Clean as Clown can be.

No nose-picking. No grungy fingernails. No sweaty shirts (freshly laundered and steam-ironed, if you please).

Oh yes. We hospital clowns are squeaky clean clowns. I love it! What my friends affectionately termed "obsessive-compulsive tendencies", are now career must-haves. I can now not only justify my strange taste in clothes and fondness for toys, I can also get away with not shaking hands, having a nail brush at every sink in my house, and making people leave their shoes at the door.

For at Docteur Clown, such things are smiled upon. Nay, BEAMED upon. My clown shoes, for instance, mustn't be worn on the streets, only in hospital, so that I don't tramp any outside dirt (and there is quite a lot of it in this city) into the wards. My hands must be thoroughly scrubbed - no hasty run under a tap. Clothes must be clean and only worn once before laundering. And bodies must be bathed both before and after visiting a hospital.

Ah, sweet, sweet-smelling clowns. May our tribe increase.

Juggling careers.

Organise! Routine! Schedule! Discipline! These are lovely words, that, sadly, do not seem to be part of my life at the moment. I now have three jobs: clown, poet, warrior. And juggling my three loves is not that easy. But unlike the juggling balls that I drop (rather frequently) I have no intention of dropping any of my three lines of work.

Clown:
This is a dream come true. But I wish there were more hours in the day. I often don't have the time to set aside for juggling practice or learning a new lullaby to sing little sick babies to sleep. The past three days I have not had the chance to do ANYthing remotely clownlike. Not even time to iron my newest pair of 2XXL baggy clown pants.

Poet:
My writing, what I - and most other people who know me - consider to be my greatest gift - has moved to the back burner. Although I know that my unwritten words die with me, there is more immediate action needed on the clowning and of course on my activism work.

Warrior:
This is my most difficult job. And the Askios Projects are already several jobs rolled into one. But fighting in the holy war against child abuse is, well, just that: holy. I signed up for lifetime membership, and I know that I am going to leave this world a better place by the time I'm finished. It's like the old fable about the mouse with the great idea: it doesn't work unless someone's willing to bell the cat. And I decided a long time ago that I would bell the cat.

So I shan't complain. "Clown, Poet, Warrior" looks good on my visiting card and it really does sum me up. Fragmented as I am, the mosaic I form is pretty damn good. (Hmm .. I wonder if there's a Haiku Noodle in that last sentence? We shall just have to wait and see.)

Tomorrow I shall put on my Clown hat. Yes, both literally and figuratively. Gladys the Clown will come out and lift many loads off my shoulders, turn them into little sparkly bits of fluff that fly off with every giggle. Sure, there will be new loads waiting in my Inbox later, but there will also be more clown days, and it will all balance out. That's the beauty of my mosaic.

Seeds and stuff

I wonder if seeds
know that they will become trees.
Growth - what adventure!

Nature. It's almost like one of those children's puzzles, where all the answers are hidden somewhere in the picture. I like to think that God has done this for us, hidden all the answers to our many, many questions about life - but hidden them right under our noses, obvious if we just LOOK for them. I do believe that nature holds the answers. I learn so much from seeds about life and death, about challenges and pain, struggle, persistence and growth.

A seed is buried.
"The end!" it weeps, as it splits
open, and begins.

Once Upon The Inside

Once upon the inside of my front door, I stuck a Post-It note. It read, "I only accept kind and loving people in my world."

Now, hardly anyone visits. I guess affirmations do work, after all.

And so it came to pass ..

... like wind after beans. Audition at 10 a.m. Workshop session at 12. Red nose handed to me at 2 pm, March 6th 2007. What a moment. I felt like I'd been awarded the Padma Bhushan.

Driving to the audition that morning, my heart was all a-flutter. I found myself beaming at the road and the traffic, while "I'm going to be a clown!" kept dancing through my head. It was the same feeling I feel when I fall in love. Not that ALL the men I've fallen in love with were clowns. Au contraire. Some of them really didn't put many smiles on my face in the end. But this feeling today was so exhilarating - the feeling before you find out what a creep the man who rocks your boat really is - and even better: no nausea, no letdown, no yeast infections, no lies. (And best of all, it just gets better every day!)

Oh yes. Clowning is way better than falling in love. Clowning is about being true and sincere (well, hospital clowning .. I don't know about circus clowns which is a whole different scene). As a clown, I walk bow-legged because I choose to, not because I have to (oh dear what innuendos). Clowns wear bloomers not g-strings. Clowns are at their sexiest with baggy over (or under) sized clothes. High heels vs. clown shoes - no comparison. Of course, as a clown I do have to wear more make-up than I'm used to. But you can't have it all.

The audition was fun, though I was a bit nervous at first. I whipped out my recorder, fife and a strange instrument called a melodica (distant relative of the accordion) and proceeded to play quite badly. Then I grabbed my balls and showed the lady what I could do with them. Not much. I can juggle three balls but not too well. (Yes I have THREE balls. Multicoloured juggling balls. Actually I have SIX. Another clown vs romance advantage - all the balls you want, and you only play with them when you really want to).

Then I had to do a bit of acting and improvisation, fill out a form, listen, talk, and listen some more, and then on to my first workshop session DOT DOT DOT (yes another uninspiring cliffhanger).

Gladys comes out of the closet.

Gladys has been around for a while. But I like to think that March 6th 2007 is the date when she really came out of the closet, and into polite society.

In a way, Askios was responsible, because it all began when an article about how I started Askios was published in Sattva, an ezine about the development sector. Last month's issue was about Bangalore and as I looked through the pages, I noticed a comment in a photo feature, by someone who was training with Docteur Clown. That's interesting, I thought.No, I lie. I didn't think it was interesting. I went ballistic with joy! Clown. CLOWN. CLOWN!!!! I had to get in!!!

Well, I hate long blog posts that just go on and on, so I'll cut a long story short. Maybe not short. Maybe just less long than it could be. Here goes: I googled and found a recent news article about Docteur Clown in Bangalore. They had just held auditions. I called the lady and was told that training had already begun. Devastation! I tried to draw on all my old advertising skills, and sell myself to her, and must assume that it worked, because eventually she said she'd think about it and that I should call her in two days at 9 a.m.

Oh, the tension. It was worse than waiting for a Saturday-night date to call you on Monday.
I called at 8.55 a.m. I called at 9, 9.10, 9.20 etc etc. and all I got was a ringtone. More devastation. By 2 p.m. I gave up, and reassured myself that she had left her mobile at home (though secretly I worried that she had met another clown) and called again the following morning.

Meet me at 4, she said, and I did. Then waited some more while she finished her accordion class. I am SO glad I am a much calmer human being this decade. The old me would have stormed off in a huff. But the new improved me took the time to enjoy the Alliance Francaise's lovely tea, lovely garden, and not-so-lovely garden benches.

Eventually the lady did show up and we had a nice long talk, at the end of which I discovered that while not yet Clown status, I had at least got myself an audition on the following Tuesday. I promptly rushed home and spent the next few days despairing over my badly-deteriorated juggling skills. I have since decided to blame this on my middle-aged eyesight, which now makes everything close by look blurry.

By Tuesday morning, I had a bag packed with all the things I deemed necessary for the audition. Then, with pounding heart and ridiculously happy smile, I set off .

Not much of a cliffhanger, I realise, but I stop here.