those Italian gesticulations that are sometimes whimsical and other times savage.

To me, a good actor is misunderstood and underappreciated, and I sometimes think the problem is with the word itself. Because the word actor connotes acting rather than action, it carries a suggestion of make-believe or pretend when, in fact, the actor’s job is not to act like a character but to act as that character.

Just as I loved the actors on the big screen, the models in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar awakened some vital part of me. I studied them and copied their looks because they were visible in the way I wanted to be visible, alive in the way I wanted to be alive.

Only some dreamers have dreams. For the rest of us, dreams are headlights that blind and paralyze. What we have, instead, is dreaming itself.

“Are you saying that you’re molding the world?” I asked with a laugh. “In a way, I think so. Look, if you give a camera to a rich lad and one to a poor lad, they’ll photograph

the world differently, you see. The rich lad’s thinking how things ought to be. But the poor lad’s imagining how they could be. I was born dirt poor, so I’ve spent my life creating images of the way that things could be.”

How vividly I remember the hushed anticipation, the lights turned down low, and the clickety-clack of the old dual projectors whirring into action. And then, as if by magic, the screen would transform into an open window, a portal through which I could slip away and escape Madison completely.

“Open yourself to the gentle indifference of the world, Caroline.”

One’s whole life is spent studying the world, intently searching its patterns for the slightest flicker of meaning. Most of the time there is nothing, only accident and chaos. But now and then the presence of meaning is undeniable. It becomes a real thing—dimensional, measurable, indisputable.