On October 29, 2015 Winona Ryder turned 44. The occasion proved significant later on, judging by my journals; I made a note of it on that date while having a whiskey sour alone in the bar of the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto. It was my first night in Toronto, my first time in Canada, and my first time in a big hotel. It was also my first paid junket as a writer, having just been flown in from Barcelona to participate in the International Festival of Authors. I’d probably just showered off the economy class syndrome, changed clothes, eaten a good dinner, popped into the bar for a nightcap (I seldom drink; whiskey sour is simply my go-to order whenever I’m invited), and my general impression of the city while I sat there watching the rain outside could be summed up in one sentence: “This is how I want to live the rest of my life”. I regret how that sounds now: like I had been seduced by luxury, like all it took for me to relinquish my roots was a king-size bed and a rooftop restaurant. It wasn’t the sophistication what had won me over; it was the stresslessness of those hours. The sudden absence of that tinnitus-like anxiety that constantly makes you aware of what work is due, what everything costs, what problems lurk ahead.
I was 34 and a half, almost to the day. And I was not aware of this yet, but I had already seen my father for the last time.
(This is very much not about him; I just remembered that bit.)
Around that period back in 2015 I was already fiddling with a very ambitious novel titled Heaven Park. You may have heard about it. I feel self-conscious about how much I ramble about that story compared to how unlikely it is that people will ever read it, but alas, it took up so much space in my mind while I actively worked on it, it tumbled for so long in there, it is inevitable that its colors stain the rest of my writings on any subject. Succinctly put, Heaven Park deals with a corner of the world that becomes a utopia: pantries are always full, everyone’s lovely, “no one’s born, and no one dies.” Immortality deals demand careful wording in the small print regarding aging: I wanted to spare Heavenparkers the limitations and ugliness of senectitude (yes, I believe that), but at the same time I wanted diversity in their ranks, the courage of teenage and the wisdom of adulthood, instead of an homogeneous Lothlórien of flawless-skinned elders.
I have long observed Winona Ryder’s birthday —in the most prosaic sense of the word observe: I stare at the date, and go ‘hmm’, like I’m thinking something clever— and therefore I was well aware of the occasion on the night of October 29, 2015, even with all the new sensations I was experiencing. 44 is a good number; I’ve always liked it. 4 is perhaps my favorite glyph in our writing system, ever since I was a child. I love how off-center it is. I could only wonder what Winona Ryder was doing on her fourty-fourth birthday, how she was doing, or where she was. I gather now she was probably in Atlanta, filming the first season of a show that would become one of the highlights of her career, but I, being ignorant of this and less strange things, thought that her career had already peaked. Thus I decided right there and then, in a hotel bar in Toronto on the night Winona Ryder turned 44, that no one in Heaven Park would be older than 44. (The current exact wording in the manuscript is, “For years now the youngest person in Heaven Park has been eleven years old, and the oldest is forty-four, four times eleven.”) Of course Winona was free to stay in Heaven Park for centuries, but she would never feel older than she felt outside on October 29, 2015. With the ability to feel much younger, too: everything is possible without that pesky linear time.
Well, I am writing this days before I turn 45.
I have locked myself out of Heaven Park.
That wasn’t a sudden realization, either, though this one here is: my father was 45 when he had me. Meaning I locked him out of Heaven Park as soon as I was born. Good thing this is not about him.
Heaven Park, geographically, is based on the summer colony in Catalonia where I used to spend my vacations as a kid, some ten miles inland from the Costa Brava. In the manuscript, Winona Ryder has a house assigned, one of a hundred and twenty-one (eleven times eleven), all to herself. I don’t. I did not write myself into my utopia, for fear of my presence tainting it. It was the right decision. During the years it took me to write the manuscript (about four (4)) plus the years it’s sat in my hard drive enduring almost daily trims and tweaks (no hyperbole), the utopia has only grown more exclusive, its denizens kinder and smarter and sexier, to the point where I am incompatible with the result. I am fully confident that Heaven Park won’t be any less heavenly for Winona Ryder being there; no one would ever be annoyed to find Winona is their next door neighbor, but I know that such is not the case with me. I’ve had plenty of time to cope with that truth, so my aging out of the entry window is the least of my problems. Who cares I’m too old now—I was never good enough. Besides, they don’t have linear time there, so if I ever grow to be good enough, then I live in Heaven Park already. It’s like the old chant: “What do we want?” “Time machine!” “When do we want it?” “It’s irrelevant!”
These lines are probably not the best piece of evidence, but I write because I believe it’s the best I have in me. The frequent, insidious equivocation between good artist and good person has been successfully debunked already; I do try to be both. But I’m pretty sure I’m a better artist (writer). Heavenparkers are first and foremost good people; art comes second. But outside art exists there too: the architect who built Winona Ryder’s house in Heaven Park didn’t make it to Heaven Park either, though his work stands there. Thus he is among Heavenparkers in some way. Much like the designers of the clothes they wear, or the authors of the books in their homes. “My hope, my wish,” I wrote last December, “is to become one of those: a book spine on somebody’s shelf, in a basement or a shady corner of a living room, the eternally thankful witness to the privacy of a prettier person.” If that old book is ever read —not all Heavenparkers speak English, or Catalan— even once in a hundred years, all I hope is to elicit a smile or an underscore in pencil.
In an admirable example of fact not living up to fiction, all while Heaven Park became a utopia, the world where I am condemned to exist has gotten steadily worse, its kings crueler, its pawns stupider. I’ll spare you the summary. As for me, the North American continent became my home base—better seats for the long, undignified death of an empire. There were a few more junkets —I fondly remember Milwaukee, Austin, Petaluma, Winston-Salem...— but then came my publishing drought. The recession hit. I no longer live in LA, I subsist in LA.
During the last few years, as my journals too bear witness, I’ve been happiest during my trips to Catalonia, to the land where Heaven Park is set. In dark times beauty is harder to see, but far from cities one can take the extra time. I walk for hours, and whenever I stop at a random spot I never fail to wonder at the life bustling around me. The world’s gotten sicker for sure, but if you zoom in you’ll see healing, too: when I used to run through these fields as a kid or a teenager, Heaven was not this beautiful; creeks were dirtier and wildlife scarcer. Now, within walking distance of my summerhouse I’ve come across the most colorful bugs, crayfish, frogs, snakes, turtles, mallards, herons, bunnies, boars, genets, fallow deer! The landscape has changed, for sure, but I gravitate toward the enduring things that stay there for centuries: farmer’s markets, steeples, stone bridges, hermitages, castles, ruins, mountains. Find me in open fields at dusk; find me at noon knee-deep in marsh water, sun-burnt, bramble-scarred, shouting at a damselfly on my finger, “You are my bestest friend!” I’ll hop back on the train still barefoot, change into a button-up shirt in the restaurant’s restroom. I hitchhike. I criss-cross the Heavenly lands like a vagabond: no appointments, no ultimate goal. In my manuscript, Heavenparkers can bump into outsiders in the woods: the two will exist in the same place at the same time, but on different frequencies (“even if you find the way you have to find us in the waves, too”). I am one such outsider. I’m Heaven’s hobo. I’m Tom Bombadil. I’m the frog, the boar, the mountain: all I have to do is be. When I’m at the most detached from reality, farthest from cars and the news cycle, deep in the forest under the rain, trampling on thousand-year-old dwellings, watching the fire in the darkness, that’s when I feel closest to paradise.
On May 27, 2025 I turned 44. I was visiting this shrine in the middle of nowhere that plays a minor part in Heaven Park (most locations play a minor part; it’s a vast book). I was very far from Canada, nowhere near a whiskey sour. But I was offline, and therefore untouchable, feeling as stress-free as I felt the day Winona Ryder turned 44. I was well aware I would never be a Heavenparker. I was at peace. I still am. Let Heaven exist, even if I belong in hell.
I think at 45 I’m retiring. Please don’t worry, if that worries you: I assure you, you won’t be able to tell the difference. I’ll keep writing (that’s a compulsion, not a job), and I’m launching a new book in the fall. I’ll subsist in cities and thrive in the woods. I’ll spot Hollywood celebs and wild animals; it’s the same kind of high. I’ll just spare myself the pain of chasing that whiskey sour in Toronto. I don’t know whom I was trying to impress there—probably myself. But it’s not my place. My place is on a bookshelf. I’m there already.
