The Beating Heart of God

Jessie's favorite saying is "your mom." It's the swiss-army knife of her vocabulary, applicable in, well, just about every situation, and it is lodged in my brain.

"How was your day?"
"Your mom."

"What are you up to?"
"Your mom."

"The house is on fire!"
"Your mom."

I'm sitting next to her now, her body warm against mine, her breath rhythmic in sleep. She is a such a pretty girl. I like going to sleep after her, because seeing her plaintive, peaceful visage nearly ensures me happy dreams.

It's my spring break, and between shifts at Apple I decided to loop down to Berkeley Springs on my way to and from Philadelphia. It's a short trip, but I wanted to see Dave and Steph, both to finalize some movie business as well as just hang out. Apparently they live pretty close to one another now, so I'm hoping that ensures that I'll see them both. It's hard for me to keep asking people for help with the movie - sometimes I feel like a wholly incompetent leader, and so when I feel like people have lost their faith in me, it's a blow, not completely unexpected, but still a disappointment. I have an amazing, patient crew, and I think we're at the end of the time where I can realistically expect them to stick around. We have one more shoot coming up though, on the weekend of March 24, and this will be the last one, the last push, the last time. Old faces and new will be there, and I think we will be partying like hell when it's over. I'm to the point where I want to be able to watch and enjoy the movie. It deserves that chance.

I listened to something that changed my life today. Julia Sweeney (remember her from SNL?) has a one-woman show called "Letting Go of God," and it was so bittersweet, so honest, so forthright and thought-out and tragically funny, that it's easily one of my new favorite vessels of ideas. I hope everyone gets a chance to pick up the CD and take a listen. I will certainly be picking up a couple copies and giving them away.

Years ago, Mat and I had a conversation at an Eat'n Park where, for twenty minutes, the beauty and wonder of the universe was glimpsed over grilled stickies. It was right in that time when we were just rekindling our friendship over long talks about writing and the screenplay for the movie, and inevitably we always seemed to, in the course of talking about stories, end up talking about things like the meaning of life and its purpose.

Anyways, for these twenty minutes the muses smiled, and like a cool wind peace and wonder fell upon our table and we became genuinely, truly alright with the great big question marks. The Big Why. The Big Why Not. We realized that whether or not there is a God, this place, this existence is equally miraculous either way. If I am merely an assemblage of carbon atoms, then the fact that carbon atoms can combine to form consciousness is an amazing, mind-blowing instantiation, regardless of whether it evolved or was designed. What is the real difference between God existing and not existing? He is one way of talking about the things that happen to us, but maybe he's not the only way.

The fact that anything exists seems intensely peculiar to me. Why something and not nothing? What created the elemental forces like gravity and magnetism? Who or what lit the wick for the Big Bang? Whether some deity dreamed it up or... or... I don't know, I don't even have the language to try and describe the alternative, the fact that it and we and this are all here is truly, truly stunning. Special. Unique. Gorgeous. You should SEE the stars in Berkeley Springs. For the first time tonight, I could see that the Pleaides are really the beating heart of Taurus, the thicket of starts at which Orion is aiming. Those stars might not be connected at all, might have no idea they are related in the minds of the little Earth people, and yet there they are, existing, shining regardless (I want to type "irregardless" because it is a much better word but, alas, it's not actually a word), and like the beating heart of God they are timeless in their ever-changing states.

Anyways, I'm getting philosophical. I'm sorry. The warmth of Jessie's body gets me all confident, like I could look up at the night sky and feel at home amidst the constellations, the great dragons and warriors and lobsters and virgins, big as half the sky and still infinitely small in the whole of the universe.

Find some stars and look and listen. Let me know what you hear.

Your
Martin