Home

You walk uphill. It was a mid-autumn afternoon, in Southern California, still hot; the summer rave keeps coming back, you can smell it— 潇洒(carefree), 醇⾹(mellow), 厚重(momentous), like the golden-orange lustre of sunlight on dry sage, the arid wind, carrying dust, seamlessly fading into the sky. The sky is flat and bleached, but it extends, all upward and eastward a curve-less dome.

You walk up through the sputtering shadows of the oak trees, now soft as a whisper. There is a din of muttering chit-chat, 窸窸窣窣 (faint rustle), right overhead, but distant, as if they were just part of the wind. Or the crunch of the leaves.

Now as you walk up, the oak trees parted, and some have been left behind, you find yourself setting foot on a vast wander; the slope has ceased enough to make a clearing— to the east flickered 百家 灯⽕(hundreds of homes aglow), and to the north with the pine that perched the Hawk. You walk toward the Hawk, whose eyes traced back to the faraway, down the hill down the oak path down where you come from. But by walking a little Further the pine branches stood in your way so that you can’t see Her and She can’t see you. So you back down and turn to the west, seeing the sky you were just talking about.

Hill, canyon, eucalyptus, oak, bird, dust. Dust veils the hill, bird cross the canyon road, eucalyptus, oak. Line of gradients so perfectly straight and uninterrupted— straight. The sound of vehicles parting the wind rises and falls from afar, like the wax and wane of the sea. Distant, soothing, carried away by birdsong and wind. You look down at your feet and how much extends from them. You draw a step back more delicately than ever, trying not to wake up the perfect balance of the moment like that of a child. Equidistance. You decide to keep this moment of peace for yourself.

Then you see a path upward. Illuminated, narrowed, winding up behind the hill, at the sacred point it broke the horizon a gaping white fence. And so you followed it, ⾛得很慢# 很慢｡ (ever so slow.)

The dying light of the sun so adamant, it still caresses your face with its remnants, warm enough to be neglected, quieting, blueing, down to barely a whisper. The light in its eyes has passed but you can still breathe it when you close your eyes. There is nothing more on the top of the hill. The woods are gone, and in the place of the sun are yellow streetlamps. You are (you find yourself?) walking downhill now, along all the other people with lowered heads, to home, to home. Through the archway, across the lawn, to the cold glass building teeming with yellow lights.

but wait. That’s not my home.

Where is home?

The Hawk already has the answer, perhaps.