Page 142

By Jack Joseph Smith

each other parting, but those 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 away. I was like a cat clinging to A HUMANS coat, but when you look into its eyes, you can see, that its spirit is far away. 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 going. I took short trips to New York and to the New Jersey shore. 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 meaning. There certainly was no fire. I remembered what the fire was. It had only been a little while ago. And there were no lights of beauty there, as opposed to the lights I knew. The lights of the depths. The faces there were more distorted with red and yellow makeup, than a white womans, who walks the streets of a black world. I began to make up stories about myself, and to read adventure stories. I saw myself as Jack London so strongly now, that reality and illusion moved as a constant through my brain. I never thought of deciphering reality and illusion, for I was not at a point yet, where I could pursue either one of them in its seperate form. I needed them together. I still needed a tearing within my spirit, so that I could at least feel my sences live. How about being a bum made into a movie star? Then I wouldn't have to brag anymore. Everyone would know who I was. All I would have to do is act it out. The sighing, dying, ending, with a breeze leaves of Fall, turned the other way around and brought a new trick into my weary heart. Three months after I had begun to study drama at the downtown playhouse, I was asked to try out for a part with a profeessional childrens theatre. Knowing nothing about being an actor, I was a little fearful, but I tryed out anyway, and was accepted into the company. 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

Torn between 'the need not to be alone' and 'trying so hard to break away', the narrator compares himself to 'a cat clinging to A HUMANS coat' whose spirit is far away, finds the lights of Broadway and the New Jersey boardwalk 'very dim', sees himself as Jack London until 'reality and illusion moved as a constant through my brain', and after studying drama at the downtown playhouse is accepted into 'a profeessional childrens theatre'.

The page shows a man who needs illusion to feel anything, 'I still needed a tearing within my spirit, so that I could at least feel my sences live'. Acting arrives as the natural next disguise, a way to 'act it out' rather than brag, and its promise is shadowed by the admission that he needed reality and illusion 'together'.