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 FADE OUT

Something I’ve been coming to grips with lately –

Death is unnatural.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that it is normal, that it is just a part of life. Death is not a part of life. Death does not belong here. Death of any kind – any kind – is wrong. That’s why it feels wrong.

If death was always going to be the end, if we were meant for death, we would not fight it so. We would not hate it as we do, would not thrash and cry out when we lose someone, would not spin in the deep whirlpools of grief. Human beings have a soul, some kind of eternal soul. We were not born to die. We were born to live.

I say this because I have seen so much death – not much physical death; I’ve been fortunate enough to lose only one member of my family and one friend – but I’ve seen a great deal of emotional death over the years. And I’m still fighting it.

I could tell here countless stories.

The end of my relationship with Michael.

The horrible loss that I see in some of my current friends.

The splendor of all of our childhoods, now past.

Everybody has these stories.

And maybe some people, perhaps healthy people, accept deaths like this and they move on. Certainly, I live day-to-day without much active grief. But for whatever reason, lately, I’m not okay with these things. I know they happen, I can’t fix them, they just are. Death just is.

And that's what I've been writing about.

In the last scene of my most recent screenplay, the one I'm working on with Sam, a man is writing a book review. He has just been visited by someone from his former life. This person tells him that the woman he loved, for all intents and puposes, is dead. She's not physcially dead, but she might as well be.

So here's what we wrote.

"Sam crosses to his window. The sun is almost completely gone. He watches it and begins to cry steady, constant tears.

After a moment, another low knock at the door. Faye sticks her head into the office.

With some effort, Sam pulls himself together.

FAYE

I’m sorry -- did you want to --

SAM

Yes. Come in. Let’s finish this.

She comes in and sits at the desk, snapping on the desk lamp.

SAM (CONT’D)

Where was I?

FAYE

The graphic fumbling of the heart --

SAM

-- of the book. Right, right. Of his own book. New paragraph. But the real loss here is ours, as Louden squanders his talent, the promise of his youth, and the delicate brilliance of his entire premise. This book should have been gorgeous. I wanted it to be. But it seems that all the richness of his first novel, all the glow and poignancy which so characterized his writing, is now gone.

Sam pauses. Faye looks up. Sam looks at her, then:

SAM (CONT’D)

New paragraph.

FADE OUT."

And that's how it ends.

But the real loss here is ours. The real loss here is ours.

So go ahead and thrash, world. I will for as long as I can.

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 ALCHEMY

At six, my body is a furnace.

I stoke it out of bed and coax up a flame in my eyes.

I send myself faithfully out.

I am the quiet priest of a quiet religion,

Cloaked in flannel and milk white fog.

At seven, I turn the key in the lock, brass to brass.

I fling wide the door,

Opening, open,

Before a morning has been sung hello,

Before a plank has been lifted or a nail driven,

Before a pen has touched a page.

My body is a furnace,

Opening, open.

By eight, I’ve already served bread to the jangling gypsy band,

Tea to the king’s mysterious wife,

Dark cups of blood to the usual ghosts.

I send myself faithfully out.

At noon, the sun is roaring with his golden mouth,

Opening, open.

I am tumbling in a sphere of metal and glass.

I measure ice and potion,

Weigh metallic heaps of dust,

Pour and chop and carry.

I coax up a flame in my eyes.

At three, I am a cog in the clock of time.

I’m pulling coffee from its dark bean fists,

Separating water from earth,

Sorting moons from stars.

More visitors cluster around to watch me work,

To trade their coins for cups.

I am the quiet priest of a quiet religion.

At six, the sailors come whistling in, homebound.

Beggar children stretch out their hands for hunks of cheese.

The king stops by to ask after his wife.

I kiss them all,

And turn them back to the door.

I am tumbling in a sphere of metal and glass.

By nine, I distill the day into night.

I float through the shop like a white moth in a cave.

The lamplighter comes by, singing,

Offering me his arm.

I turn the key in the lock, brass to brass.

I am a cog in the clock of time,

Opening, open.

In case of 2007: The Very End

They stretched out, stomachs full of warm coffee.

And this, she realized, this was how it would happen. How he would finally drop anchor, cutting those telephone wire lines that connected him to Hannah. Because of this, he would call her tonight and tell her, voice breaking, that he would not be coming back to New York.

She expected this knowledge to come to her with a jolt of vicious joy, but it didn’t. She felt only relief, relief that it would all be over and that he could join himself together again. His continents would drift back together, glaciers cracking, tectonic plates rumbling in reverse, molten lava bubbling back into the earth. This was a prehistoric morning, as he rolled onto one shoulder, sand sugaring half his face. This was Pangea.

“It’s the bluest thing I’ve ever seen.” She said, nodding to the sky.

He smiled, but didn’t reach for her.

A gull squawked nearby. They listened to it and to the thunder of the Pacific and the starting-up morning sounds of the pier.

She noticed a wild-looking man, shirt off, panting as he jogged down the shore.

“Crazy man dead ahead.”

He only smiled again.

The relief began to ebb as he rolled back onto his back. She felt the rush of time come sweeping up through history, yanking landmasses apart at their seams.

He sat up and it was going.

He grabbed his phone, checked the time, said, “We need to move your car.”

And it was gone.

They stood, brushing sand off their bodies, and turned their backs on the Pacific. Their shadows stretched behind them.

And by the time he finally reached for her, she took his hand in full awareness that there was no Pangea. Not for her anyway. His hand, clasping hers tightly to help her over the dunes, was no more than an apology.

In case of 2007: Fall, Exercises

When I was seven, Jurassic Park was released into the world. Of course we weren’t allowed to watch such things. My sister was nine and even she didn’t see it until two years later. For some reason, though, the stories I’d heard about the movie haunted me. I saw clips, little clips about it on TV. I drew pictures of dinosaurs, and my older cousins terrorized us by hunting us down as raptors.

I don’t know if it was this way for everyone, but that craze seemed to last forever. It was four years later by the time I actually saw it. 1997. We were in the basement. I’d long since gotten a minute-by-minute retelling of the movie from my sister. And, even so, the film surpassed what four years of an overactive imagination could create. I don’t remember if this is true, if I said something about it right then, or if I could pinpoint that moment as being when I decided to make movies. I was already a writer. But Jurassic Park set me to fire.

*****

On Christmas Day – I was probably about 14 – my mother told my grandparents that my sister was a better writer than me. I don’t know if, even then, my dreams of writing had solidified. But I know now that writing has always been so entangled in every part of my soul. It was the way she said it, a slight incline of her head at my own false assertions. I was trying to impress upon my grandparents just how talented Lisa was. But when I said she was better, I didn’t mean it.

My mother meant it. I don’t know if I so much cared about being worse than Lisa – she was older, of course, and she was Lisa. It was just an assessment of me, by my mother, that declared me unfit to pursue my deepest longing.

*****

Three swings, all about a foot from the ground and then one baby swing, dangling by wound up rusted chains. They’re framed in yellow, garish, bright, rectangular. Someone built this playground, but they forgot the grass. Instead they’ve tried to keep the city out with chain-linked fences, drab brick, and dry mulch.

Spider-vein cracks in the greentop suggest earthquakes, past and future. In the inescapable angles of a Los Angeles sunset, towels sway on the clothesline.

No one but me knows this family has a baby. What a thing, what a beautiful chore, to roll up that last swing, raise up the baby so she can fly, suspended, tiny fists waving, all almond eyes and black bean little toes. She can sway, dancing, to the tumble of sirens.

I want that. I want this – four swings, a slide, four walls, and a city to keep at bay. And the breath of a baby in October. And a pumpkin.

I demand that, if I can never have the grass.

In case of 2007: Midnight, August

I once said that God must be a city built on the shore. I still believe that’s true. He must be cliffs, so strong and solid. He must be a roll of dark mountains, ferny and alive with unseen vegetation, the sound of crickets and the damp smell of fog.

He said a city set on a hill cannot be hidden. I still believe that, too – now more than ever in the murk of this particular Malibu evening. He is light, stronger than neon and fluorescent pollution, the clear ring of a bell against a low urban and suburban buzz.

And the Franciscans must have known, to have so well followed His example. To fortify themselves here, surrounded by the ocean – the blue and thick gray, a vast and melting nebula. At night, it’s not alive, not moving and certainly not audible above the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s inanimate, a dead thing, swirls of anesthetic and comfortless sleep.

This. Here. This is where we make our stand, toes at the edge of this. Not conceding anything but in plain sight, in piercing gold, a hiccup in the droning ocean flatline.

God’s hand will reach down from His city and plunge into the water and fish out buildings and SUVs and great fistfuls of humanity, wrench them, dripping mire, out of the abyss. He will invite them, longingly, with a searchlight beam in high, clear soprano notes, undulating, rapturous. He will speak in his booming voice and it will resonate in the chests of men and they will drag themselves up from the sucking tide and begin the climb to his city.

God is a beacon.

And it's for us to walk along the shore, pointing and saying, "Look, look!"