Chicago last weekend, downtown, on State Street, I stopped for a minute to look at a store window full of toys. In particular, I spent a long time staring at a doll that came with a trunk full of clothes. I put my hands up against the glass and let myself *want* that doll the way I would have wanted her when I was eight years old, which is to say I allowed myself to want with the whole of my being.

It was Saturday and the street was busy, decorated for Christmas, full of people rushing and shouting and laughing. The sky was dark. It was getting ready to snow and I was suddenly filled with a sweet and familiar ache.

When you tell a story, the world rushes by you in the same way, leaves you standing silent and alone, your face pressed up against a well-lit window, gazing at something, wanting it fiercely, knowing that you are probably not going to get it, but willing, anyway, to dream, to try .

I’ve decided that telling a story is more than anything else, the art of longing.  

To be happy, somebody once said, you must have work to do, something to hope for, someone to love.

That, then, is what I wish for you (and for myself, too) in the coming year, these things:

	that you will be able to do work that matters,
	that you will have someone to love
	and that you can stand, for a moment, on a cold street, in front of a lighted window, that you can put your hands up against the glass and let yourself hope and believe that there is, after all, a way in, a way to the other, beautiful, side.