The walls in my uncle’s house are crammed with pictures.

Most are photos from his many travels: London, Singapore, Buenos Aires.

Some are paintings of his own creation—dreamy watercolors of flowers, fish, or forests.

But there’s one that always stands out to me when I visit—one I can’t get out of my head.

It looks very old, like a lost artifact that, by some strange occurrence, happened to appear right there in the place of another picture.

The clumps of land and circular waterways depicted in it are like nothing I’ve seen before, not to mention the giant rock, encased within a bubble and suspended in the sky.

One time, I asked him where he’d got it. He stared intently at the scenery, with studying eyes, as if seeing it for the first time himself. Then he said simply, “Another time, another life.”

I asked him what that meant, but he remained silent, lost in the picture.

At last, he turned to me with his famous half-smile and said, “maybe, some day, while in parts unknown, you’ll see it too.”