EPISODE 1 
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Allie: (narrating) Everyone knows not to stare into the
sun. It's something your mother tells you when you're a kid. "Don't look at
the sun or you'll go blind." But sometimes you want to understand something so
badly that you'll risk going blind for just a glimpse of what it all might be
about.

Allie: (narrating) Most people change kind of slowly. They're who they are,
and then after a while, they're someone else. But some people know the exact
moment where their lives changed. They saw the person they were going to marry
or the look in their baby's eyes the first time he smiled. For some people,
it's not the good things in life that made them change. It's something they've
gone through that makes everything they look at from that moment on seem very
different from how it had always been.

Allie: (narrating) They say some men carry their war with them for the rest of
their lives, and some men put it behind them like an old pair of shoes. And
then, I guess, there are others who go on fighting, even if they have no idea
who their fight is with or why it's so important not to give up.

Allie: (narrating) Russell Keys came home from the war like a lot of other
soldiers. He was tired of fighting, and he was very glad to be coming home.
There were things that had happened to him, and he knew that he was not the
same person he had been when he left. He had changed, and he wondered about
all the things here at home that might have changed too, while he'd been away.
But sometimes when you go somewhere far away and then come back, the part that
bothers you most is not the things that have changed, but the way that other
things have stayed the same, like you hadn't been anywhere or done anything at
all. The kids would still play ball on the vacant lot where he and his friends
had played every summer, the high-school band would still play every friday
night in the park downtown, and old Mrs Parker would still be waiting, as the
kids came home from school, to yell at them if they stepped on her flowers.
All of that might still be the same, but he was different, and so nothing
would really be the same at all.

Allie: (narrating) That summer, a lot of things had happened that people
couldn't explain. There had been lights in the sky and stories in the paper
about saucers crashing. John had come, and then he had gone. For a while, life
went back to being life, and almost everyone forgot the things that that
summer had brought with it from out of the sky.

Allie: (narrating) Some people have given up all hope of anything in their
lives every changing. They just go on with it day by day, and if something
were to come along and make things different, they probably wouldn't even
notice it right off, except maybe for that kind of nervous feeling you get in
your stomach. My mom and I used to call that "the car trip feeling", because
it was how I'd feel whenever I knew we were going to go somewhere far away or
somewhere new.

Allie: (narrating) People are lonely in this world for lots of different
reasons. Some people have something in their disposition. Maybe they were just
born too mean, or maybe they were born too tender. But most people are brought
to where they are by circumstance, by calamity or a broken heart or something
else happening in their lives that wasn't anything they planned on. People are
lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. The one thing that I do
know is, it doesn't matter what anyone of them might tell you... nobody wants
to be alone.

Allie: (narrating) My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She
liked to watch the clouds in the day and the stars at night...especially the
stars. We would play a game sometimes; a game called "What's Beyond the Sky?"
We would imagine darkness or a blinding light or something else that we didn't
know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There's nothing beyond
the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we play all of our games
beneath it.

EPISODE 2
========= 
Allie: (narrating) The world is made up of the big things
that happen and the small ones. And the part that's so unfair is that we call
them "big" and "small," because when something happens to you, when you lose
something or someone that you really care about, that's all there is. The
world may be blowing up around you, but you don't care about that. You don't
care about that at all.

Allie: (narrating) You know in cartoons, the way someone can run off a cliff
and they're fine, they don't fall until they look down? My mom always said
that was the secret of life. Never look down. But it's more than that. It's
not just about not looking. It's about not ever realizing that you're in the
middle of the air and you don't know how to fly.

Allie: (narrating) People believe what they want to believe. They find meaning
where they can, and they cling to it. In the end, it really doesn't matter
what's a trick and what's true. What matters is that people believe.

Allie: (narrating) When you're little, you like to think you know everything,
but the last thing you really want is to know too much. What you really want
is for grownups to make the world a safe place where dreams can come true and
promises are never broken. And when you're little, it doesn't seem like a lot
to ask.

Allie: (narrating) Why do people want so desperately not to be alone? Why is
it more comforting to think you are being watched than to know that no one at
all is watching? And why, really, does that make us any less alone? In the
end, if there are others out there, then wouldn't we be, all of us, still
alone together?

Allie: (narrating) Christmas is all about hope. Kids hope for new toys. You
get older, and the toys get bigger, but the hope stays the same. Some people
might hope for peace on Earth or maybe for a better tomorrow, whatever their
idea of that might be, but most people still just want something bright and
shiny and new.

Allie: (narrating) My father liked to say that there were these things in life
that didn't make any sense, and they could never make any sense, and if you
were anywhere near smart, you knew that. But your job was not to give up, to
keep on trying to make sense out of them anyway, trying to understand things
that could never be understood. I guess maybe people will always find
different names for their answers, but the one thing is, their questions will
always be the same.

Allie: (narrating) There are times when it seems like the whole world is
afraid...when the fear is something you have to live with day in day out. When
people get scared, they do a lot of different things. They fight, or they run,
they destroy the thing they're afraid of, or they put a lot of distance
between it and them...make it something you can shoot at with a
friction-action gun.

Allie: (narrating) When you're a kid, all you ever want is for the stories
your mom reads you to be true. You think you can crawl inside the world that's
in every book and live in the pictures on every page, but deep down you know
that this isn't something that could ever happen. And it's knowing that the
magic isn't quite there, that it's just over the next hill or maybe in the
next story, that makes you feel safe in your bed at night. You really wouldn't
want it to be any other way.

EPISODE 3 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) The world is made up of the big things
that happen and the small ones. And the part that's so unfair is that we call
them "big" and "small." Because when something happens to you, when you lose
something or someone that you really care about, that's all there is. The
world may be blowing up around you, but you don't care about that. You don't
care about that at all.

Allie: (narrating) People like to examine the thing that frighten them, to
look at them and give them names, so saints look for God, and scientists look
for evidence. They're both just trying to take away the mystery, to take away
the fear.

Allie: (narrating) We're all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time,
every day, a cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our
choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we
might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to
fall.

Allie: (narrating) I have this idea about why people do the terrible things
they do. Same reason little kids push each other on the schoolyard. If you're
the one doing the pushing, then you're not going to be the one who gets
pushed. If you're the monster, then nothing will be waiting in the shadows to
jump out at you. It's pretty simple, really. People do the terrible things
they do because they're scared.

Allie: (narrating) My grandfather used to tell my mum that kids should never
have to worry about anything more serious than baseball. Everything you need
to know is there. It has success and failure, moment where you come together
and moments where you stand alone. And it has an ending. Not a clock, like in
other sports, but an ending. And that, my grandfather used to say to my mum,
is as close as a kid should have to come. To that sort of thing.

Allie: (narrating) We all like to think that we have some control over the
events in our lives, and a lot of the time we can fool ourselves into thinking
that we really are in charge. But then something happens to remind us that the
world runs by its own rules and not ours and that we're just along for the
ride.

EPISODE 4 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) When you're a kid, anything can take
you away-- soap bubbles or a hose spraying a rainbow up over a new-mowed lawn.
I guess growing up means that it gets harder and harder to find your way back
to that kind of place where you can be taken. The one time I see grownups with
that same sort of look on their faces, is when they're just at first falling
in love.

Allie: (narrating) I remember my mom telling me that she only went to church
once, with her mother on Easter Sunday. When the minister said that the
Kingdom of Heaven was within her, that scared her half to death. It meant it
was all up to her. People want the comfort of strong arms. They look to the
voices in their heads. To drugs. They look to the sky.

Allie: (narrating) What makes us human? That we can think? That we can feel
sorrow and pain? Maybe. That we can laugh? I hope so. We can hurt and we can
laugh, and we know a past and a present, and in some ways a future. Maybe what
makes us human is that we know just enough to think and know where we're
going.

Allie: (narrating) I asked my dad once about his dad, my grandfather. I knew
he'd had some hard times, but I didn't know a lot more than that. I said to my
dad 'I guess maybe he was kind of lost'. 'Not lost, really," my dad said, 'but
for a while, he was definitely bewildered.

EPISODE 5 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) I never met my grandfather, but my
father told me that he was a very brave man. And with all that'd he'd done,
maybe because of he'd done, his favorite thing in all the world was to mow the
lawn. My dad said he heard his father talking to a neighbor once. The neighbor
asked him how he was and what he'd been doing. And my grandfather said, "I've
been cutting the grass and watching it grow. Cutting the grass and watching it
grow. Life," he said, "is 90 percent maintenance."

Allie: (narrating) Sometimes people come to a moment where they think they've
found that one last chance to be someone else. And they go for it. When it
doesn't work out, they spend the rest of their lives looking back over their
shoulder at what might have been.

Allie: (narrating) People move through their lives sometimes without really
thinking about where they're going. Days pile up, and they get sadder and
lonelier without really knowing why they're so sad or how they got so lonely.
Then something happens. They meet someone who looks a certain way, or has
something in their smile. Maybe that's all that falling in love is, finding
someone who makes you feel a little less alone.

Allie: (narrating) What makes a man who he is? Is it the worst things he's
ever done, or the best things he wants to be? When you find yourself in the
middle of your life, and you're nowhere near where you were going, how do you
find a way from the person you've become to the one you know you could've
been?

Allie: (narrating) When everything in your life is right on track, it's easy
to believe that things happen for a reason. It's easy to have faith. But when
things start to go wrong, then it's very hard to hold on to that faith. It's
hard not to wonder whose reasons these things happen for.

Allie: (narrating) Do you know the feeling of daring yourself to walk across a
dark room? That way you're excited because you know, you really do know, That
there's nothing there to hurt you. Some people get to choose their dark rooms.
They get to look for places where the fear is only skin-deep. But some people
are nowhere near that lucky.

Allie: (narrating) Some people put a lot of work into their lawn. As if a
patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they
thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful,
it wouldn't matter at all what was going on inside the house.

Allie: (narrating) People come home for a lot of reasons. They come home to
remember. They come home because they've got no place else to go. They come
home when they're beaten, they come home when they're proud. They come home
looking for a door out into their past or a road out into their future. They
come home for a lot of reasons, but they always come home to say good-bye.

Allie: (narrating) Some people spend their lives hoping for something to
happen that will change everything. They look for power or love, or the
answers to their biggest questions. I think really what they're looking for is
another chance. Some way to lead another life where all the mistakes they've
made would be erased, and they could just start over. Nothing bad has happened
yet, and all their possibilities are still in front of them.

EPISODE 6 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) My mom says that life is like a roller
coaster ride. There are ups and downs, there are big scares and slow builds
and places where it levels out. The only difference with this roller coaster
is that every time it stops, you get off in some place totally different from
where you got on.

Allie: (narrating) Sometimes the best way to move into the unknown is to take
familiar steps. Small steps. To do ordinary things to deal with something that
is in no way ordinary. We're always going someplace new, all the time.
Familiar things just let us pretend that we aren't moving into unfamiliar
territory. You take those small, familiar steps, and you try to be honest. Not
to live as if nothing has changed but still to go on with your life. But there
are times when what you need is a piece of how things used to be.

Allie: (narrating) My mom told me once that when you're afraid of something,
what you want more than anything else is to make it go away. You want your
life back to the way it was before you found out that there was something to
be afraid of. You want to build a high wall and live your old life behind it.
But nothing ever stays the same. It's not your old life at all, but your new
life with a wall around it. Your choice is not about going back to the way
things were. Your choice is about hiding, or about going right to the heart of
the thing that scares you.

Allie: (narrating) People say that when we grow up we kick at everything we've
been told. We rebel against the world our parents have worked so hard to bring
us into. That part of growing up is kicking at the ties that bind. But I don't
think that's why we kick at all. I think we kick when we find out that our
parents don't know much more about the world that we do. They don't have all
the answers. We rebel when we find out that they've been lying to us all
along. That there isn't any Santa Claus at all.

EPISODE 7 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) I think when you're older, what gets
hard is that you forget how to take things as they come. And sometimes, the
things that do come, are more than anyone should have to take.

Allie: (narrating) I grew up, just my mom and me. I never thought a lot about
who my father was or where he'd gone. I guess I knew there was something
missing. But when you're a kid, your life is just your life. You don't think
about all the other ways it might've been.

Allie: (narrating) As long as I can remember, people have liked to talk to me.
You know, kind of how somebody says something to you. Doesn't have to mean so
much. It's just that it opens a door for you and you can see into a room you
couldn't see into before. It doesn't really matter how you got there. The
important part is you're seeing something new and different.

Allie: (narrating) If a dream is just a dream, something that happens in your
mind while you're asleep, then that's all right. It's yours to take with you
into the morning, and it fades away there in the light. But when the dreams
start to come while you're awake, and they come with the light, then that is
not all right. What we look for then is other people who have dreamed what
we've dreamed, who have seen what we've seen. When the dreams become real,
sometimes the only comfort you can find is in knowing that you're not alone.

EPISODE 8 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) Most of the fights people have are
about something simple. You want something the other person has, or maybe
they're afraid you're going to want it and they go after you first. People
always think that if they win, then that's the end. Everything will be all
right from then on. Then everything changes. And tomorrow, the thing you were
fighting for will just be a memory. Like everything else, it's already
happened.

Allie: (narrating) We had come to the time I had always known was coming. I
had always had this feeling that, one day, I would have to do something very
hard. I just hoped that I could find a way to do it without anyone getting
hurt.

Allie: (narrating) When you've done something that you can't take back,
something that you don't understand, you start to hold tightly to the things
you do understand, and you try to make sense out of everything you can.
Because if you believed that all you had to do to make things right was to
find a reason, but what happens when you find the reasons and they are not
your own? How do you find any comfort or any sense in that?

Allie: (narrating) I guess I always knew that there was something different
about me. But when all of this began to happen, when I started to be able to
do things, it was kind of scary -- like in a dream where you start falling and
feels kind of good, until you start begin to wonder if you'll ever be able to
stop.

EPISODE 9 
========= 
Allie: (narrating) There's a feeling you get sometimes in
a bad dream. You're running and something dark and big is chasing you and you
want to just stop to let the dark, big thing catch up with you. Something bad
is going to happen, you can't change that, but you can turn and see it coming.
You can see the face of your bad dream.

Allie: (narrating) I had done what I could. I tried to make the soldiers think
that their plan to use me as bait hadn't worked, that I had been taken away. I
thought that if I could make them believe that I was gone, then they wouldn't
bother me anymore and I could go back to who I used to be. But too much had
happened to all us by then for anything to go back to how it was.

Allie: (narrating) When I was very little, my mother would read nursery rhymes
to me. I always hated "Humpty Dumpty." That's a very scary poem. No one knows
how to put it back together again—not all the king's horses or all the king's
men. No one wants to think that there's anything in the world that could fall
apart that badly, but of course...anything can. I guess that's what's so scary
about "Humpty Dumpty."

EPISODE 10 
========== 
Allie: (narrating) My mother always talked to me a lot
about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day and the stars at
night...especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called
"What's Beyond the Sky?" We would imagine darkness or a blinding light or
something else that we didn't know how to name. But of course, that was just a
game. There's nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on,
and we play all of our games beneath it.

Allie: (narrating) I don't know what will happen next. I don't know what I'm
going to be, what I'm going to learn, but what I do know is this—life, all
life, is about asking questions, not about knowing answers. It is wanting to
see what's over the next hill that keeps us all going. We have to keep asking
questions, wanting to understand. Even when we know we'll never find the
answers, we have to keep on asking the questions.

Allie: (narrating) They will be coming soon, coming to try to stop what was
going to happen next. But maybe they could be stopped. Maybe something could
happen that would make it hard for them to do what they wanted to do.

Allie: (narrating) How do you let someone go? How do you understand that
that's alright, that everything changes? How do you find a way for that to
make you feel good about life instead of breaking your heart? The hardest
thing you'll ever learn is how to say good-bye.

Allie: (narrating) People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is
to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every
plan we make is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending the day
won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest
lie there is, and it is the best. You have to keep going as if it all
mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all.