It was a Taco Bell. It looked just as you would expect, deliberately identical to the vast numbers of other Bells out there. The food, too, had that distinct quality of sameness. Everything was a blur of similarity, neither here nor there, flowing together into a vast undifferentiated blob of unity that hampered any further attempt at thinking things through

But then, outside: the ocean

The sudden shift from one kind of overwhelming totality to another was almost too much to bear. But, in all this, one key difference snuck in, clearing up the confusion:

The ocean tasted better