over the world. Other locks purchased at hardware store with the couple's name scraped into the paint. I think about the love and secrets that the couple felt when they walked away from the bridge. They leave this tiny bread crumb of their lives. Love locks may at first blush seem a romantic and silly gesture but I think they mean something more. Love lock are a simply symptom of the idea of how temporary our lives are. We live and love often completely anonymity. Thousands living and dying and loving completely isolated from great chunks of the world.
So when man has died and truly died and all those who loved him are gone then what evidence do we have of their existence? That these people lived and loved and whole lives were shaped and there is nothing left. Others may have loved and locked and lost. Others may have lost the blooming flower of love they felt to the storms of life. But we may never know. For while I see these tiny locks and think about their stories never told. I see these blurred images in my mind of couples, and lovers with no faces. Nothing but blurred and empty features.

That is why we leave locks because while we can not picture a world without us.
Even though it contradicts that which at our core-we know-that the world will live beyond us.