The Reason You Are Not a Star

The reason is not plain. Your nose is not too big.

You do not lack symmetry. Your eyes are

bright, inquiring oceans, still enough, deep enough. The reasoncan hardly be called reason.                                    It is a whole lifeyou have. This is also, and always, an idea

about another life. One way to talk about it is to say that sometimes,                                                    after days of fever,you have a fit of weeping for no reason. Or maybe the reason is just hidden

              in the huge sense of need like the crowd around our living.People lean into sadness to find what                                   it asks.Beauty asks, too. We tilt at it                              for every partnot exactly right. We hear. We are cracked like voicesthat rise imperfectly toward a song's pitch. Among actors, life never thought to raiseyour particular voice, but it is so                      much lovelier for living—and by living—        I mean to say what makes us stand in lines for what must be wholedays of our lives, that stripping of expectations— that unfelt loss of willingness                                    that orphans us, strands us in a new roledaily. In these lines I have seen a child watching her mother

pass a bad check, consumed                                with how she worethe cashier down. Lives might have passed                                adopting her role,currents under her life, her life a mask, a novelstory attuned to

the telling of lies.         If this is how we are, maybe we are door framesthe dead appear through.                            They stand behind every curtain, every"now," every "choose."                    But none of this proves to you what I hope.You will not believe any reason why you are no star. If you were here

I would tell you it is only because                    we can never know when we begin to act.