250th day sober. On the radio (the only source of news you can trust) they're saying Sidney Poitier died today. I didn't know he was still alive. He was in his 90s or so.
The guy came up from nothing - he didn't even learn how to read until his teens, taught by a Jewish (naturally) waiter at a restaurant where he was a dishwasher.
He got into acting and that was a hell of a smart move. Because just like singing, like Sinatra chose to do, you don't need any equipment or up-front money or anything more than a pup tent to sleep in.
That's the trouble with starting out middle-class and falling to the bottom. I was expected to become an artist, and that takes art supplies, often expensive ones. But acting, like Poitier did, you can do Shakespeare stuff on the sidewalk and people will toss tips. You can survive, even make a good living doing that. Singing's good, and playing an instrument can be with a lot of caveats. If you're a member of the underclass it can't be an instrument that's expensive or needs a lot of maintenance. Trumpets can be expensive, but there are always cheap student models out there.
When you lived your early years in a 5-bedroom, 3-bathroom place with a family room and a living room and huge yards on all sides it's quite a shift to get used to only doing what you can do while living in a pup tent. I probably would have stuck with art if I'd had the now-unusual good fortune to grow up in the same house all along, nice and safe and stable. But every time we moved, every year or so, I pared away more stuff.
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