The Little Theater of Dreams

For this little theater of dreams you can only get a one-way ticket. In fact, it is not just a place but the place. Aren’t we all actors and spectators of each other’s lives?

Let me introduce you to the prima donna, busy as she is beautifying herself in front of a mirror that has never reflected her soul nor is it ever going to;

the protagonist, who’s only appeared for a fleeting instant in the grand play of his life;

the comedian, who laughs to forget as if he were an alcoholic;

the one who always dies, everyone’s friend that is;

the walk-ons, ready to backstab you for the feeblest breeze of glory;

the ticket sellers, who’ve never bought a ticket for themselves;

but most important of all, please let me introduce you to the cleaning man.

An old fellow he is, so frail and bent that he envies the proud rigidity of his faithful broom.

When the curtains drop, that’s when he appears on stage. You can see him among the rows of seats, sweeping thousands of emotions, thousands of words that we have thought, produced, consumed and thrown away. Yet another day, yet another show.

The closet of the cleaning man is a sort of greenroom packed with cloths, buckets and black bags.

There, in the quiet darkness of his life, the cleaning man stirs all the scrap paper into a bucket before setting them on fire.

All of a sudden, a strange light shines from the depth of the bucket, shining on the wrinkled face of the old cleaning man. Only when silence is supreme true magic occurs.

Now the words and the emotions that were carelessly discarded by the crowd, each and every fragment of life joins with another: intertwining, separating, getting confused with a multitude of other lives. Some stories are born, others die amid the boos of the audience but still, ladies and gentlemen, the show must go on.

 

When the sun shining in the depth of the bucket extinguishes its light, when the fire dies out, the cleaning man hangs his horrible uniform and walks out of the closet.

On his way back home, he’s back to an infinitesimal reality of life. His tired eyes know this well.

In night's darkness, his heart is full of light.

- by Jason Ray Forbus