Evil Clowns

So, it hasn't been a great weekend. As a result, I feel like taking myself too seriously today. My young male playmate down the street even tried to hump me this morning, something he's never done before, and I can't help but think of it as a sign that the world is going downhill. I'm beginning to expect that my blogging experiment may have run its course. After all, surely there are better outlets for my creativity? Something more respectable, like the visual arts... For instance, I have always wanted to go back to school and try my hand at painting again. Here is a clown painting I made in my youth.



It's not much to look at, I know. But come on, I'm a dog. At least I can sign my name. It's decidedly non-edgy, which might be what you'd expect from an animal who gets regular walks, affection, a spot on the couch, the occasional table scrap, good access to medical care, and enough free time to do extravagant things like blogging about myself. There's not much ambiguity here. Non-threatening clowns? Cool. It's hard to get worked up about clown paintings in gilt frames any way you slice it. Cute. Great. Good dog, Sid. Nice painting.

But I'm not really feeling like the clowns in my painting are really representative of my inner feelings right now. Besides, the eyes are completely out of proportion. My mood being what it is right now, I feel somewhere in between Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's "It...."








...and the evil clown doll who attacks Robbie in "Poltergeist."




I'm going to get abstract and pensive here since I don't feel like being witty today. I feel like being serious and dark and arty. Mysterious. J once made a point of turning in piece after piece of "evil clown art" after her junior high school art teacher informed the class that "all art should be beautiful." J's ouevre included a devil clown sculpture, a devil clown mosaic, and numerous drawings of clowns with sharp teeth. Junior high was not a particularly good time for J (from what I can gather, it isn't a particularly fun time for most young teens), but releasing the evil clowns and putting them down where everyone could see them felt good even if she got the impression that nobody knew quite what to say.

Personally, I am feeling like I could use a good piece of evil clown art today. Something with horns and teeth. Not to get all philosophical or anything, but I think we all need to acknowledge that we all have the capacity to be evil clowns in whatever we do. We all need to acknowledge our evil clown and ask ourselves how we choose to deal with it. Do we let the evil clown do whatever it likes? Do we file down the teeth? Do we keep ourselves and our evil clown locked in the basement, out of sight? Perhaps we chain the clown up like the Gimp in Pulp Fiction and bring him out for parties and special events when we need a little evil clown to keep us sharp. But upon reflection, I do not think that the clown can be eliminated from our lives or sent on a predetermined path like a wind-up doll. He sits there in the corner of the room with his pointy yellow teeth and eyes until he rises up and pushes us from behind into a wall. This lets us know that he is still there with us. Our inner evil clown.