Home

I called the ground floor of the old Star Hotel my Home for about four years. It's located in Blue Lake, Ca, a sleepy hamlet that lies on banks of the Mad River, about ten miles inland from the only-slightly-more-well-known Arcata, CA.

At the time, the hotel was no longer lodging guests as it once did. While I rented the bottom floor of the hotel, a local arts school (and only business besides the gas station) rented the top — which consisted of nine small bedrooms and a few bathrooms. Whether the hotel was really called the "Star Hotel," I have not been able to prove. The only evidence i have are from the few encounters at the post office in which I described to a local fellow where I was living, receiving the response: "Oh, you mean the old Star Hotel."

Now, the art school students who lived above me were not studing sculpture or painting. They were studying physical theatre at a place called Dell' Arte . Physical theatre is another phrase for "Artsy Clowns." Sure, the Del Arte's performed plays, and they certainly worked very hard, honing various forms of stagecraft... but sometimes they also rode unicycles, juggled, and wory plasting water-spraying flowers.

Here's what I learned about aspiring clowns during my stay in the old Star Hotel: