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‘I’m tending to this dead tree,’ he tells me Last time he was rolling the hard rocks down into the canyon and then back out again   ‘How can you tend to it? It’s dead’   John looks at me for a long time, as if I’ve said something that he needs to try very hard to understand, as if I’ve failed to comprehend something fundamental   ‘Listen man It’s my vocation And I’m trying to keep upbeat about it, alright? So fuck off’ Ÿ ***   It’s about a half-hour’s walk into the desert from my cave to the dead tree that John’s tending There was a time it’d take you half a day, there were so many prophets and holy men leading disciples around, striking rocks and bringing water forth, conversing with the scorpions and snakes, giving sermons on mounts or even boulders if all the mounts were taken Now it’s just me and John doing the whole ascetic privation thing   There’s no one left out here to work miracles for, which is probably for the best, considering I’ve got all of half a miracle to my name and John’s not very good with people Which is not to say that I dislike hanging out with him – he does provide a dry sort of companionship, once you’ve been around him long enough – but he’s an obsessive personality type, so he’ll only really talk to you if you can feign an interest in rolling rocks around or if you can come up with a new strategy for harvesting water to feed his dead tree Otherwise he just ices you out and starts praying It gets old fast   He’s been living in the desert for a few years now I can’t take more than a month or so at a time The desert is hot, your skin chaps and there’s nothing to do But when I get back to my cave on the outskirts of the city, things are better Everyone always appreciates my sacrifice, the