Bring Your Own Water
And leave behind your notions of yourself.
Sand greets the eyes from horizon to horizon.
The only safe harbour in a world like this is solid, barren rock. Something you can stamp your feet on and wedge your fortress in.
A craggy surface to cling to when the sandstorms rise up in the deep desert and roll over the cities erasing them from sight and memory for a time.
But wisdom comes from the desert.
A way with limits. The hard ends of life.
A knowing of living within a thimbleful of water of the edge. A sharing and owning of the essence of life. What’s mine is yours. And you are mine.
There’s a hard edge to existence, a knife in the hand of a babe.
Sudden pits that open up and devour a man’s living. Steal his riches right from under his feet. He can still smell it as it falls away into the abyss.
And at the core, the knowledge that fear is the undoing. The mind-killer. The little death.
Obliteration.
You can stare out into the desert your whole life in this polished city and know nothing of what it means to walk out onto the sands and take your life into your own hands.
To rise up above the dunes and ride the wind. To look the beast in its maw and leap upon its back. To feel true power.
The desert is where the bones of the foolish are ground into dust. No man walks out of that desert without knowing who he truly is.
Keep your cities, with your date palms, those water thieves. Your water-rich flesh knows nothing of life.
Step beyond your shields, your uniformed escorts, and walk onto the sands.
Know the freedom of the shifting landscape, beyond the reach and sight of your enemies.
This is an Empty World, stolen from my favourite book, the only book I’ve read and read and reread throughout my life. The only book that tells me how I’ve changed while it reveals a new layer of itself.
Treat this world with care. it has great riches and sharp edges.
