The origination story (excerpted from A Transcendental Journey):
The Greenbrier is a famous resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, a haven for Presidents, the mindlessly wealthy, and people who don’t like driving in the dark. The grounds are stunning, with meticulously tended golf courses, manicured pastures and sparkling brooks, and the colonnaded architecture of the Old South, all framed then by the kaleidoscopic autumn display of mountain forests. Or so they say. It was too dark to see any of it.
My room that night cost nearly twenty times as much as my suite in Vail (and that a discount rate because I arrived so late). But I said okay. It was the last night of my journey. Some antebellum celebration was called for.
I was too tired to go down for dinner, so I called room service (the one place on my trip where I had that luxury). They said my dinner would arrive in forty-five minutes, so I showered and relaxed, and browsed through the hotel reading material. Then I noticed a writing desk.
I opened my laptop on the desk, set Bernard on one side and the Pipestone turtle on the other, then spent several minutes arranging the desk lamp. Squinting just so, I began to write nearly invisible words on the blue white screen. It wasn’t email. It wasn’t even the book I had intended to write. It was a play.
Years before, I had written the first three pages of a play. I hadn’t touched it, had barely thought of it, in nearly a decade. For some reason that night the words started to flow. And wouldn’t stop. A dialogue between a scientist and an angel. Set in a casino. Spirituality. Quantum physics. Slot machines. A blockbuster for sure.
It wasn’t my Carl Sagan book. I didn’t care. I was writing again.
Pages poured out of me. When my dinner was delivered, I munched between punch lines. A little after midnight, I finished the first act. One entire act of a play in one session, from a man who had hardly written a page in almost a decade. That was a miracle.
I gently closed the laptop and went down to the bar to celebrate. A live band of six pieces or so was playing old pop standards: Cole Porter and such. A few couples danced in the intimate dim. Alone at the deep-burnished mahogany bar, I perched on a stool, murmured with the music, and saluted my finale with champagne. Every end is a Beguinning.
