The Foreign Embassy

This afternoon, I sat in a cozy chair looking out a window set high in a brick wall, watching a wisp of cloud in a bright blue sky, cool breeze coming through open doors, high ceilings like an old church. The old woman in the wheelchair who'd been calling for Richard repeatedly, desperately, had left a while ago, and I sat listening to The Joshua Tree and reading Bob Dylan, and I wanted to stay there, I really did. But I had places to go, things to do, though no promises to keep.

It's been cool here in the mornings, even cooler in the evenings, and I'm wearing sweaters again and savoring the chill, which feels very much unlike LA. I walked down a street in Pasadena the other day almost shivering, and heard the sounds of a Salvation Army band tolling Christmas tunes, and I could have sworn I was in New York if I closed my eyes.

The last year, in recap. Got a new job at a special effects company. Worked, worked, worked. Got an option on a screenplay and rewrote, rewrote, rewrote. Between the two of those, time flew by faster than it's ever done. Not much stands out.

Except, of course, this: the look on my wife's face when I walked in the door and she told me she was pregnant, and the feel of her ever growing belly under my hand, and the first glimpse of my daughter. You know, the important stuff. The stuff that puts everything else in the shade.

I write because I can, because it's what I do better than anything else, and I still feel that I can one day do it for a very good living, and that that day is closer than ever. I write because sooner or later, everything else bores me, and because I have worlds within me that I would like to share.

And I write because, honestly, my perfect day of work would be one spent working in my little office overlooking a hill, putting people and worlds on paper, with the occasional sojourn to spend some time with my wife, and soon, my child. My ideal day. I would like to live by the water, and write for a living, and spend as much time with my family as possible. That's it. That's all I need. And I'm flexible on the water thing.

I've been reading Bob Dylan's CHRONICLES, and loving it more than I have any book in a long time, and I hit a bit the other night that stopped me cold:

"Sometimes you know things have to change, are going to change, but you can only feel it--like in that song of Sam Cooke's, "Change Is Gonna Come"--but you don't know it in a purposeful way. Little things foreshadow what's coming, but you may not recognize them. But then something immediate happens, and you're in another world, you jump into the unknown, have an instinctive understanding of it--you're set free. You don't need to ask the questions, and you already know the score. It seems like when that happens, it happens fast, like magic, but it's really not like that. It isn't some dull boom goes off and the moment has arrived--your eyes don't spring open and suddenly you're very quick and sure about something. It's more deliberate. It's more like you've been working in the light of day and then you see one day that it's getting dark early, that it doesn't matter where you are--it won't do any good. It's a reflective thing. Somebody holds the mirror up, unlocks the door--something jerks it open and you're shoved in and your head has to go into a different place."

I spent a great deal of time when I was younger, and not that much younger, waiting for something great to happen, some massive change that would turn everything upside down, that dull boom. And sometimes I still do, when it comes to writing: that big sale, that discovery, the day when you find your phone won't stop ringing and your email box is full and all over a sudden everyone wants to get on your train. But that's no way to go about things, because you'll spend an awful lot of time disappointed when that boom don't come, and a day that should have been a day spent with your favorite person in the world turns into a day that wasn't THAT day, that day that probably won't come, because big change doesn't happen like that, like a bolt from the blue. Big change happens while you're working away in the light of day, having that first glance, that first kiss, that first flip of the heart, that first cross-country move, that first kick in the womb. Big change in something that starts with little change and compounds and grows, and keeps growing, until you turn around and you're married, you live in Los Angeles, you're thirty-one. You're a father.

So I keep working, and keep writing, and keep trying not to forget to enjoy the little changes that come along each day.