Page 142

By Jack Joseph Smith

144 each other parting, but bhose were strange times, when the need not to be alone held on to me, when at the same time I was inside, trying so hard to break aways I was like a cat clinging A ehenlnes coat, but when you look into its eyes, you a can see, that its spirit is far aways I suppose that it was that, I was extremely : unclear about what’ I was leaving, and consequently” had no clear vision about where | I might be goings I took short trips to New York and to the New Jersey shores They were very lonely, and the lights of Broadway and the boardwalk seemed very dim; Maybe it was, that they just seemed so old to me, That they had lost their meanings There certainly was no fires I remembered what the fire wags It had only been a little while -agos’ And ‘there were-no lights of beauty theres as opposed to the lights I knewi! The lights of the depths, The faces there were more distorted with red and yellow makeup, than a white wontinay who walks the streets of a black world;’.I began to make yp stories: about myself, and to read adventure stories,’ I saw myself as Jack Londow so strongly now, that’ reality and illusion moved as a constant through my brainy’ I never thought of deciphering reality and illusion, for I was: not at @ point yet, where I could persue either one-of them in ite seperate form,.I needed them together?! I still needed a tearing within my spirit, so that I could at least feel my sences: Lives! How about being a bum made into a movie star$ Then I wouldn't have to brag anymore’ Everyone would know who I wags All I would have to do is act it outs The sighing \ving nding, with a breeze leaves of Fall, turned the other way around and brought a new trick into my weary heart,’ Three mont: after I had begyn to study drama-at the downtown playhouse, I was asked to try out for a part with. @ profeessional childrens theatre; Knowing nothing about being an actor, I was a little fearful, but'I tryed’ out anyway, and was accepted into the companys The

Original Scan

Page 142

AI Interpretation

GPT

Clinging to the rich girl because he cannot bear being alone, the narrator makes lonely trips to New York and the Jersey shore, finds Broadway and the boardwalk dim and used up, feeds himself on Jack London fantasies, and stumbles into acting as another way to keep reality and illusion fused together.

Loneliness is the pressure behind both the romance and the self-mythologizing, so the new life never really breaks cleanly from the old one. Acting arrives less as a disciplined craft than as another form of fire, another place where illusion can keep sensation alive.

Claude

Late-summer Greek and Polish and Lithuanian and Italian picnics, beer with older men, rainbow-cheeked girls, and the decision to leave the family business — Bis the rich girl still clinging at his side while Michael tries inside to break away.