Picturing Beijing

This morning I saw the sun rise in Beijing, hazy and white.

Across the top of the world, from thirty-five thousand feet, in blazing sunlight, I stared at ice on the surface of the far north sea.

This evening, home on the porch with Diana, Staten Island, New York City, I watched the sun set on the western hills of New Jersey.

In my mind I see the hotel room I left this morning and watch again the growing brightness from the rising sun on the other side of the world.

In my mind the globe is whole, the map complete -- without flattening, without projection, without metaphor.

Somehow it feels like a miracle, though I don't believe in miracles. Instead I know that simple technology and fossil fuels are responsible. And yet, tonight, experience feels contiguous, and I feel lucky, rested, connected, human.

Tomorrow the jet-lag and discombobulation will catch up with me, and I'll have to rely on pictures once again. But tonight, Beijing and New York rest side by side.