The Navel Of Creation: A Loop In Eternity

The desert is a study of dueling extremes.

The day's heat wrestles night's impending chill,

Yet there is no victor,

The pendulum forever swings.

During a summer's midday the desert smolders,

Like the ashes of a freshly extinguished bonfire.

Every breath scorches your lungs.

The heat ravages your flesh,

Yet it coddles your soul.

Your skin must be completely veiled from the burning sun by a thin layer of porous fabric.

Any exposed skin on your face vibrates like the water in a pot just before the boil.

But once the sun sets, the temperature plummets.

Soon the chill of night persecutes the heat of day,

But for a fleeting moment,

As day's dominion gives way to night's control,

The two eternal foes become locked in a titanic struggle and neither surrenders.

It is during that ephemeral moment,

A semantic space pregnant with transition,

That the desert is neither hot nor cold,

 Neither this nor that,

 And yet during that fleeting moment the desert is all those things in one,

 Yet not one of those things in all.

Inevitably the chill overpowers desert's heat,

 And the titanic struggle is no more.

 The heat of day becomes legend's lore,

 But surely will return once more.

 For now the night chill is unbound and free to roam.

A man not protected from the desert's chill of night can die from extended exposure.

The first symptom is a numbing of his extremities.

His fingers first and then his nose become insensitive to touch.

The mighty desert wind slams against his naked flesh,

And it soon feels more like the burn of fire than the chill of ice.

Such can be the desert at night.