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
This is simply beautiful.
RispondiEliminathank you Daisy! wishing you a good day :)
EliminaI like the Prima donna better than the cleaning man... The anti heroine of the theater of dreams. the Cleaning man is just the protagonist.
RispondiEliminaNo, the cleaning man is the Demiurge.
RispondiElimina