“Rain is a very special blessing,” my mother says. Even when I was little, she’d already been saying it to my sister and me for as long as I could remember. Just as my grandmother had said it to her, when my mother was not my mother but only herself, in the dry Texas summers of her own childhood. Eons ago and continents away, as children reckon these things.
10
It’s summer now. It’s been cloudy all day, but they wait until the thunder starts to clear out the pool.
We’re stuck in that special kind of boredom unique to children waiting for something to happen, a task most of my friends seem to find torturous. I don’t mind though, at least not as much. Of course I’d rather be splashing and playing–I’ve always loved water–but I can entertain myself with my own thoughts just fine.
Besides, there’s a thunderstorm to enjoy.
If there was ever a time I was afraid of lightning, I don’t remember it. The regular afternoon show of lights and noise is one of my favorite parts of summer, right alongside rainbows, bug watching, and the ice-cream truck’s jingle. All-natural, organic fireworks: a proof of the Divine more compelling than anything I’d heard in sermons, from a time when I still thought divinity was something you had to prove–that miracles, to be true, must be shown to be above the mere march of atoms.
Eventually, the storm passes and they let us back in the water.
2
An earlier summer, perhaps. I’m playing in the street in front of our home, bare feet on hot pavement, when drops of water begin to fall from a cloudless sky.
It isn’t my first sun shower–they’re not so very rare, in my hometown–but it’s the first one I’ve really noticed. The way the clean, bright air brings the world into supernatural focus; the way the colors grow as vivid as a Monet; the smell of steamed petrichor, so much sweeter than when it bakes in the dry after-rain; the heat of the sun pinpricked with chill, like no other feeling in the world but fresh love.
Maybe there’s a rainbow; there often is.
5
My dad and I are on a road trip. It’s the first one we’ve taken together, just the two of us, since I was three or four years old. We’re driving through Louisiana, on our way to New Orleans. The highways are built on pylons above the swamps for long stretches, as straight and hot as a sunbeam.
We stop for lunch in a torrent. I ready myself to sprint from the car to the door of the Wendy’s, but the moment my foot touches pavement I’m stopped dead. The rain is warm. Not just tolerable, it’s pleasant. Warm as a bath; warm as a shower. I laugh and turn to my father with a grin, wondering why anybody in this climate would care about being caught in the rain, when all you get is wet. Are people really that afraid of water?
We stroll across the parking lot to the restaurant and step inside, where the A/C is turned up so high I soon realize they’ve simply moved the hypothermia to the wrong place, turned the unpleasantness inside-out. They’ve become so accustomed to protecting themselves from the weather’s spite, they can no longer recognize its love.
6
The weather’s in a rage today, more rain than we’ve seen in years. It’s been a deluge since early afternoon and it’s only gotten worse. I should have left work hours ago, but I’ve always been most productive in the evenings and it’s frustrating to have to go home right when you feel like you’ve finally started your day. It wasn’t supposed to get this bad.
My fiancé texts me a picture of a funnel cloud from our apartment balcony. I chastise them and tell them to get inside; they chastise me for still being at work and tell me to leave now, while I still can. They don’t want to be alone.
I’m simultaneously relieved and mortified that so many other drivers are still out, that I’m not the only one this crazy. Luckily, my car–my first and best car, a 2006 Honda Civic named Eve–handles the flooded roads with aplomb. I cross an intersection with two feet of standing water, and for a moment I’m afraid it might flood the engine and stall her, but Eve makes it through and I get home without incident.
We wait out the storm together in the bathroom (the only room in our apartment without any windows), doing our best to comfort our poor, neurotic dog. The funnel cloud never touches ground, and eventually the storm moves on.
As night falls, we go out onto the balcony and watch the titanic blanket of awe and fury roll slowly out onto the plains, lightning sparking and flashing in half a dozen colors–sometimes to the ground, sometimes in between the star-scraping clouds, sometimes deep within them so the only sign is a brief, pale glow. We watch the storm for a long time, until the thunder’s sostenuto has become too faint to hear. When we finally go back inside and climb into bed together, we can still see the lightning in the far distance, slowly dancing its way off the horizon’s edge.
8
My children are finally asleep. My spouse and I, in the loft across from theirs, are drifting off now. Our lovely new house is quite small–Tiny, in fact–and the ceiling is so close to our bed I can hear each individual drop of rain on the roof above us.
It’s almost winter and the rain is bitter cold, but we’re warm and protected here, our new home wrapping us in its arms, sheltering us, sharing its body heat. It’s already quite fond of us, I think.
The closeness of the weather reminds me of camping.
3
I don’t remember how old I was the first time my father took me backpacking, but I remember what I carried when he decided I was old enough to wear my own backpack on the hike: a bag of marshmallows and my teddy, Annie Bear. When we made camp that night and he asked me to get the marshmallows out so we could toast them, I felt so proud I might have burst.
We made that hike many times over the years: into the Mount Evans wilderness along Lost Creek trail, to our traditional campsite on a hill overlooking the creek, a beautiful meadow on the opposite bank. Pitch the tent, unpack the stove and dishes and food, bear-bag everything after dinner, go to sleep. Then do it all again in reverse the next morning.
Even after I was old enough to go on longer trips, then trips with my friends instead of my father, the primordial rhythm of “hike, shelter, food, rest” strings all those experiences together in my mind. The mountains of my home are a monolith, an unbroken backdrop to the inner landscape that extends from my earliest memories through adulthood. Dozens of rains blur together into a single timeless storm
–rushing to make camp before the weather gets bad, so we’re not stuck pitching the tent in a downpour–stopping our hike to take shelter when the lightning moves close, getting low to the ground and away from the tallest trees for safety–dozing in the tent in the afternoon, waiting for the sun to win its wrestling match with the rain so we can start the stove and make dinner–being woken up in the middle of the night by a sudden cloudburst, drifting back to sleep trusting our tent to keep us dry and warm–hiking with my friends and not-yet-fiancé through way too much rain, moving much too fast, our backpacks much too heavy, cocky in our youth and relishing our strength and health, knowing on some deep level that neither would last forever–my father, smiling at my words as I breathe in the damp pine and the birdsong and the view and tell him that “Rain is a very special blessing”–
4
My train of thought stalls. I stop pacing for a moment to pull out my phone and check the time: a little past 2 in the morning. There’s a heavy rain outside, murmuring a white-noise soliloquy in every room and corridor, and I’m thinking about videogames.
I’m in my favorite building on campus, the science building. It’s pleasant enough during the day, but what I really love about it is the liminal, eerie atmosphere it takes on when it’s uninhabited. All utilitarian spaces are like this: as anyone who’s traveled the Backrooms can tell you, designs which neglect aesthetics always contain a seed of the surreal. In the middle of the night, and especially when it’s raining, “tasteful, but generic” blooms into something out of a dream. Or, perhaps, a videogame.
If it were a videogame, I’d be searching for secrets right now: hidden passages, coded messages, collectibles, lore. All the optional stuff that makes games beautiful instead of just “fun.” Instead, I’m only wandering, enjoying the loose, floaty feeling of a night with no sleep and no intention of getting anything done, following my whim at every intersection and staircase. The patter of the raindrops fades in and out as I move past the coal-black windows.
I think about videogames a lot. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to tell stories with them. Not the way most games try to, with cutscenes and dialogue and flavor text sprinkled in like nuts in a brownie, but with the game itself. What sorts of stories must be games, would lose their essential core if they were translated into any other medium?
I pause again to leave a bit of graffiti on a whiteboard: a substitution cipher I invented for fun, a little alien glyph for each letter of the alphabet. I have fantasies of someday using it to hide secret messages in a game of my own. The thought of someone puzzling over my amateur code in this real-life dream makes me smile–
My train of thought stalls again; not a flooded engine this time, but a rollercoaster inching over its peak.
Like many others, I’d been thinking about stories in games as something the player controls, or perhaps creates. Stories of choice, agency, will. Schrödinger’s plotlines. Mechanics as metaphor. The player as co-author. What if all of that is wrong? What if the player’s decisions aren’t important to the story at all?
…Why do I like secrets so much, anyway?
Why am I wandering? Why do I prefer to follow my whim, instead of deliberating? Because I don’t have a goal. I’m not following a plan. I’m not trying to go anywhere. I’m just exploring; hoping to end up someplace new, see something I hadn’t noticed before, find a new perspective on something familiar.
I’m doing the opposite of going somewhere: I’m trying to get lost.
Like cracks spiderwebbing across a sheet of ice, an idea starts to grow. A place–no, several places, chapters–begin to take shape. Places full of things hidden just for the sake of searching: clues to puzzles that outlive their solutions; riddles that spark insight with or without an answer; secrets that don’t need a purpose to be worth seeking; mysteries that need no denouement to be satisfying. Levels made to be explored, not “beaten;” settings that aren’t where the story happens, they are the story.
a too-peaceful hedge maze, seemingly meaningless details around every corner
a space station dug into an asteroid, artificial gravity twisting and turning, a nightmarishly disorienting three-dimensional labyrinth
an abyssal sea base, flashes of bioluminescence in the distance hinting at something unthinkably huge
a tiny island with a stone tower that grows infinitely wider as it ascends, its impossible vanishing point obscured by clouds
The floaty feeling is gone now, burned out of my veins, replaced with static electricity. I make my way to the second-floor balcony overlooking the lobby and sit on one of the couches set out for studying. I pull my journal out of my bag, and with the rain’s patient encouragement, I begin taking notes.
7
Night is falling, the glow of the streetlights making gauzy sheets of white where the rain passes through it. It reminds me of a night spent in the country the last time I visited this island, when the harsh lights on the sheltered patio of our hostel cast similar curtains beyond the roof’s edge. While the rain fell, some friends and I watched an orb weaver the size of my hand catch and eat a katydid we’d placed in its web.
That was a very long time ago, back when my phone had a hinge and 23 buttons and my camera was disposable plastic.
The nostalgia evaporates once we’re inside the bright, towering mall. We weren’t looking for a mall, particularly–just a place to get out of the rain–but we’ve been meaning to check one out, and in any case we need better shoes. The cheap, colorful umbrellas we bought at our hotel have kept most of the water off our heads, but our feet are another story.
(A very, very soggy story.)
We wander for a while, and on the third floor we find–of all things–a Crocs store. My no-longer-fiancé picks out some slip-ons while I browse the racks in vain for something my size. Japanese people aren’t predisposed to having large feet, apparently.
I worried, before we left Hawaii, that having an always-up-to-date map in my back pocket might dilute the experience, or even destroy it. Fortunately, I’ve so far managed to resist actually using my phone too much, so Tokyo remains one of the best places in the world to wander. Seemingly every corner has something new and interesting and magical just around it.
I make a small exception for the walk back to our hotel. True, following the quickest route means we might have missed a valuable experience, but it’s getting late and our feet are sore and pruny. It’s okay to be dull now and then; what’s the point of magic if you’re too tired to savor it? Besides, we still have most of a week left on our honeymoon–there’ll be plenty more time for getting lost before it’s over.
My heart shivers as we walk hand-in-hand through the night, our love as fresh and scintillating as the day I said “yes.”
9
I’m wandering the campus again–outside now, not thinking about anything in particular. The science hall is my favorite haunt at night, but in the daytime the outdoors are much better.
It’s a gorgeous campus, spacious without being sparse, with lots of hidden and not-so-hidden nooks and details: ideal for wandering. Along with the friendly and intelligent student body (not to mention the, um…students’ bodies), it was one of the main reasons I decided to attend.
There are several large courtyards mulched twice a year, not with pebbles or wood shavings, but with pecan shells–all populated year-round by an army of impertinent squirrels. Not all my classmates think the novelty is worth their presence, but I do. No other feeling is quite like the crunch of walking over a carpet of pecan shells, especially when they’re fresh and the smell is still strong.
Beyond one of the courtyards is a labyrinth, the traditional kind: a single unbranching path, drawn on the ground with colored bricks and concrete, in a twisting, intricate pattern many thousands of years old. They’re often used for meditation; I decide that’s why I’m here now.
As my feet trace the path with slow, even steps, it begins to rain.
My college is in a state just shy of “the south,” and the climate is the very definition of temperate. It’s a moderate rain, somewhere between a drizzle and a shower, and just-departed summer hasn’t quite shut the door behind itself yet, so the air is still warm.
It is autumn though, and the water is far from bath temperature. I would head inside, but I hesitate: the part of me that loves ritual, that relishes the art and magic of rules with no purpose but themselves, the part that was the last to abandon superstition and embrace the Merely Real, is loath to leave the path. The barriers of this maze aren’t physical, but they do exist. Should I cheat to get to shelter sooner, or take the time to retrace my steps and risk getting drenched?
Suddenly I laugh; I’m being silly. I’m waterproof! What do I have to fear from getting wet?
I continue my walk, my steps no slower or faster than before, and soon reach the center. I survey the trees and benches around me and take a few slow, deep breaths. I’m about half soaked and getting colder now, but I’m not worried. At worst, my lips will turn a few shades bluer and I’ll be shivery until I change into dry clothes.
I close my eyes. There’s no thunder to enjoy, but that’s likely for the best–as I’ve grown older, I’ve gained more respect for the danger that beauty sometimes favors. Besides, the lights and noise aren’t as important as they once were. The rain itself has been special to me for many years now: a private, personal blessing, borne from another time when I decided not to care about the weather, another time when there was something more important to me than staying dry and warm.
I remember–
1
I couldn’t tell you who reached out first, only that we’ve been holding hands for most of the day. It’s a bit of a challenge due to our difference in height, but we’re making it work.
This is the first time I’ve held hands like this: not being led or leading, not politeness, not family. I’m a bit surprised by the intimacy of it. We take our hands so much for granted, we forget how sensitive they are; how expressive; how private.
We’ve been split up into pairs on a field trip downtown, a sort of tourist scavenger hunt: find the building with the gold dome, find the sculpture of the bull, find the store on the mall that sells such-and-such particular knick-knacks. I scold her for shoplifting a cheap bracelet and she looks so confused I feel abashed; later she lights a cigarette and makes me promise to never start smoking.
The rain starts on our way back to the bus stop. It’s still technically summer, but we’re in my home state, so although the rain stays light it has a biting chill. While we wait for the bus I loan her my overshirt to help her stay warm, and when that’s not enough I wrap my arms around her, sheltering her from the rain, sharing my body heat. Of course, now I’m cold, but having her pressed against me is more than worth a little chill. The top of her head is at just the right height that I can tilt my chin down and rest the tip of my nose in her hair. Her smell is unbelievable. My body fills with an odd, tingling warmth that has nothing to do with the temperature, a feeling somehow both brand-new and strangely familiar.
She sighs and leans back into me, suddenly seeming relaxed for the first time all day. She carries her confidence and joy so naturally, it’s only now that she’s finally set it down that I can see the tension she’s been carrying along with them. Some deep instinct urges me to hold her tighter, that she’s trusting me to support her in much more than the mechanical sense. I nuzzle the back of her head, breathing her in, letting her know I’m close. It’s a relief to feel obligated to just do the selfish thing–no indecision, no embarrassment, not even the anticipation of guilt clouding my bliss.
For a while, time politely looks away. We make small talk with each other; the rain makes small talk with us. A brief and boundless moment. Nothing miraculous–nothing even out of the ordinary, really–but a miracle, nonetheless.
The bus runs late. The sun is low now and it’s getting colder, but we’re keeping each other warm enough. I already know this moment will stay with me for as long as I’m alive. Then she says–
“I can feel our hearts beating together.”
Later, when I’m a father instead of only myself, my children and I gather by the window to watch the lightning. I listen to the water and say to them, “Rain is a very special blessing.”
In Search of Secrets 