As I pack up the remaining bits of my office, and life, and house, I want to pause for some reflections that have been working themselves out in my head these past many weeks and months. I don’t commit to putting these kinds of thoughts down like I used to, and blogging is a pitiable excuse for journaling (another entry), but it’s still a document. In the minimum, I at least want to say “here… this… now.”

About two autumns ago, while feeling a bit nostalgic, I took a short trip through an old neighborhood, running back over memories of school and friends. I wasn’t surprised by the cascade of thoughts that followed (how I had arrived at my current stage and its companion: “did I get here the right way?”) but I did realize, rather startlingly, that I’d now lived in Dayton, OH longer than I had lived anywhere else my whole life (at the time, 18 years). No glance in the mirror or ginger body ache made me feel quite as aged as that tiny, wincing moment… because I swear I just moved here.

The eventful parade of joy and tears, learning, love, hopes, dreams and visions crystalized in a second and I became the strange figure of a man I wondered about at 16 while slouched in the back seat of my parent’s car: “who will I be in 20 years?” Whoever coined the term ‘bittersweet’ must have been living through a similar moment.

And here I am again, making a mental inventory of the whole mad affair as I get ready to leave it behind for another chapter in a new city. One score of a man’s life, checked, catalogued and filed away—just dramatic and exciting enough to be interesting, just blessed enough by the hand of God to be a witness to His providence.

I look forward to what awaits—new dreams, new hopes—but for now I drift back, considering with amazement what has been this speeding rush of two decades…

Here is a man as a kid, a new student, foolish and proud, ignorant and wise, a ghost of Holden Caulfield in his shadow.

Here he is as an artist—desperate and hopeful, hungry for knowledge, a stumbling tower of ego.

Here he is as a young man, his first true job spinning webs of promise and stagnancy, his first true friends planting stone and steel… his best friend all fur and obstinance.

Here he is at 30, meeting with God, grabbing hold of slippery and unrealistic dreams, still knowing, still believing.

Here he is as a husband, awkward and selfish, the stumbling tower of ego, torn down and rebuilt with new hands.

And all of it within this city, in just about every corner.

We look to another horizon, that will someday arrive with as much quiet surprise as this one has.

But for now, Farewell to you, good friend.

Don’t swallow up our empty space too quickly.

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…our house is a shambles, mostly in boxes. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of boxes, but are hoping to remedy that this afternoon through a handy craigslist posting. (What’s not to love about craigslist?)

We have until Wednesday to corral the chaos, at which point we stuff it all into a 17′ UHaul. Assuming it all fits. Which is not guaranteed.

Thanks to all of you who called, texted, and emailed birthday greetings. I’m terribly sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you yet, but I will sometime soon! Though possibly not until Georgia.

More blogging to come. From the South…

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From Claudia Roden’s “Coffee: A Connoisseur’s Companion” by way of several other blogs…

In Italy it was the priests who appealed to Pope Clement VIII to have the use of coffee forbidden among Christians.  Satan, they said, had forbidden his followers, the infidel Moslems, the use of wine because it was used in the Holy Communion, and given them instead his “hellish black brew.”  It seems the Pope liked the drink, for his reply was: “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.  We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it.”  Thus coffee was declared a truly Christian beverage by a farsighted Pope.

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I like structure. Form. A framework. Let me craft the full skeleton before ever touching muscle or flesh to bone.

When I was a senior in high school, Mrs. U taught me how to write an essay. Her real name was Ruth Uyesugi, but decades of high school students shortened it to the affectionate vowel. She stood in front of the class with the Oriental carved ivory pendant hanging at her chest (she had married a Japanese man during World War II and internment camps, the blond Quaker and the dark-haired opthamologist; she knew how to play outside the lines) and she preached the three-point topical paper. Start with a creative, engaging introduction. Then a brief organizational paragraph listing the three points to be addressed. Following: the three points themselves. And finally, a succinct conclusion.

I wrote every paper through college and on into grad school by this dictum, and it worked for two-page book reviews and twenty-page finals.

When I stumbled into the mysteries of screenwriting, the month-long Act One program (and Robert McKee, author of the screenwriting bible Story) gave me a new tool to rein in the vast unknown expanse: the three-act structure. I clung to this life raft that read, at most basic, beginning, middle, end. Ten weeks with Janet and Lee Batchler hammered in a new set of skeletal bones: sequences to build the acts (three to beginning and end, six to the middle)–and three beats to a sequence. Thirty six movements, actions, to tell a complete story.

Now every screenplay I begin starts with those 36 points, fitting them into place, edging them around, pulling the shaky pieces, shoring up weak joints. And when the skeleton is complete, I am free to be creative, to juggle words and ideas, secure in the ending already written. True: the bones of a finished screenplay must often be broken and reset time and time again; even limb amputations and new growth. But even then–I reform the structure before I write.

Some would say that I am no artist. That I cling too tightly to the form of things, the established ways. I say…let them have their say.

Scripture says that God knows the plans he has for me. Over and over, I’m told He has predestined me for Himself, formed the bones of my life, the bridge that leads me from here to there. My free will, it seems, is the muscle and bone, the fleshing it out–but I build on this framework with such anxiety, such care–because I can’t see the framework. I didn’t craft it and I don’t know where this next bit of creating will take me, I didn’t write this ending, so how do I find it?

I know. I do know. The ending has been written.

I’ve read it. I’ve heard it.

So I know.

I do.

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But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  ~I Timothy 6:6-7

The script I’m currently rewriting grapples with the idea of contentment. What does it look like? Where does it come from? Is there such a thing as false contentment? And how do I answer these questions — all of which Scripture addresses directly — in a manner that doesn’t reek of “Christianese” to someone who wouldn’t touch a Bible if you handed it to them?

Immersing myself in this morass, I shouldn’t be surprised to find my own contentment under attack.

At the moment, I’m starting my dream work — being able to write full-time as my day job. I am married to a wonderful, creative man who gets as excited as I do by the dictionary.com word of the day. We’ve been practically given a beautiful house to live in for the next year.

–And yet, I find myself shot through multiple times a day with tiny, hot needles of irritation and envy for what I don’t have, for the things that don’t satisfy. It’s often the most inane, ridiculous situations: the friend who has her guest bathroom decorated perfectly, the woman at the grocery store who manages to get her hair to frame her face just right, the article by a writer who expresses a thought in clever, insightful way I wouldn’t have thought of.

All of which tells me: if I can’t embrace who God has made me to be and what He has given me in this moment, I will never be content. It won’t matter how many screenplays I sell, how brilliant my marriage is, or if we end up with a lovely little mountain cabin in the wilds of the Blue Ridge — I will find ways to take issue with it, to handcraft my own discontent.

So here’s to embracing the gift — the gifts — of the moment. To weaving a fabric of contentment, thread by thread, thought by thought. And to telling a story that just might encourage someone else to do the same.

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