Re-Invented!

Maybe it was the gleam in the eye. Maybe it was the studied vacantness. Maybe it was the look of embarrassment when I mentioned our past shared theatrical adventures. This man standing on the corner, shaking a bell, soliciting coins for the Salvation Army, used to be a fellow-traveller in our world of theatrical madness. He excelled in the theater of excess. He specialized in a creative approach supplemented by lots of drink and smoke, and over the top theatricality.

He looked at me as one of the Souls of the Damned. A denizen of a fallen world that he gladly, thankfully, has left behind. He wanted to make me disappear. He told me he had "re-invented" himself. He was a new man, a different man, and he'd prefer not to be reminded of where he came from and what he used to do. And that creative realm, was actually part of a destructive lifestyle that no longer worked for him.

I wanted to tell him we weren't that much different. I too have re-invented myself, I do it all the time. And yes, I too have left the drink and smoke behind, but the theatrical madness, never. But it wasn't really the time or place for any of that. He's on a new, better path, I'm just a reminder of that old road that leads to some kind of hell.