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.
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A concise and impartial dictionary of absence, promises, quarrels, ordinary objects, and the troublesome instability of words.
The City of Service
The temple we inherit is a building from which almost all necessity has been removed. Nothing must be brought for it to continue being what we call a temple. The sanctuary asks nothing of us. Stone is good at this kind of independence.
A living temple was otherwise.
Water had to come in. So did grain, cloth, oil, aromatic substances, fuel. The things required for worship arrived because someone carried them across a threshold.
Houses of Wood, Light, and Smoke
Some of Angkor’s most intimate ruins do not rise above the ground at all. They are postholes, low mounds, hearths and ponds: durable traces of a domestic city built largely from things that decay. To restore that city is to see Angkor not only as stone, but as wood, smoke, water, repair, and people living within calling distance.