The heat descended upon the desert surrounded by ochre mountains in a slow flood. Still, the landscape lay motionless under a heavy heat and wide sky. Open eyes afforded a glimpse of asphalt, broken vehicles, sun and cacti that had melted to the contours of the windswept sand, like melted wax. Distant heat waves boiled the sand into bubbles towards the sky; the sky dripped its blue onto the sand below. The world was a canvas oozing in blue and beige. Motion had long abandoned his body in search of an oasis beyond. The heat threw his body into tidal swells of sweat that lapped against air around.
The membrane of skin and sky vibrated in a friction that sent his bones into a hum. He stood in a skeletal stillness to listen, however curiosity soon turned to fear as he realized he was precariously teetering upon a latticework of brittle bones. He was paralyzed by the thought that the spines and cords that gave him shape would pierce his flesh and throw him into shapelessness. Immobility was no longer for leisure, it was now for survival; he found new motion in the twitch and scan of his eyes. The landscape bubbled, as the final traces of latent motion spasmed from under stones and underground crevices.
A ribcage sizzled on the sand, sending streams of ivory into the air that congealed into a white plastic chair. He sat and wondered about matter and mirage. The exchange continued, as his sweat met and slowly melted the chair. Eternity became imminent. Time became a tempo counted at the rate of a lazy train of thoughts. The world assumed direction authored in sweat drop streams punctuated by trails over freckles and scabs.
In this eternity the landscape became a canvas; fine art on a white museum wall. Where movement and locomotion appeared in phantom quivers and whispers. Like distant memories the accidental brush of a strangers hand, the scent of an orange peel torn in a crowded room. The world vibrated on the periphery of his sight, but nothing could escape his perspective. Even himself, he too was an aspect, a quality of the scene; the thought of himself looking at the canvas on the white museum wall superseded his sense of sight, and became his sight.
Although he was noticed only as a small misshapen drop upon the canvas, the body glowed and paled in an ember that burnt the pigment from the paint.He sunk lower and lower into the serenity of immobility, in the comfort of a bath of warm melting wax. The chair drooped sending his glance above. He saw a bird that had been long overtaken by the flooding freeze. Like him, the bird had chosen this stale state; anything that could twitch a muscle into motion could have escaped this lackadaisical landscape. Earlier the bird had followed its hunger; trailing a body lost and burning in a slow desert ramble to pick at the bones of its assured destiny. Interrupted by the lullaby, the bird floated motionless. It was, as a silhouette in the sky, a finch, and as a shadow on the sand, a vulture. The world had finally lapsed into indecision it vibrated in the friction of myth and sight.
He sat and swayed upon the strands of the white plastic chair that had melted into more of a hammock above the glittering sand. The melting polymers moved in vibrations that dripped from the tips of just-hardened ivory tendrils. The melt was caught in inertia, caught in the crest of a wave approaching a shore, releasing stores of motion that bubbled to the sandy surface and tapped the landscape into a gentle sway.
His eyes winced, as he burrowed his sight deep into the horizon, he clarified the hum of motion that was being released in a thousand squeals and screams beneath him. As the pigments melted and blended, his sight began to return as colors moved and mixed, that gave him a heavy sense of seasickness. He shook his head, and sight into motion, his gentle gaze sent the world into sway according to a common spasm, which settled as the tendons in his eyes tightened and pulled the blurs into focus. Shrubs and stones leached hues and shades from mineral waters that churned below the sandy surface. Skins and skeletons swelled and sweat, dripped as blue paint drops onto the sky, as oil streams congealed into wandering highways. Soon his jaw dropped and diaphragm swelled as the gentle breeze flowed like a coastal current into his lungs. The shake sent the sun in a circle around the globe, sending him hurling upon the destinies of remote desert highways.
