Map 165 – The Fatigue Of Sunlight…

Sun blind. A vast white arc of light that covers and exposes. Stone and skin are turned translucent. The soul of the place is exposed, burnt wide open by the screaming light, and we walk out into this. We step, with skin-burning steps, across crackling stone.

In the roadside shrine, green water seethes with velvet stillness.

Opposite the sun, the bell-clear blue rings out across the dome of the scalded sky. Midday and it can only get hotter; midday and all is stunned into stillness. And running over the white stone, a single line of blood, a droplet fallen and rolling from the wounded day. Its brilliance against the blank plane of limestone disturbs.

All balance is gone and one staggering step is taken, an age between steps, an aching journey through the solid white day, under the clanging sky. Time stretches like a rusty coil, shedding iron dust onto the heat-swimming ground.