Rik Rawling

...he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror and the world cannot lose it.
Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

Further to yesterday’s post, I’ve used the drawing for this mock-up cover for Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing. The second in the Border Trilogy series, this is a much more challenging proposition than it’s predecessor All The Pretty Horses, which is arguably McCarthy’s most accessible book. The Crossing is in a way a test to see just how far you are prepared to go with McCarthy on his epic pilgrimage throughout the physical and psychic borderlands that existed between southern USA and northern Mexico in the mid-20th century. Long stretches where “nothing happens” interspersed with rambling monologues delivered by a cast of quasi-Old Testament characters and dialogue written in untranslated Spanish. If you think you can handle that, then saddle up and join young Billy Parham as he wanders the wasteland in search of the understanding that “deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.”