Hammock Snapshots are short flash fiction pieces, accompanied by an original illustration that aim to capture a moment, a feeling or a fragment of something without the pressures of longform writing. The series began on Instagram and now also features on our site.

There are only spectrums of opposing forces, pushing back and forth in a constant tug-of-war. You can't express clearly how much you feel this constant oscillation, how you see it in every thing around you. Within you, in your circles, in the news, the pendulum goes back and forth. 

Between happy and sad, open and shut, careful and reckless, conservative and liberal, anxious and calm, hopeful and empty, opulent and abject, tradition and modern, humane and apathetic, chaos and tranquility, all of these poles constantly shifting. It often feels as though you are on the edge of some clarity, some discovery about finding the balance, the right place for it to stop, when you realise that axis has changed again, that it is not just the string in motion but the entire apparatus around it.

 You know that everything and its opposite is true, that a million pendulums in the city are going back and forth, each with their own destinations, each one slightly altered by the poles they have already been between, seeking an equilibrium that is always elusive. You can find solace in the constant motion, or simply close your eyes to all of it and keep swinging.