"Everything is made of one hidden stuff." - R. W. Emerson

I just saw the DisneyNature preview for Earth for the third time.  I am getting so excited for that movie.  I’ll never forget the first time I saw the BBC Planet Earth films – I don’t really know why they’re so much different from every other nature film ever made, but they brought me to tears.  Now Disney is coming in with music and storytelling to give the images a purpose – I think it will be wonderful.

A few months ago I was at dinner with some professors and administrators from Pepperdine and Cambridge, and the topic of the spiritual significance of nature came up.  Pepperdine’s provost Darryl Tippens proposed a theory that estrangement from nature and the fading of religion/spirituality among young people might be linked.  He observed that each time he has the chance to speak to students about powerful spiritual experiences in their lives, they almost always recall a moment at a retreat in the mountains, a time of solitude on the beach, or another quiet moment away from the city and suburbs.  Perhaps if more people spent more time in nature, its mystical ability to encourage reflection and introspection would produce a generation more inclined toward the spiritual.

The other night my mom was talking about an interview she saw online with a man (I wish I knew who this was) who reexamined the sentiment that we are a group of evil humans destroying a self-sacrificing and benevolent planet as we plunder its resources for our own dark purposes.  I strongly believe that the earth is worth protecting and must be respected, but man’s charter to exercise dominion over the earth and its creatures should not be forgotten.  The earth is not a weak and submissive bleeding albatross – it is dangerous and volatile, and we seem to do all we can to cling to its surface in flimsy shelters to survive.  It is a difficult task to try to subdue the earth, and a joy to be able to use its materials to carve out our little civilizations.  As far as the earth is concerned, we and our empires are just a flash in the pan.

There is one little three-second clip on the Disney Earth preview that shows three or four dolphins peeking out through the surface of glassy, still water with an enormous blue-white iceberg in the background.  It is crushingly beautiful.  It strikes me that the amazing thing about this film is that it involves no sets, no actors, and no special effects.  It’s all real.  It all already exists, and scenes like this one occur every few seconds, completely unnoticed, all over the world.  This film looks at the family relationships between animals, how they care for each other, experience distress on one another’s behalf, and, it would seem, even love each other.  It is beauty that moves us and changes us, although it is just the everyday world of the critters on screen.

So now: does this mean that our distant, authoritative relationship with the animals we’re watching translates to the far away, higher beings who watch us?  If we lived in some other realm and got to see shots of footage of the human world, would we still be moved and changed by the beauty we beheld?  I think so.  This perfectly describes the root of my desire to make movies.  Movies enable us to look at our own world from a “distance” – when it’s projected onto a screen, somehow the mundane things we look at every single day of our lives become captivating and powerful.  This is the special gift all artists give the world; they extract, package, and present scenes from our own world to remind us of the beauty that surrounds us every time we draw a breath.  

Springtime in Los Angeles

There are people who tell you they don't like Los Angeles because they "miss the seasons."

There are other people who have known the bliss of a mid-March drive down Sunset when everything is in bloom; a demonstration of spring at its very finest. There's a magic and mystery in the way it happens here. It's hidden and discreet, subtle and effortless. The air in the entire city siddenly changes. It is sweet and heavy, filled with the scent of the sticky and burgeoning blossoms that promise

 the damp warmness of summer. Each time I exhale, I feel the same guilt for being wasteful I feel when I throw a SmartWater bottle into a trash can instead of recycling it. The jasmine and orange blossoms dominate, but even the new growth of greenery makes the air smell fresh and verdant. Different parts of the city host different aromas, but there isn't an inch of it that doesn't beg me to widen my chest cavity to make room for deep breaths that fill my body from shoudler to shoulder to stomach.

Tonight I had the pleasure of dining at the home of one of my oldest and best friends who lives in Will Rogers, my fantasy neighborhood. As soon as I got in my car, I cranked up the heat on my feet and slid the windows down so the air could rush through the stale air of my MINI. The hillside smelled strongly of the sagebrush that grows in the chaparral, with the blossoms in perfectly manicured front yards laced harmoniously within it. Down the winding road to Sunset, the floral scent overwhelmed the space so strongly that even the orange glow from the street lights seemed to refract differently upon the dime-sized molecules of perfume hanging in the intersection. West on Sunset to Chitauqua, the breeze moved more rapidly through my car windows, more fresh and dewy but still full of life and growing, scented with the dirt smell of the walls of ivy and bougainvillea along the winding descent. As I approached the beach, the thick salty air mingled with the above. This is the smell that reminds me of the first nights I spent in west LA in high school; I was in love and enamoured of everything, and the air I pulled through my nose seemed made to fit. This combination of smells transports me. It is rich, pleasant, and full of nostalgia that promises the secrets of the future are good.

I made the scary left turn in between the dual traffic barricades onto PCH and headed up to the 10 East, the salt, dirt, and flowers subsiding with the cold rush of cool asphalt, cars, and concrete. On nights like these even the freeway smells are crowned with sweetness. As the drive picked up, these smells all alternated as I switched to the 405 and on to the 101 North. I love this drive. I love to pass the roads that eminate from the busy freeway like ribs from a spine. Each is dotted with things I love - stores, restaurants, houses, businesses. People full of hope and trying hard, people resting on wilting laurels, people empty, and people overflowing. I think of the Jewish delis with bagel chips and matzah ball soup and pickles, the tired and noisy clientelle. I think of trendy sushi places. I see the valley spread out before me as I crest the hill just past Mulholland Drive. It's a field of dreams as far as I'm concerned. In my own mind it's easy to stick my left arm out the open window as a wing and fly out over it, loving it and making my plans for it.

As I transfer to the 101 I think about Hollywood glittering behind my tail lights as I head up north to my parents' house. I think

 about my dreams for it. And I am so full of joy to skate across this asphalt red capet that unrolls for me as I coast upon it. At 73 miles per hour, this freeway is my oyster.

And this makes me reflect on my dreams. I am living them. They are already realized. Perhaps I draw as much joy from dreaming about my life and future as I will from living it. The substance of the dreams themselves may be just as important as their realization. I don't think the air will smell sweeter at some future point. Years ago I dreamt about living the way I do now, about being the person I am now, and here I am. I hope others see the days they spend 'climbing the ladder' as the full and complete realization of their dreams. Why wait? Why not live your fantasies every day? Mine certainly do not consist of a tireless sprint to an eventual, barely-attainable goal. What worse thing could there be in life than an end point? My dreams are of possibility, potential, energy, and inspiration. These things fill my soul on spring nights in Los Angeles just like this one. And as long as I breathe, I am living my dreams.