Ansui Ryusho is the pen name of Sushant Shrestha.

He started writing as a teenager, and for years, he traveled. Physically, spiritually, inwardly. In search of transcendence. He wrote these words and songs in the rainy streets of Reykjavík, over misty mornings in London cafés, through the sunlit streets of Cusco, in the bustling lanes of Kathmandu, along the foggy beaches west of Sebastopol, in the temples of Tiruvannamalai. He was convinced that truth lived somewhere beyond the ordinary, and he was willing to go to great lengths to find it.

Then, slowly, something turned. He stopped trying to outrun the dark in himself and turned to face it. The broken parts. The unloved corners. The places no amount of seeking will ever reach.

The work stopped trying to rise above life and began to descend into it. There is no longer anything to transcend, only matter to attend to: the mystery folded inside the ordinary, the sacred hiding in plain sight. Each poem, each photograph, each song is a small act of transmutation, turning what is plainly here into what was here since the beginning, only unseen.