THE FRENCHMAN AND THE STONE

THE FRENCHMAN AND THE STONE

A great mind in a great man loses itself in a relentless endeavour.
Spending his mammal heartbeats wisely he at least has feverish purpose.
Olfactory bliss transforms him through the scent of mummification to a gone age.
A Frenchman and an Englishman race to unlock the wisdom of those who seem to have resisted the deluge.

And a subterranean prodigy of architecture with its endless outstretch of rooms and corridors is a microcosm of one’s journey from this life into the next.
The Frenchman , stricken with persisting ill health perspires and perseveres onward in awe through this cavernous crafted world wishing so vehemently to understand and to understand further.

Hushed in the desert for over three thousand years the secrets of our ancestors are revealed to the wand of curiosity he wields while in London the Englishmen pours his sober logic and arithmetic onto the seized and guarded stone.
The taught ropes choke and fray round the colossal stone slabs rolling slowly in this pounding kiln of heat to their steep ascent driven by the will of glistening toiling ebony backs who working hard into the afternoons of the ancient world are contrary to the conjecture of the modern one, well fed and well treated.

The afterlife silent and poised sits in a darkness awaiting whilst the stars never disloyal exact their poles of immense white light towards the shafts of tombs of Pharaohs of Egypt lying amidst glittering and abundant treasures in their exquisitely sculpted and ornately decorated tombs. An immortality of sorts has been born.

In his tenacious malady the Frenchmen sees these images as vivid as his colleges before him.
But are these hallucinations or apparitions?
　
TIM SANSOM 24TH NOVEMBER 2010