Return to the Sunlit City : part two

 "We've found cancerous cells."

That's not the kind of information anyone wants to hear, but the brain of a focused Asperger can at least cope with it. That was last October and it's fair to say I had no more than "a brush with cancer." A grade 3b melanoma which only required one small op and a year long course of pills, not immunotherapy.

Aspergers are also good at dealing with terrible facts and, oddly enough, because I'd just gone back to my literary roots in Monterey and seen the Book of Deer in Cambridge I was a little more phlegmatic than most about the possibility of death. The finales of both those experiences really had felt like the closing credits of two TV movies so while I didn't actually want to die, I was a little more at ease with my fate than others might have been.

Both of my books (Dear Miss Landau and The Legend of John Macnab) were autobiographical or at least quasi-biographical. Macnab's hero, John Sandiman, was flatly based on me and I'd recorded the audiobook version of Dear Miss Landau in 2013. A surrogate version of my own speech and personality would indeed survive after my death. A form of literary immortality, perhaps.

So I was strangely serene about things. A bit like a tired old Roy Batty contemplating his own oncoming death in Blade Runner.

I'd booked a holiday to the Greek Isle of Hydra before my diagnosis but the doctors allowed me to go. So, just before fourteen wildfires ravaged L.A. and Malibu, I found safe harbour in Hydra Town and enjoyed the view.

I already knew about most of Juliet's misfortunes, but I also found and read the article which detailed all the dross about A Place Among the Undead just after I arrived on the Isle. For the umpteenth time I got that feeling that God may be merciful but He sure ain't democratic. He may not be able to influence your free will, but you better do it His way or you'll get stomped.

It had always felt like Somebody Up There wanted the tales of Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet to be Buffy's true destiny. Every time Juliet and/or Buffy ignored this more calumny seemed to befall them, like the temporal ripple effect beloved of science-fiction writers. However, because I'd at least tried to follow fate's Yellow Brick Road, I seemed to get a pass.

And just after I got to Hydra and read the Undead article, L.A. caught fire.

At least Juliet's house didn't burn down, but it could hardly have been the best of times for her. Meanwhile, I sloped around calm streets of whitewashed stone on arguably the best and most beautiful island in the blue Aegean.

Despite my best efforts I did worry about my rose, but I forced myself not to email her.

Instead, my devilish imagination delivered sardonic images of L.A's citizenry standing hopelessly on street corners singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" amidst the devastation. At times like this I think that while God may not play dice, maybe He does have a slightly scurrilous sense of humour...

Although he wrote "Hallelujah" in New York, Leonard Cohen had lived in Hydra for several years during the Sixties.

So while the Santa Anas fanned the flames in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, I walked up the hill. Not to the gates of the sunlit city, but the door of Leonard Cohen.

It wasn't that tough a trek, passing by quiet white houses with their shuttered windows and terracotta roofs, careworn cats crouching on their front steps like dissolute courtesans. I remembered Avalon and other days, and the memories walked with me:

Perhaps pilgrims on the mountain road to Calvary had felt the same way...

Up the hill, past the odd little golf carts parked on the kerb. Up the hill, stride quickening and feet flying...

And of course:

I look up and see ... the homes way up in the Hollywood Hills, well lit by the sun.

Google Maps helped me find my way to the innocuous door in the quiet alleyway at the top of the town. The private portal to the home of the legendary American singer-songwriter who'd helped guide his people on their own long trek towards that shining city on the hill.

But not everyone made it.

I sat there for some time, photographed the door, listened to "Hallelujah," remembering the way things had been and how she'd looked that long ago day.

Magnificent. I always say that.

But trapped forever in the Hollywood bubble, far from the sunlit city.