Knowing Now You'll Never Be a Clown

'Imagination is everything', we were once taught by a teacher of ours. And so in this episode we take up the imaginative possibilities of play and laughter, wondering together what possibilities can come from holding the 'darkness and vulnerability in the heart of everything' alongside the joyful, expansive possibilities of play. Along the way we laugh a lot, imagine what it would be to welcome the joy of others, and consider how 'authenticity' always involves some measure of playfully cultivating what's been so far marginalised or not included. 

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

Knowing Now You’ll Never Be a Clown

But if you were, and if your grin

were painted red as a Coke can, a fire

engine, red as the Tabasco sauce

you spilled on your mother’s carpet, and

if it lifted itself from the inside of one huge ear

to the other, and if your nose were a ping

pong ball almost begging for a swipe, and if

your feet slept within white shoes, three feet long

and flapping, would you be able then to talk

to everything you really want to talk to: the

chickadees who come closer than your nieces,

that piece of paper blown across your lawn,

the rain, each nudge of green in your garden?

And when you put on your coat, that U.N.

of colors and scraps, that coat that would

make Joseph feel he had folded himself

into the pages of GQ, the one with the shoulders

rolling up to your cheeks, with buttons the size

of pancakes, and a hem like the border of

Czechoslovakia, would you want to walk

into church, quietly take your place with

the choir and just as the minister finishes

the benediction, honk your horn? 

And

when you put on your polka dotted tie, wide

as a summer afternoon, would you

want to pin the squirting yellow daisy

on your lapel, sit in the business meeting,

and after the ayes have it, squeeze

the rubber bulb in your pocket? 

Then

again, maybe you would just stay home,

listen to jazz, the blues, or some swing,

open each of your cupboards and talk

about Tuesday or the way the light falls

across the counters, invite Lou Jacobs,

Emmett Kelly, Felix Adler, Otto Griebling,

hell, the whole clown alley, rent a calliope,

a center ring, one elephant, and get out the pies.

–Jack Ridl

Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash