The Big Summer Break
The Muse Letter No. 64
I need to be a desert for a while.
Nothing to grow on me but wind caressing my face and body and heat waves rolling over me, lulling me into a sweet harmonious sleep. I need to dry up like the Rose of Jericho, all crumbly and fragile on the outside, condensing my energy into a tiny little ball, waiting for rain. “It can survive for years in that form, though it is sometimes uprooted and blown by the wind like a tumbleweed.”1
I dream of myself floating around, uprooted with no compass to guide me, at the mercy of strong winds to carry me forward into the unknown.
Or maybe it is not wind that I am waiting for but: smoke. Like the fire lilies sitting in the soil of the South African landscape half-asleep, half-anticipating to finally bloom after a raging fire.