In April of 2021 we all had just lived through the most unusual year of our lives. It was marked by the stark contrast of being disastrous for some and merely strange for others. Due to our place in life, Wei and I were lucky to belong to the second group. Even though it completely shut down our business for months and had a massive financial impact, we were able to perceive it more like a “pause” button had been pressed than a “stop” button.

A strange distortion of time perception set in, and a mixed jumble of concepts, experiences and mental pictures couldn’t quite find their place in the time sequence. Were they even real? Did I actually drive on the freeway through downtown LA in the middle of the day sometime in April 2020, – or was it July? – with not one car in front of me, as far as I could see nothing but empty lanes reflecting the glistening sunlight? Unexpectedly, though, it didn’t feel post-apocalyptic to me at all, just oddly serene. It felt like the world was taking a breather. The irony was palpable that it was able to do that only because a vicious virus was making it hard for hundreds of thousands of humans to draw a breath. Had the situation been described to me a year earlier, I would have found it terrifying, but now that I was actually in it, despite all the implications, it struck me as serene. That mix of horror and serenity became the defining feature of our 2020 experience.

So, yes, in April of 2021 we were ready to resume life and do some “revenge traveling”. Vaccines had become available which all but removed the threat of death from the virus, which was the only thing that had really worried us.

The day after we both had reached the full protection offered by the vaccines, we hopped on a flight to Hawaii. The state had just re-opened and allowed tourists back in on a very restricted basis, and only following tight protocols. We arrived at the resort in Kauai as some of the first tourists after they had just re-opened days before. The place was empty, only partially staffed, and it had the feeling of Sleeping Beauty just re-awakening.

We got up early the next day and walked to the beach to see the glorious sunrise. More serenity. It seemed that this feeling continuously suggested itself into our lives during a time when much of the rest of the world was struggling to cope with unspeakable horrors.

After breakfast, we went for a walk on the beach, which was completely empty, and I was reminded of my drive through an LA devoid of cars, sometime in the recent, or not so recent past – I wasn’t sure. But now Hawaii, and we’re the only tourists? How bizarre is *this*?

During our two and a half hour walk we saw a total of perhaps five other people. About twenty minutes in, we encountered a couple strolling in the opposite direction, and a bit later, there was a fisherman surf fishing with his pole stuck in the sand. Another half hour passed, and a few hundred yards in the distance, a young woman emerged from the trees, walked down to the water and then proceeded along the beach in the same direction as we were walking.

What a picture, almost surreal in its serenity: A beautiful Kauai beach, empty as far as the eye could see, except for a Hawaiian woman slowly strolling along the water’s edge. We both watched her every now and then, fully aware that this scenario might have occurred every day for hundreds of years, but probably not since the middle of the last century, and it would likely never occur again. We both felt a deep calm and an enhanced ability to enjoy the surroundings, and we imagined she felt the same. At one point, she reached for a stick and drew something in the sand. Then she slowly walked up toward the trees and disappeared. A few minutes later we got to the spot where she had written in big letters: “Fuck you, Jim”.