the oasis.
By the fourteenth day,
traveling south, then further east,
then south some more, the
philosopher,
a
calm
and
reasonable mind, felt the
unfamiliar fluttering of panic in
his breast. He trekked west;
perhaps he had gone too far east
instead of south. He trekked
north. On the nineteenth day,
supplies dwindling, he dropped
the camel’s rope and stood still.
Reason is indistinguishable from
madness in the desert. Facing
north, towards his homeland, the
philosopher raised his right
forearm to his forehead—to block
the sun?—and resolved to stand
still, to expend as little energy as
possible, to hope for rescue. On
the first day, the sun turned his
shoulder to stone. When night
fell, the philosopher tried to
lower his arm and found that he
could not. He looked down and
saw the stony skin. He reached
across with his left hand and felt
his shoulder: the hard, rough
grain of sandstone. He dropped
back his left arm, lest it too turn
to stone. On the second day, the
stone weight of his left ankle sank
into the sand. Each day, the sun
turned another patch of skin to
stone. But the philosopher did
not die; the stone kept him alive.
A triage on the living body, limbs
and non-essential organs ossified
first. When the sluggish blood
could no longer feed the hungry
brain, his head hardened, his last
thoughts on the immortality of
the immaterial soul. Only the
chest remained alive, the
attenuated chest. The blood
pooled in the chambers of the
heart and it beats still, a statue of
living flesh.