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John Grey |
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MIDVILLE THEATER Into the theater, I'd leave the stone age of a small town behind me. I loved the anticipation at the ticket counter or loading up on soda and popcorn. And there was nothing as overwhelming at that step into blindness, stumbling to a seat, feeling around for carved initials in the arm rests, wads of old bubble gum, as I waited for my eyes to adjust. And there was always the screen, flat, white skin over a skein of light, bordered by ancient tapestry. There was nothing between me and the movie. Magic unreeled from tiny port-holes in the rear wall of the theater, rode a canopy of moving fire above my head, particles of dreams jigsawing together at the first touch of screen into jungle or Montana or deep space. The gilded walls of that rickety palace framed my Saturday afternoons, until it closed down on my fifteenth birthday. The moment I left it, my childhood was a boarded up picture show, its neon darkened, its posters torn and flapping in the wind. JUNKYARD RAY This junkyard is the rusty, twisted metal, rat infested candy store: a Chevy steering wheel squashed beneath an Oldsmobile chassis; a Jaguar hood ornament; a Volkswagen driver's side door. These are the parts to the automobile you assemble every day in your head. You collect them piece by piece. You can't build a lover this way. You can't find your father dozing on the sofa, snoring and dribbling, and recognize the nose you pocketed when no one was looking, the legs you hauled home strapped to the roof of the old man's borrowed station wagon. Some day, a miracle car will rise up out of the dust and junk of your garage laboratory. The ones you did not create will come out to admire it. They won't see the days sifting through the junkyards, the disparate scraps and chunks that somehow coalesced. They'll be so impressed, they'll wish you were the one made them though they won't confess it. They'll just say, "Great job," the exact words you would have sealed their lips with. |