The acts of the players

I didn't know at the time, but I was in myths. This was long before I had the notion of faith, even longer before I knew of faith deeper than religion. I was a dinghy tossed on a sea of hormones on a small planet free of real want or struggle. I was also shy and unfashionable, but something in me hungered to get on a stage and speak and move there. To become others, unlike myself; to become a new self; to become everything; to unbecome. The theater people were telling the old myths, the true untruths. We resurrected long-dead spirits, filled fertile blackness with noise and motion until it was curtains. Before and after the myths, we theater people sprawled in the wings, stumbled, flaunted, loved and hated. Magic and ephemeral were my new favorite words. I got high on trappings too—gowns, masks, flowers, ego—for we were like any disciples: clueless. We were pretty awful, and we were also transcendent. Theater was my first church and first communion.