THREE BROTHERS ⋅ A NEW GOD ⋅ CITY OF SALT ⋅ LAKE OF DREAMS ⋅ SUSPENDED! ⋅ THE TWO STREETS ⋅ ON THE EDGE OF THE MARSHS ⋅ BLACKSUN ⋅ DEMON ⋅ GAZELLE ⋅ THE HARDRIIM ⋅ RIDER ⋅ THE FLYER ⋅ ARABIAN NIGHTS ⋅ THE EMPTY MIRROR ⋅ THE SOLDIER ⋅ THE BICYCLE ⋅ THE CROCODILE ⋅ THE THREE TRAVELERS ⋅ OCEANSONG ⋅ THE FLUTE ⋅ THE TREE ⋅ THE TOWER

After a very long day traveling upon the sand hills, an itinerant merchant asked his bicycle if it preferred going uphill or downhill. The bicycle responded quite firmly: “What is important to me is not the uphill nor the downhill when I cross this great desert: it is the load I must carry that matters most. For today you burden me with all manner of your wares: embroidered sandals whose toes curl ever upward and yet provide little comfort; five goatskin water flasks whose corks will never dry; seven unripe gourds the shape of mullah’s turbans; a gamy white chicken ready for the pot; a haunch of gazelle dried and cured in the sun until it is as hard as a stone; a hollow drum whose beat echoes with the muezzin’s pain; a stick barbed with vicious iron spikes, ready for the infidel’s head; four bound and wrapped scrolls of ewe skin for the scribe’s deceitful pen; a cedar pole for mashing the date palm’s pith into a thin intoxicating wine; a flag to signal your enemies’ imminent defeat; a sparrow hawk’s tethers of crude chamois; enough pepper to spice a barrel of camel stew but not disguise its fetid taste; twelve eggs of the extinct elephant bird; a water bucket whose walls collapse when dry and leak when wet; three broken crutches to hold up your unbroken limbs; enough salt to dress the sultan’s table and make his heart weep; enough rope to cure the blasphemers of their bitter delusions; a pair of black boots with no soles; three round flasks with the appearance but not the substance of polished silver; a caged scorpion whose venom glows at night . . . and yet with all these wares we are carrying, who is feeling the greater burden - you who must sell it all to feel you can acquire all you need, or I who needs nothing but the steady thrust of a man’s feet upon my pedals to roll me onward to the ever-distant horizon? I will travel upon this desert road when you are long dead and gone, for the weight of my desire is so light and the burden of yours so infinite.” -home-