Listening for the Drum Between Raindrops
The sandstone gleams with dew, each droplet resting briefly before slipping into a vine-carved groove. The sound—softer than a moth’s wing—is lost to the jungle, but the stone remembers.
The apsara stands in a quiet rhythm. Not posed, but listening. Her fingers offer a gesture that does not close. A pause that does not end. I lean into the hush, aligning lens and breath. The tripod settles like a spine into earth.
I press the release and wait. Not to take, but to receive.
In the stillness, the world becomes tonal: light in gradients, sound in vapour. Her anklets do not chime, yet I hear them—the memory of motion in a body now held by time. The exposure completes, and the air returns like an aftertaste.
Later, in the darkroom, the chiaroscuro flows from silver grain, not as invention, but as retrieval. The stone becomes skin. The silence, voice.
The print arrives not as a product, but as an echo—the one I first heard beneath cloud and rain.
Her silence turns
wild rain into measured pulse;
roots listen, undisturbed.Light rests on a braided crown—
echo of a thunder that never breaks.She offers two fingers,
opens a gate inside the chest
where stone may learn to sing.
Also in My Journal
A Scroll Carried by Wind
Zhou Daguan came to Angkor to observe—but found a kingdom that defied explanation. This introductory scroll welcomes new readers into The Wind That Carried Me to Zhenla: a poetic resurrection of the 13th-century emissary’s journey, revoiced with reverence, wonder, and the hush of temple stone.
The Goddess of the Golden Tower
There is a tower the moon remembers—where a king once climbed in silence, and a goddess wove humility into gold. Though the spire has faded, her presence lingers in the hush between breath and stone, waiting for the next soul who dares to kneel before the unseen.
Phimeanakas and the Goddess of Sovereignty
Within the Royal Enclosure of Angkor Thom stands Phimeanakas—the Celestial Palace. More than a monument, it is a myth made stone: where kings bowed to the goddess of the land, and sovereignty meant surrender. A contemplative meditation on sacred architecture, divine right, and the quiet power that still lives between the stones.
