37. Seeing the Desert for the Sand

Fig. 37-1: Visualize a Parkscape (Either Ignore the Goat or Pretend that it's a Dog)

Repeat a familiar word for a few minutes and it will lose definition, stare at anything totally familiar to you for long enough and it will eventually lose its context, but oddly, if you stare at the most unfamiliar of terrain, it will eventually become familiar.

Sitting out the hottest hours of the afternoon beneath a shady tree in the desert while on a camel trek (about 40 miles to the east of Pakistan), the landscape began to look like a sprawling parkscape that you might find in a major western city, with hills that lead towards the horizon, and trees and shrubs spaced at appropriate intervals—the only thing that you have to neglect is that it is unbearably hot and the grass has been replaced by sand, though that ceases to be apparent after an hour or two.



Fig. 37-2: Your Pretending Produced an Actual Dog. Your Parents Were Right—You Clearly Have a Good Imagination.