Stillness Before Time Resumes
I arrived before birdsong, before even the guards had stirred. The corridor exhaled its centuries in the scent of lichen, ash, and wet sandstone. No wind—only the curl of incense from a monk’s hand. Then He emerged: Ta Reach, eight-armed, garlanded in jasmine and time, veiled in half-light. Not standing in glory, but stillness.
I waited until thought dissolved. The camera remained open—not to take, but to receive. One breath. One long exposure. Later, in the darkroom, I shaped that hush with shadow and light. Every curve remembered.
Still before the gods—
stone listens more than it speaks,
light becoming vow.
Also in Library
The Stone Is Not the World
A contemplative Angkor essay on how surviving stone has shaped the way Angkor is seen — and why the vanished world of wood, water, labour, smoke, roads, bodies, weather, and devotion must be allowed to return around the temples in What the Stone Hides.
The Consolation of Not Being Separate
There are moments when the world refuses to become personal. The rain falls on the day you needed sun. The illness does not pause because someone is loved. The sea does not soften because a child is afraid. And when the thing prayed against happens anyway, it can feel as if the world has abandoned us. But perhaps what has failed is not the world’s care. Perhaps what has failed is our idea of care.
The Face That Looks Four Ways
The faces of the Bayon have been called Brahma, Lokeshvara, Jayavarman VII, and Vajrasattva. This essay examines the evidence behind each theory and argues that their deepest meaning may lie in a royal-Buddhist synthesis: compassion given the scale of empire.
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On The Lantern Chronicles, I gather writings from Angkor, myth and legend, contemplative essays, and poetry — works shaped by silence, beauty, wonder, memory, and the deeper questions that follow us through the world.
It is a place for stone and story, reflection and vow, shadow and revelation.
You would be most welcome there.