Low sunlight casts the shadows of figures, standing on the Frankwell footbridge in Shrewsbury across the River Severn, into trees. The willows have shaken loose from leafing, and the light that strikes them has a brilliance no longer absorbed by hungry foliage. The trees are illuminated, freed from the processes of growth, and the river has risen to meet them.
The shadows stand in the golden branches above a bend in the river, and look back at us. They are dark and shift slightly, mirroring our movements, but not enough to feel we are the same thing. We’re not. They are strangers, watching. Freud may have called them doppelgangers: uncanny versions of our repressed selves. Jung may have seen them as unconscious personalities that we project on to others because of the struggles we have with ourselves. The shadows are not watching us, though: they’re watching the river.
