Drifting into Emptiness

Wander into the eyes of Acan, 85, Cambodian. He sits in the stone dorway of an ancient Angkorian temple selling carved wooden elephants and bowed instruments.

I sit with him in the shade and listen to him strum. We talk little, but somehow a lot is communicated.

My mind wanders to another place when I look at this picture. Across the wrinkles of his forehead, along the eyebrows and around the eyes, I pause and gaze before sloping down his right neck muscle and into a bay of soft focus. The flow pulls me around the back, down his left shoulder and out into an expansive sea devoid of thought. I have drifted into emptiness. I am calm and rested.

And then I hit the fabric of his trousers and am jerked back into the intensity of his face!

see [link] for more portraits from Asia. Enjoy!