In case of A RED DOOR

It is all true

It is all true --

that thousands of fish have never been named,
that compasses point north,

that pi just goes on and on and on and on and on.

And it is true
that somewhere a man is buying flowers,
and a girl rides the subway, chewing a thumbnail over a book,
sparrows breed to make more sparrows,
and that cries give way to sleep.

It is all --
sea in its vastness
time in its fastness
heart in its fullness
-- true.

It is all true.

And it is true
that when you stand against my kitchen wall,
eyes fixed on a speck or some refracted light,
that you can see
a shimmering
blueprint
of another room,
another house, with
clean windows
a storm cellar,

and a red door,
that you will leave unlocked.

And the sun is a star,
our closest star,
that will not burn out in our lifetimes.

In case of ANANDA

I’m happy.

In fact, my new catchphrase is, “I’m so happy!” Ask anyone. I say it so often; it’s almost embarrassing.

But what I mean is, I’m joyful. Even on bad days, even on the totally shit ones when my head won’t stop pounding and my kids won’t stop screaming and someone’s eating pizza and drinking beer right in front of me (!), I’m still joyful. I feel like I know myself better than I have in years. I feel more alive, more aware, more at peace, and more at home in my own skin than I ever really have.

Because the world is opening up for me. Because I have nothing really, no money or fame, no power or influence, no stakes to claim in the present. I have nothing on the line, nothing to lose, yet I have everything to gain.

I plant my flags in the future. I aim for the horizon. And even as I do this, I know that failure can’t touch me, can’t stain me. Failure is life, it’s a part of life. Fine, so be it.

I am loved. What else do I need?

Bring on the failure! Come, storms! I’m alive; you can’t kill me. I’m alive and the universe cares. I’m loved; I’m invincible.

In her wonderful children’s novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeline L’Engle writes of a dog called Ananda. The dog comes in a dark hour into the lives of the characters, wagging her tail, resting her head on their knees. One character asks, “What does ‘Ananda’ mean?”

And someone else answers, “It means, ‘that joy in existence without which the universe would be lost.’ ”

Anyway. That may not be an accurate translation of the name Ananda. But that is an accurate description of what I have.

That joy in existence without which the universe would be lost.

And I know, of course I know, that dark hours lie ahead. But this is the joy I want to keep, the joy I want to remember. The joy of being this age, in this time and place, of waking to life and love, teaching and learning. Cooking and reading and serving coffee and grading papers and holding hands and playing music and writing writing writing.

Meeting people I can smile genuinely at, knowing that they are as important in their existence as I am. That they, too, have gold and purple flags planted on future hills, flashing in the sun. Future glory.

I want to give everyone my Ananda. Be Ananda. Look for it. Hunt for it. Grope around in your darkness. Hold your breath and dive for it as for a great pearl.

Let her come to you when you need her, wagging her tail. Let her rest her head on your knee.

Let yourself be loved. So far as I can see, that is happiness.

In case of WOLVERINE

I love.

I love.

And it’s on nights like these that I love best, and most deeply, and most purely. George Winston’s “Autumn” is spinning languidly on the record player. I have a cup of cinnamon tea. And upstairs, Beth and Justin are talking, loving each other.

Just when I think I’m too hurt or too scared to go on, quiet moments like this come to me and I’m wrapped in a circle of unbroken love – my friends stand strong around me, my family clasps hands in a wider ring around them, and our God binds us all together. Nothing bad can happen to me. I’m safe.

And with that safety comes the beautiful freedom to love back, to give back. You can’t pry yourself open; I’ve tried. The harder you wrench at your seams, the tighter they knit themselves shut. Nothing opens them but love. You do have to try, but you try with love. Not desperation. Not fear.

It’s a weird metaphor, but I feel sometimes like the X-Men. Specifically, I feel like Rogue. I feel like a poison to everyone I want to help, to everyone I try to love. I keep people away; I want to touch them, but touching them will hurt them. Sometimes, I wonder about the creators of X-Men and how they could be so awful to create someone like Rogue. She embodies, in one way, one of our most fundamental fears – that we are our own enemy.

But, in their infinite grace, the X-Men people also created Wolverine. And Wolverine heals. He can heal himself, yes, but he can also heal Rogue.

Wolverine can heal himself and he can heal Rogue.

He can touch her. Does she hurt him? Of course. Inevitably. But he heals.

God has given me dozens of Wolverines over the years. Maybe hundreds. He put the ability to heal inside everyone. Humankind is entirely made of Wolverines and Rogues.

Sometimes we’re more one than the other. That’s our war. But we fight it and so does everyone else. Everyone. We don’t have to fight alone.

And on nights like these, I’ve been touched by a healing hand, not a poisonous one. I’m wrapped in a circle of unbroken love. I’m open. I love back.

I love. And I'm not Rogue, tonight.

In case of 2007: Mid-July

Danny to me in the video store: “Why not get this one?”

I paused, biting my lip.

Danny, YOU could be biting my lip right now, I thought. Let’s go. Let’s tuck ourselves into a closet somewhere and you can kiss me as hard as you want.

But maybe it was something in the neon blue lights or the DVD he was holding. He just raised his eyebrows and waved the movie in my face.

“I don’t want to.” I said. “That one’s lame.”

“It’s funny.”

“Who wants funny?” Yes, I said it. Sarcastic and mean, just like that. But, you know, don’t get me wrong. I was in favor of funniness. I’m a funny girl. Danny was just not getting it.

He sighed and put the boring movie down.

The point was: we were young. Do you know how often you get to be young? We were young and on that particular night, we looked amazing. My hair was down, brushing my shoulders. Danny’s collar was open and I could just see his collarbone, curving beneath his skin. But it wasn’t just about making out, either.

I just wanted Danny to realize that we were young. That it was a night in July and there were crickets chirping out there in the darkness.

He was standing there, holding a romantic comedy, and probably not thinking about it. He was probably thinking about popcorn, probably about work in the morning, and, yes, probably about sex – but only in that brief, idiotic way men typically do.

He shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. I adored those glasses. They were part of his charm.

Somewhere, someplace, there once were two young people. And they went to the beach on a July night and wrestled in the sand. She rubbed sand in his face and when they tried to kiss they knocked their heads together. And the next morning she woke up with her hair in knots and her shoes soaked in seawater. And then he wrote it or she wrote it or they told a friend of theirs who wrote it. And that’s where Danny’s lame movie came from.

Danny wanted to watch something someone else had lived. And while it might make us feel good for a while, really, it would just get lost in translation. Because probably they didn’t even really knock their heads together when they kissed, but the person who wrote it decided that nobody would believe it if they didn’t knock their heads together. Because the truth would actually seem less realistic than the cute quirkiness of people who can’t kiss right. Good kissing is so done. The time has come for bad kissing and knotted hair and shoes that smell of the sea.

To Danny, it didn’t matter what had happened to these people. It only mattered what the writer wrote and what the two beautiful actors did. To Danny, that was all there was.

And he just stood there, lanky, glasses glinting in the fluorescents. For God’s sake, I know why he wanted that movie! Because he was only halfway on the beach, had only one foot in the closet, only one arm draped (very loosely) around my shoulders.

I wanted to know if Danny and I would ever knock heads. I wanted to do something that would make a good movie later.

But, at the end of the night, Danny and I watched his lame DVD. And, five years later, I wrote something I just made up.

And Danny and his tall blonde wife thought it was great.

In case of 2007: June

I guess we’re never promised anything. Not even this: the chatter of strangers and the silent bumper car collisions of their spirits. I’m writing a paper, ironically, about the function of religion. The airport is perfect for it, seemingly so ordinary – women staving off old age with too-red lipstick, little girls in Barbie shoes, heavy bags slung over shoulders.

This is the church of travel, the sanctuary of transition, and the harried flight attendant is our priestess. This businessman takes communion in his coffee.

I wonder how many souls are as deeply entrenched in living as I. How many are as determined to consciously breathe and to know the flickering red-yellow-green-go­ of passing moments? Oh, Creator of the air in which we’re prepared to trespass, send a tremor through space. Send turbulence or déjà vu. Send words to accompany my expansive ache.

This, then, is the function of religion: to explain the boy who wears socks with sandals, the striped ties, the thick blood/glass eyes/brittle marrow of passing bodies, the answer to Eliot’s overwhelming question.

The answer (with as much precision as we’ll ever get this side of a downed 747).

I find myself in love with the most unlikely people.

Oh, painted toes, round glasses, braided hair, and rustling newspaper – know that steel and sky only imitate a deeper motion. Know that it is only love that holds you aloft. Know that we’re never promised anything.

Not even this.

In case of A PERFECT MOMENT

Although my hopes could not have been higher, I was surprised at just how wonderful Australia was.

A full update to follow.  But for now, this.

In case of A LOVE AFFAIR

I remember the first time I watched the Academy Awards on television.

We were living in Herndon, VA, and Billy Crystal was hosting that year.  I remember his opening monologue, which included a hilarious version of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme.  I remember Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who were young faces then, accepting a screenwriting award for a little movie they’d written and directed and acted in themselves.  That was the year Celine Dion sang “My Heart Will Go On.”  That was the year Titanic won everything.  It was 1998.

And that – those precious hours, right then – that was when I fell madly in love with Oscar.

And I hadn’t even seen Titanic.

First off, though, let’s get this much on the record:  I don’t necessarily place an absolute faith in the value of the Academy Awards.  I know that sometimes the winners don’t deserve it – not as much as some of the other nominees and not as much, even, as some people who didn’t get nominated.  I know that Oscars are political symbols, politically given.  So I’m not naïve about that. 

And I don’t always like the “celebrity” aspect of the awards either.  I almost never watch all that red carpet stuff beforehand, when everybody analyzes each other’s clothes and jewelry and hairstyles.

But what I love, LOVE, is the heart of the matter. 

What I love is that whenever I watch the Oscars, I feel like I’m hanging out with a bunch of my old friends.  Because these people love movies.  And I LOVE MOVIES, TOO!  It’s like I finally get see the faces of people – just like me – who want to devote their lives to the silver screen.  I know why they do what they do.  I know that, deep down, we all know how beautiful and poignant movies have made our lives.  And every year that there are more, that there is new beauty and poignancy brought into the world, that year is a year worth celebrating.  CELEBRATE CREATION!

So I have now spent over a decade watching the Academy Awards on TV.  I have seen Roberto Benigni climb exultantly across the tops of the chairs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and I have seen Adrien Brody passionately kiss Halle Berry right on the lips.  I’ve seen the creation of an award for animation, watched the Awards move permanently into the Kodak Theater, and nervously hung onto my precious Oscars as they barely survived the WGA strike.  I’ve even spotted a member of the Secret Society of Seat Sitters!

And last year I got to stand on the stage and look out across that sea of empty chairs and imagine what the theater would look like if they were full. 

And tonight I get to watch the whole production for the twelfth amazing year.  So Happy Anniversary, Oscar!  I hope we stay together for twelve more years. 

Heck.  I hope we stay together forever. 

In case of LOVE

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimatably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-- e.e. cummings