Pierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath

Pierre Auguste Renoir After The BathPierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath 1888Thomas Kinkade The old fishing hole
"Well, well, well," said St. Ungulant. "We don't get very many visitors up here. Isn't that so, Angus?"
He addressed the air beside him.
Brutha was trying to keep his balance, because the cartwheel rocked dangerously every time he moved. They'd left Vorbis seated on holy contemplation and dirt. Many of them liked to make life even more uncomfortable for themselves by being walled up in cells or living, quite appropriately, at the top of a pole. The Omnian Church encouraged them, on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt.
"I was thinking of adding another wheel," said St. Ungulant, "just over there. To the desert twenty feet below, hugging his knees and staring at nothing.The wheel had been nailed flat on top of a slim pole. It was just wide enough for one person to lie uncomfortably. But St. Ungulant looked designed to lie uncomfortably. He was so thin that even skeletons would say, "Isn't he thin?" He was wearing some sort of minimalist loin-cloth, insofar as it was possible to tell under the beard and hair.It had been quite hard to ignore St. Ungulant, who had been capering up and down at the top of his pole shouting "Coo-ee!" and "Over here!" There was a slightly smaller pole a few feet away, with an old-fashioned half-moon-cut­out-on-the-door privy on it. Just because you were an anchorite, St. Ungulant said, didn't mean you had to give up everything.Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of one­way prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and catch the morning sun, you know."