Jesters do oft prove prophets. - Shakespeare
My son brought a clown to dinner. We ate sloppy joes, drank beer, and talked about death. It was unexpected dinner chat with a clown, but it turns out that all conversational roads eventually end there. The dearth of fireflies led us to the death of the bees, and on and on. The clown pointed out that the sexy extinctions get all the press - big cats, pandas, etc. - while the critical insects fly under the radar. Everything is dying, always, a perpetual cycle. The coral reefs, the soil, the American chestnut. The death of reason, the novel, comedy. Civility. Democracy. We die little deaths each day in response to the news, blind to the elephant in the room: We, too, are busy dying.
It was an interesting dinner.
We’ve heard many stories of this young man, son of a famous clown, and his work around the world. His job is to bring joy to broken children in breaking places. I can’t even imagine it. I don’t generally like clowns, but was humbled by this one. He was kind and engaging, gentle and generous, but also somewhat muted, curved over his plate in a weary posture. In his psychedelic pajamas and eccentric accoutrements (rubber ducky necklace, raccoon tail belt, a swirl of sherbet hair - he is his vocation), his sadness was a small, incongruous undercurrent. He was a hush in the soft laughing room, while an Italian tenor warbled quietly on the speakers in the background. I texted my son the next morning, noting that his clown friend seemed sad. He responded:
He’s seen a lot of the world’s suffering.
Clowning in refugee camps and hospitals in war torn regions and whatnot
He’s not a particularly sad individual but his eyes hold it
It’s the whatnot that gets me. The sadness, the suffering, and the dying. Even the clowns are not immune - maybe especially the clowns. He made us laugh, in the end, and left us with a little hope.
When my grandmother was my age, she read the obituaries daily, sighing and clicking her tongue over all the deceased. So sad, she would say. Each day she would tell us about a death - the bank teller’s ex-girlfriend, the neighbor’s sister-in-law’s lawyer. We laughed at her obsession, we were young and stupid, blind to the inevitable. Now, my grandmother is long gone and I whisper with old friends about all the death. Did you hear? The daughter’s first roommate, the child of the old boss, the college friend’s second wife. Did you hear? So sad.
We are bored to death, flirting with death, scared to death, and cheating death. As we age, we grow careful. We join gyms, eat kale, take the stairs slowly, and consider the new weighted meaning of red meat and salt. There is no cheating the inevitable, however. You will not disarm the reaper. Whether you chew the scenery or cower upstage, belt the aria or sway in the chorus, the curtain’s coming down. Final bow or not, the show will end - lights out, goodnight everybody, drive safe!
Midlife has found me thinking a lot about death. It’s not just me, I see it everywhere in the writing of my generation. My aunt, who is my age, sidled up to me recently and quietly confessed, “I think about death all the time.” It’s an expected thing, as we age, to confront mortality. The news doesn’t help, we’re wallowing in loss with the morning coffee - plague death numbers, impending climate catastrophe. Guns in schools. Even the kids are scared.
The clown, with his great, global joy-spreading campaign, woke me to what’s right at the end of my nose: Hope dies last. He will travel, again and again, to the center of the dying and he will coax a smile or two. He will take what resides behind suffering eyes and store it in his own. And he will do it again.
Today, there are tulips on the desk and a carpet of snowdrops in the yard.
There’s a white breasted nuthatch that survived the window incident, and a great wild hawk circling the back field.
There are books to read, cantatas in the background. Monk is forever at Town Hall and it cannot be missed.
There’s pink wine and a papaya, and a letter in the box.
There’s work to be done, good work, hard work and whatnot that beats back the death panic and eases the suffering, somehow, if only for a moment.
There’s a sweet, sad clown at dinner to remind me that some work for joy, even though. The most delicious revelation of my middle age is the slow death of the fear of death.
We’re all terminal, but today I’ll wear the salmon socks with the purple shoes, maybe the birdcage earrings. I’ll raise a glass of pink wine and try to make someone smile. Better angels, and all that. The eyes hold it, but the rest is jest till the curtain falls.
Happy spring!
Lisa
Things to share:
Speaking of death and climate catastrophe, two more headlines to ruin the morning coffee this week: World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says; and Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe.
“Survival” is a beautiful essay by Taslim Jaffer, the winner of CNFC’s 2022 contest. There’s so much in it: motherhood, childhood, life, and death.
I try not to get too political here (with limited success), but today’s letter from
feels important. We better pay attention, or our national nightmare could get much worse.I am loving Marina Benjamin’s beautiful little book, Insomnia. Her language perfectly and poetically captures the affliction and is giving me new ways to think about it.
I love this essay. And it hit upon something I've been mulling over recently: how comforting it can be to read about, to talk about, these mortal coils. It's such an antidote to the “hustle culture” and "self improvement" industry that surrounds me. I crave a good momento mori.
Fabulous, Lisa! Beautifully written x