I feel very calm, very untroubled by all of this.

I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, "This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is.

I'll calm down when I feel like calming down. You answer the question.

This was my dad, for gosh sakes! After not seeing him for two years, I had finally found him-in another dimension playing chess with a ghost! How was I supposed to calm down?

All indications from the MRI are that it's nothing serious. You've got to let it calm down. He had that tendon problem last September, and of course it healed. It just flared up on him. ... In about a couple weeks, it'll calm down. So it's nothing major.

But somehow, standing in the clear night air, under a sky that glowed like a shower of sparks, none of that stuff mattered. It slipped off me. It was like shedding your clothes before you step in the shower. I felt I was down to essentials again. In fact I felt very close to God at that moment. I guess if you're ever going to feel close to God it'll be while you're looking at the heavens.