/take me back to eden

Nature has this humane attribute to teasing. If we are lucky enough it’d allow us to take a peak through a secret window to what Eden looks like. It disappears in an instant but boy does the mind-hurtling charm of Gaia first freezes the mind and then slowly releases it to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty.

It was an early summer morning in Manali and I was sitting on the balcony of my hotel room with my trusty tripod battling the glacial Himalayan wind having just completed shooting a timelapse. I was reviewing the images on the flipped screen on my camera when I noticed an amber glow engulfing me — as if Apollo had just cranked the luminosity of the sun.

I looked up and a thought shot into my mind, shining and winking like a meteor. The thought flashed and went out so quickly that I had to stop breathing for a moment to try to find it. Wasting no precious seconds, I composed a frame, dialed the settings, and stole this moment from Thanatos’ suitcase. A few seconds later, it was gone — the landscape returning to its gloomy green.

I surveyed the image again and again, and it spoke to me of the heavens every time I looked at it. I knew suddenly joy and fabric felted into one fabric of space and time. And I knew in my heart, oh how much I wish to see Eden — if not as a resident then as an apprentice photographer for the gods.

I will travel far beyond the path of reason
Take me back to Eden