I’m in Joshua Tree, California, the very last time I set out to stargaze. I’ve come for the month of July to this hallucinogenic desertscape inland of Los Angeles, where my goal is to disconnect from daily life. Oneness with the universe and all that. As a debut author, I’ve been spooked by too much attention, and so I look up and think about how good it is to disappear into these constellations, so far from human concerns.
This is one of the last nights I see the stars in California.
Two days later, fire crackles through the brush forty miles east of our rented place in Joshua Tree. We leave early. One week later, a different fire follows us to our home in San Francisco, three hundred miles north, smoke creeping through the windows. One month later, a third or fourth or fifth fire steals over the sky in the new home we’ve moved to, across the state border. Fire is not sentient or vindictive, and yet it feels that way. It is all connected, is one thing the ur-fire might be saying to me, and depending on the mood it could sound like a threat, or a reassurance. It is all connected it is all connected it is all connected.
Oh, friend, how I wish I could disappear again into my old haunts—rock, lake, woods—and unplug. But unlike an Instagram account or a bad Netflix show, I can’t turn off the gray view of apocalypse that swallows the sky. It is all connected. After a lifetime of expecting the creeks, the mountains, the cool green redwood forests to hold my sorrows and concerns, it seems like such a small thing to pause and say, my turn. Let me take care of you now, tree, foothill, red-bellied newt, orb-weaver, smallest star. It is all connected.
C Pam Zhang is our 2020 Debut Star for Fiction and will be a contributor for The Constellation Challenge, an immersive postcard-writing experience launching on November 1, 2020. You can read more about how to participate here.