Timeless Tales of old ladies and shoes....

 “There was an old lady who lived in a shoe. She had so many children her uterus fell out”....."She hauled it around in a cart. When it was time to give birth, she just wrung the kid out with her hands."

Her hands were immaculate exquisite and the only thing visible outside her burqa. Those hands were both mysterious and legendary and her offspring increased every year.

She lived alone, her third husband had self immolated in the village square many years prior. 

Her children had hence displayed a dazzling array, a potpourri of characteristics, height, disposition, hair colour.

She was an author of sorts and on those rare occurrences where the children were out and about via an avalanche of surrupticious glances one hundred new stories would give birth....

Notes left in my hat...

 

I'd sometimes get folded notes in my hat.

This ones poetically notable

"Letter to a Clown

Seldom do I go into the city, but this week I came in on Monday and was back on Tuesday—I met a bright Clown in a dark laneway that needed the sort of light you were able to shed. I wondered who you were behind your mask. You drew a crowd around you like a magnet.

Do you know what you did for us?

I shall count some of the ways.

You awaken the Discerner in us. You show us aspects of ourselves so that we can dare to look; then dare we to act upon. You show us the roles we have imposed like cloaks covering ourselves and shake them off, for life is just a game. Uncovering us you show us “to be”. You gather us and draw us together through this laughter creating Unity of the Family of Man….. and as I look through the crowd, silently gathering my gift of words for you, I see compassion, joy, shining merriment, some silently suppressed, but expressed in the eyes of those who have perhaps too serious a life and hear the innocent open laughter of enjoyment in the sound of young children voices and in the youthful, I wonder if you realise how powerful your play is in changing us quietly from within. Quiet audiences, often seemingly unresponsive, can be the best.

Did you know that everyone was laughing at something different at the same time but something that was in them too? Complex, powerful, intricate this act. What impact to connect us up in still concentration as you, clever psychologist, become a mirror for each.

Deep Clown, even when you wash the windows with small, round movements it humours and relaxes and lulls us. Not for long! Like the suddenness of your own swift mind, the long movements of effort follow, giving instead into the mercurial and quicksilver changes of your ingenious and humorous acting.

I saw a Clown of Hearts and heard the quietness coming out of the audience the next day, all gathered around you, and the soft, deepening laughter rippling out of the sun of its eyes as you drew, in one swift act of affectionate comedy, the Police on their city beat in the paddy van, to the people.

Before your audience walks away, lighter or brighter or deeper in thoughts, reflecting, probing towards the Light of Life perhaps.

You took off your hat, green haired man, old, old Soul and bowed to your audience. I noticed two shadows on your face. They came down from your eyes across your cheeks. Later, when I passed the darkening laneway with all it’s dreams still whispering from the undying souls of the never-ending hopes, faiths and loves of your audience, I looked up and there, suspended in the darkness was a branch of light filled, golden flowers that you had forgotten to take; or had you? In that bright , simple spray I saw, as I did in the shadows under your eyes, Your Essence, and I am still weeping for what you evoke in us.

Your Essence, like the flowers and Your Efforts are Love,

Dear Gentle Clown."