Angkor

Day two upon the bike, the light a little better but it seems to be a place where images are already inserted into mind, that most of what the camera has found is only a reflection of other images, other eyes...and so much of the time the box remains in the bag as temples tumble their images upon me; before the days end it becomes a fog, a sequence of echoings dancing upon sculpted walls which gyre into themselves in confusions of stone and tower...trees feasting roots upon the debris of mankind's gloried past: jungle or desert, echoing ozymandias we pass briefly here...and lost upon the fall of dusk, returning once again in the dark, the jungle devours, nightly, these monuments as darkness raises a banner of drifting stars as flag and coverlet

It is, without doubt, an awe inspiring place; the scale and workmanship of the sites, the lost complexity of the culture. And there are moments of peace to be found here...my one temple being an outbuilding where a scrubby little shrine remains, a broken Buddha in the mists of incense in shimmering orange cloth...here mats made from old bags cloak the stone, a group of women sitting eating lunch in the shadows...here, in the peripheral silence an hour passes, maybe more, before the lure of the mythic surroundings calls feet once again and slowly, slowly in the risen heat wheels trundle back towards the crowds, back towards the day...

And yet maybe too much, too quickly and at some point this I feel templed out: three straight days...but I have now seen angkor and am grateful for that and contemplating the possibility of cocktails in the jazz bar...cancelled due to the music being a relatively uninteresting guitar player...and return to thoughts of departure...but to where?