![]() Yet those were my days as an acting student and a carpenter at the Oxford Theater. To feel at once both found and lost is not an easy road to be on. This was my dilemma as I sat in class waiting to present a scene or to engage in my greatest fear-improvisation. Ironically, being watched and judged became both an obstacle to be feared and the very goal I sought. The demon lurking in the wings was my self-consciousness. Knowing that there was the possibility to make more money in a day than I had ever made in a month was hypnotic, even as it seemed preposterous. To achieve the ability to affect people and be appreciated for it dominated my dreams day and night. The idea of it thrilled me, giving the vigor of sinew and blood to the bones of print on a page. Studying to be an actor was not something I felt sure about, but it was something meant to be. Above me a long piece of black pipe, suspended with chain, held the stage lighting sufficient to illuminate this arena when it came to life with story.īy exile and adventure, by mishap and naiveté, I was drawn here from the place of my birth in Ohio. In this once-upon-a-time factory, now a make-shift theater, a board would shift somewhere and resound off the high ceiling and bare walls like a lone applause. There was nothing soft here cushions, curtains, carpet, things to come with the remodeling, were expensive dreams now. Bird song muffled its way through the glass and brick as morning advanced. I often sat on the stage looking out at the wooden seats, the rising sun projecting shadows of the steel-framed window panes across the scratched black backs of the empty rows. But most mornings I would walk to Western Avenue, buy three or four donuts and a cup of coffee, and go back to the theater, long before anyone else arrived. Sometimes there was a quart of milk, a few beers, or maybe a couple of apples getting cold in the small refrigerator, which reminded me of the one we had when I was a kid. Occasionally, I lit a burner on the stove to boil water for instant coffee. With a few bounding steps across Oxford Avenue, I was at work or school, depending on the day. Even though the floors creaked and the house smelled of mold, and even though I cut my foot on a jagged piece of old linoleum, broken and protruding into the air like a sentry at the kitchen door, this was home. ![]() He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wildĪfter I left my apartment and job in Anaheim, I moved into one of the old mill houses across from the Oxford Theater. ![]() Were his yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, ![]()
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