One day the man was driving along, stuck in traffic that wouldn't let him move forward. He almost wanted to pull his car over, park anywhere, get out of the car, and walk. He almost wanted to leave his phone in the car, even leave his keys in the car...leave everything that he feels naked without, in the car....and be free. But he was on his way to do a public reading of a screenplay. In the screenplay he had to feel things he didn't want to feel, But he knew it would be a great release since he didn't get to be an actor much these days. So he was in a place called limbo. Limbo was all too familiar to him. wanting to go...not wanting to go....frozen.... still.... in between. But he went. In his car....not walking like he wanted to. He was already late anyway, so he had to get there....to be where he had promised.
He was wrapped up in "life" all day. For the last few days. For the last few years....So as much as he liked the screenplay, he didn't have time to prepare. However, after he first read it on his own, he knew that not much preparation was needed. All he had to do was breathe, and let the audience in on the loss he was feeling in real life. Because that's what actor's do. Just let people in....into a private thought....a private world....as they artfully juxtapose their world with the writer's world and make the illusion of everything being "ONE"
He was told afterwards by the writer himself, that the phones had stopped tweeting in the audience and you could hear a pin drop. The man was happy that he did his job well.....But what a strange job. The man was very vulnerable at this point, so he crossed his arms and stood in a corner amongst the crowd...not knowing where to go, what to feel, what was real, what wasn't. Then it happened....JACK ZULLO
Jack Zullo was a friend of the man. They didn't know each other well, but Jack always made the man laugh, and the man needed to laugh. This Time though Jack just looked at him and wondered what was wrong. The Man was so closed off. Jack always seemed to be trying to remind the man, that he should be happy , and should "take the bull by the horns"...Well Jack didn't say that really...that was the man's grandfather....but his grandfather was past, and everytime a voice came to him that made him laugh and encouraged him...he heard his grandfather....and missed his family....and then something else happened. The man, who had been standing there with arms crossed barely breathing, jutted his arms into the air like for a second he was Rocky Balboa on the museum steps in Philly...he was pretending to be excited for the sake of Jack Zullo, but as he had his arms in the air he could feel a release inside of himself....he could feel a tear just behind his eye, but a happy one....like the ones that snuck up on him everytime at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life". And then Jack Zullo said ..."There he is...I just saw the boy in you"...Jack Zullo smiled and walked away. And then the man walked out into the night...
He didn't go back to his car...He turned his phone off.... and he walked through the city streets, wondering what was next....wondering if he could please just once travel through some sort of mystic hole in space, right next to the flashing DON'T WALK sign....and end up in the woods somewhere. The woods would be covered in snow...Just like that soft silent snow he remembered from the woods behind his house in 1984. A time when dreams were just being born...A time when being "unplugged" just meant not having on his Walk-Man...for a second the man stopped and closed his eyes in the middle of a Hollywood street....and for that second he was back in the woods...away from everything that would later drag him down into manhood....He threw his arms in the air, and caught snowflakes on his eyelashes.... And as quiet as the snow fell; just as quiet he thanked Jack Zullo. Thanked him for reminding him of a fact that he only believed could be true in the movies...but now will start to believe and feel it in his REAL LIFE....
it is this.... Everyone says it's time to grow up, and step up, and be a MAN....but he was a MAN...a sad MAN....a broken MAN....with no answers or solutions. So in truth what he needs to do, is be a boy again...believe the world is his full of endless possibilities...and that world doesn't have to be a "used to be" world....a "used to be" boy, that hides in the man's mirror....that world can be here....now....the boy can be here..now...and he can start fresh....fresh like a clean blanket of snow waiting to have new tracks put in it...or even waiting to be formed into a new MAN..a snow man...
And then as I continued...oh shoot, I mean as the man continued ...to walk down the street....he started to believe that even in LOS ANGELES, California.... maybe he could see a white Christmas this year....
thanks Jack.....and everyone who keeps reminding me of who I really am, and that it's not that bad....
I hope in some small way, whoever is reading this...can walk away away with the same feeling...and if you do, Thank Jack Zullo.
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