It's hot out here in the canyon. So hot that the insides of my nostrils are scorched from breathing the hot air. So hot that the waves of heat rising up from the earth lift the dust up into the air with them. The dust in this dry land is insidious. It coats the rocks that stand like spines of some buried dinosaur, blankets the naked branches of the trees, and the thin blades of grass along the road. It creeps into every crevasse. You'll find it under your fingernails, in your pockets, in the creases at the corners of your eyes. You'll drink it in your morning coffee and your beer at the end of the day. You'll dream of it at night rising up in whirling siroccos, spilling down and enveloping you until you are buried and there is nothing but the unbroken wind-stirred surface of the dust.

I take a swallow from the canteen on the seat beside me. The water slides down my throat like a shining silver fish.

There is an eagle flying above me. I can just make it out through my dusty windshield. It descends swiftly and reascends with a dark shape in its talons. Lunch. My tire collides with a pothole, and I return my attention to the road. Rutted and dusty, you have to know it well to drive along it at this speed. There is a block of marble in the back of my pickup. I will begin sculpting it this evening. I have been searching for this block for months. I can already see a hand emerging from one surface, and the shape of a thigh buried beneath another. Here is the backbone, there the arch of a foot. I can see a breast and the smooth line of the throat. Ankles, wrists, ribs -- I know the form encased in this block.

I sculpt here in this barren land because the law of this land demands it. There shall be no excess. What does not belong must go. I take the burdensome surplus of stone away from the figure within. I liberate the figure with my chisel.