Where Stone Leans Toward Memory
It was near sunset when the light began to change. I stood alone in the Cruciform Galleries, where the cool shadow met the breath of the jungle. Soft chanting rose like mist from the inner sanctum. The stone at my feet was warm. The hush—complete.
And then, as if they had stepped forward without moving, I saw them.
Two apsaras, carved centuries ago, emerged from the gallery wall. Their forms touched at the shoulder and hip, so gently one might think it an accident of time. But there was intention in the lean, in the grace of their mirrored posture. And there was that smile—a rare one, teeth just barely visible. I have seen thousands of devata across Angkor, but almost none who smile like that.
I did not raise the camera.
There are moments the lens cannot meet until the breath has slowed enough to match the stillness before it. I sat with them. I let the light pool between us, golden and fading. I returned again and again in the months that followed—sometimes to photograph, often to simply be near. Their presence was not something to capture. It was something to honour.
I shaped the final image slowly, months later, using classical chiaroscuro to let the light fall as it had that day. Each print I hand-tone in gold to recall the warmth that wrapped their embrace. But even now, it’s not the photograph I carry—it’s the moment before. The quiet recognition. The feeling that they remembered me.
stone leans into stone—
the warm breath of evening light
is older than time
Also in Library
The Silence of Scales
A staircase inhales, and silence thickens between stone scales. Each step remembers serpents once carved, pearl-light gathering in its breath. In this luminous flash gem, a traveller climbs toward hush and revelation, where silence itself becomes flame. A tale brief as an exhalation, yet lingering like pearl-light beneath moss.
The Crocodile and the Moon Eel: A Tide-Bargain
A crocodile waits in hush where river bends to moonlight. From the silt, a pearl-lit eel rises, whispering a bargain of scale and tide. What is given is never returned whole: hunger meets silence, storm keeps watch, and the river writes its law in breath.
Field Note: Blue Hour at Angkor
The blue hour settles over Angkor like a hush in stone. Naga coils dissolve into shadow, carvings soften into silence, and hunger without teeth endures. A sketch becomes listening. Each fracture is a hymn, each hollow a river. A field note on patience, memory, and the stillness that lingers.
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