The House with the Heart

There is the ancient Japanese belief system called Shinto, which as a form of animism holds that all forms — both living and not, animate and inanimate, hold “Kami”, or spiritual essence.

This is no longer an abstract concept to our family. It is one we now know experientially, after fifteen years of living within the timber, brick and glass of a form that has loved us, protected us, healed us, and let us know without a doubt that the same energy — I will call it “Loving” based on my own sensory experience of it — that animates each of us humans, also animates it.

That knowing will stay in our hearts, even as we now leave what has become for us a sacred structure, a container and cathedral of divine connection, family, and loving. This is our love letter to this house. Our expression of gratitude for all it gave us.

If one travels deep into the labyrinth of asphalt tributaries that randomly flow through Topanga Canyon, and ventures to the very, very end of the tributary called Bowers Drive, one will encounter a house with a heart.

While that becomes blatantly obvious by the fourteen foot tall, wrought iron heart that blossoms from the top of the house like a proud Mojave poppy and beats ruby red at night with hundreds of tiny lights, this is not the heart to which I refer. Like all true hearts, the one I’m referring to cannot be seen. It can only be felt.

We got our first wisp of its energy back in the fall of 2004. Having just left a cavernous converted aluminum quonset hut in San Francisco’s Mission District, to now be walking through a house that looked traditional farmhouse from the front and full-size Spanish galleon from the back, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark.

With our four year old, McKinley, in tow, we had just visited the Topanga Elementary School nestled in the woods above the creek that splits the canyon with exquisite splendor. The end-of-school bell had just rung and exploding out of every door like mustangs out of corals were the wild children of Topanga. Reflecting the ethos of the canyon vividly, it was clear that each of them was wearing exactly whatever was their personal choice to express that day — a batman outfit, a leather motorcycle jacket with pajama bottoms, insect antenna with daisies on top, etc.. It looked less like the ending of a school day and more like the beginning of a Burning Man. Having been Burners since ’95 with our son coming with us since his first birthday and every one since, all three of us fell in love with Topanga in that moment, as well as with that house whose magic would soon be giving us gift after gift, blessing after blessing.

I remember one of its gifts arriving in full glory on one of our first nights sleeping within its arms. Still curious about the very deliberate angle at which the galleon side of the house charged the canyon with nothing interrupting its approach until the mountain on the far side, my wife Patricia and laid in the master bedroom with our line of sight directly adhering to that vector. Suddenly, cresting the top of that mountain was an absurdly full harvest moon. It sat like a bright orange ball perfectly poised on the mountain’s tippy top while framed with museum-like perfection by the glass doors that opened to our intimate terrace. It was too perfect to not be intentional. I could feel the house smile hugely with pride at our realization that it had been designed for that precise wondrous moment, and we could feel its delight at our delight.

Very soon we would walk through its doors again back from a trip to China with a new member of our family in our arms. I could feel every beam, floorboard and tile stretch and arch itself to greet this young one with a loving welcome. Somehow the house knew Kevin’s previous home had been an austere cold room with dozens of cribs filled with dozens of other deserving children, and it wrapped its energy, warmth and attention around him to let him know now he was truly home and truly loved. The exposed beams of his bedroom somehow became brighter and beckoned him toward the day he would wrap mountaineer rope from one to the other for his own climbing adventures. The house loved Kevin with every grain of its wooden frame and Kevin thrived in that love. His tiny feet learning to walk on the mahogany floors while throngs of his new Topanga neighbors passed him from hug to hug to hug.

As the second Valentine’s Day approached, I was consumed by the immense pressure, as I was every Valentines Day, to outdo the valentine (some creative expression of a heart) of the previous year to Patricia. Every year it was an attempt to create a heart that could somehow match the size and loving of Patricia’s. The previous year, McKinley and I had gone down to Topanga Creek, and Andrew Goldsworthy-style, arranged all the bright colored rocks of the creek into a full heart that transected the entire expanse (it’s still there under many years of silt if you look for it) as crystalline water flowed over it.

This year, the house spoke to me. It told me that somehow, all the love that inhabited its every beam and brick, and all the love that we as a family had filled its insides with, had to be let known. It illuminated for me that at its very top — when you take the DNA-inspired spiral stairs to the top deck — the crow’s nest of the galleon, there was the perfect place for a giant heart to be erected that the entire canyon could see. I commissioned artist, inventor, creator extraordinaire, Gregg Emmel, to construct a fourteen foot tall iron heart, which still stands and flashes its message of love on special days when we need to reminded that love is what fills and is at the center of everything. Whether that be a child from China, a freshly placed rock in a creek, a schoolhouse in the woods, or the beams, brick, and walls of a galleon house.

The house never stops with its gifts and blessings. For the last few years, usually early in spring time, the whole house suddenly vibrates with a deep bass note that moves right through you. We know they’ve arrived. We sneak quietly up to the top and gently and ever so slightly open the door to the top deck where the heart is. Up on top of each of the heart’s humps, or on the very edge apex of the roof, is the great horned owl couple. Eyes as big as silver dollars. Each hoot a boom that bounces off all sides of the valley and right back at us. I feel the house giggle at that — as if the vibration of each hoot tickles it — and in its knowing this would happen and the delight in us it would get to see when it did.

And there was the absolute magic it would do out of its own kind of mischievous love. Once I was on the phone talking with a producer about creating a fundraiser for a film we were working on. During the call, six year old Mckinley came walking into my room, his bottom lip buckled up on the verge of crying but being brave not to. He innocently interrupted the call with, “Daddy, can I come to your fun-raiser?”. The house had done its thing between my room and his, and all McKinley had heard was that there was something called a Fun-raiser happening and I hadn’t yet invited him. This gave us the amazing idea — a “Fun-raiser”?! How cool is that? Let’s do it. I asked him if he’d like to plan one with me, and what he would want to do. His reply was for me to dress in football gear and walk like a Pacman down on the lower level deck, while he and his friends threw water balloons and cream pies at me from the very top deck like some real-world video game. We did it, and we added the stipulation that everyone had to bring a toy they didn’t need anymore and we’d all deliver them to Goodwill so other kids could have fun as well. As I got pummeled with balloons and pies, I could sense the house belly-laugh so hard that I suspected tears welled up on the roof just beyond our sight. It had done its magic again and through its love blessed us with a moment that will always adorn our own family mythology.

Over the years, the love that lives in every nook of this house has generated too many of these kind of blessings to recount here. It has provided a safe haven for friends and loved ones in temporary need of a place to live and heal, it has created a sanctuary of loving for a number of weddings, risen to the occasion of all-night Valentines Day raves, and generated a field of light for those sacred moments we have had to say our goodbyes to a beloved pet. Both of our sons have grown beyond that magical schoolhouse in the woods. McKinley is now a Computer Engineering major at UCSD, and Kevin a happy teen living the life at Malibu High. My wife and I have reached that place where the desire to simplify and downsize, and thereby allow another family to experience the open and loving arms of this special house, has become the next obvious step in our own beautiful and blessed adventure into a world alive with yet more magic to discover.

Which brings is back to Shinto and Kami.

It seems like there are two ways of looking at this reality we are in, and people tend to identify with one camp or the other. We don’t judge that choice at all, we love that the impenetrable mystery of it all allows that. But as we look around us it feels that either everything is inhabited by some loving creative intelligence, or nothing is. It doesn’t seem deductive or empirical to say that some things are and some things aren’t — even those things we would call “objects”, not alive, inanimate. Whether your belief is rooted in science in which case everything expanded from the same singularity of energy into a multitude of universes and forms, or your belief is spiritual in that everything expanded from the intention of a singular consciousness into a multitude of universes and forms , in either scenario — whatever was present at the moment of expansion — the energy or the consciousness — must be present in everything. In every form. Be that a human being, the clouds that rush into Topanga valley at dusk and rush out at dawn, or the beams, brick, glass, and concrete foundation of a house that witnesses those clouds everyday.

We remain open to any possibility, but the last fifteen years of living in this house, and experiencing each other in it has moved us a little more into the camp of Loving being present somehow in everything. This house has done its very best to let us know what its essence is, and to not hear it, to not listen to it, to not love it, would not be in gratitude to all the miracles and magical moments it made possible.

If one travels deep into the labyrinth of asphalt tributaries that flow randomly through Topanga Canyon, and venture to the very, very end of the tributary called Bowers Drive, one will encounter a house with a heart.

You will see a large heart blossoming out of its rooftop. But know that is not the heart we refer to. That heart is simply a valentine from a husband still trying to match in size the heart of the wife he loves. The real heart is inside this house. You will never see it. But if you open your own heart to it, as we did, you’ll feel it, and you’ll be aware of every gift and blessing it can’t wait to bestow its next inhabitants.

Thank you, House With the Heart, for helping us see the Loving in everything.

We love you back.

— Kirk, Patricia, McKinley and Kevin