Sometimes, without warning, you walk into a space wrapped in frosted glass — very bright frosted glass. You can see endless lines of rain outside, the sound rolling on and on, the light and sound both near and far, and you can't tell if any of it is real.
But if something suddenly comes to mind, you see radiant water droplets gliding slowly — just like last night, on the window of that elegant silver Model 3.
They glow in a way that's both real and not. In texture, impeccably real — impeccably clear, bright, obedient to the laws of physics. Yet precisely because they're too real, they seem a little false. Like an infinitely blue sky. Like an infinitely stretching sea. California's beautiful vegetation blankets the land, reaching toward the Pacific — a silver beach where sea lions sleep in heaps, black birds forage in flocks. You see the squirrel at your feet first, affectedly nibbling with both paws like something out of a cartoon. Then you see the green waves rolling in — those waves come from the Pacific Ocean.
Someone said: lift your foot and walk from here, across the infinitely flat horizon, all the way to the other shore — and you'll reach China. This is true. Walk past the sunset, through dark ocean trenches, past fantastical deserted islands, the wreckage of shattered ships, past hallucinations of fierce sunlight in the deep sea, across the horizon, and you'll see a continent rising again. On the other side are the people you love. They'll come running in enormous shoes, clomping and thumping, and hang on you like the sweetness of spring, the grandeur of summer, the autumn that is said to be rich with rain, and the winter that nurtures spring.
The silver Model 3 was my Uber. The driver was a talkative old lady. She told me about her family, her daughter. I told her the Chinese name for the Pacific — Tàipíng Yáng — and that if you walked across it to the other shore, you'd reach China. She responded with great enthusiasm: Yes, the other shore is China — that's true!
I think it really is true. Wrapped in her healing music, I watched the endless rain outside, held back beyond the silver, transparent car, unable to get in. I saw the radiant water droplets. I wondered: when will I be able to walk out into that boundless rain?