falling in love with death

Gusts of cruelty, perversions, lusts ran lightly over the surface without troubling us; for the moral laws which had seemed to hedge about these silly accidents must be yet fainter words
T E

I estimated eight hours in front of me, and planned to stop after every one, sip on water and rest for a few minutes. It turned much tougher very soon. I was carrying many kilos more than I should have, and the breaks after every hour increased in frequency to once every half hour, and ultimately once every 15 minutes. I would take a minute sip of water and then lie down on the desert floor, looking up at the fantastic spread of stars clearer than from most other places on Earth. The ground would be soft and cool, and it seemed so much easier to close my eyes and drift off into an endless sleep of no effort, at one with the desert and the night and the sky. I fell in love with the Umm as Samim that night, and wanted to drink it in and become it, in all its life and death and terrible beauty that only I, at this one moment, could possess. I wanted to let go, to leave my things and drift away, or run amok off the track and into the dunes, gulping in that fine crimson sand that glows at dusk and turns shades of soft grey and silver at night. I would choke on that powder, and die. It would be easier, perhaps even apt.

Instead, I chose life and the harder way and the little things that seemed suddenly silly in comparison. I walked through the night till eight in the morning, stumbling to the reed shack opposite the foul smelling chemically laced water tank. It was my back that pained most, not my feet, and there must have been bruises where the straps of the haversack cut across in places I could not see, and across my chest and shoulder where additional straps of the camera bag had stretched. I had to get down to the ground in slow motion, and lay in the shade after one mammoth, triumphant swig of water.

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