Clown Passage of the Day

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Faliol vouchsafed his understanding of the matter by repeating to its last detail Streldone's account of his plight.

'Well, I am glad to know that your wits really are in order, however distracted you may seem. In any event, tonight the Sorcerer is attending the duke's masquerade at the palace. She will be with him. Help me steal her back, so that we may both escape from Soldori, and I will fill the empty part of that pouch.'

Faliol asked if Streldone had possessed the foresight to have brought along a pair of costumes to enable their entrance to the masquerade. Streldone, somewhat vainly, produced from the shadows of the coach two such costumes, one that was appropriate to a knight of the old days and the other that of a court jester of the same period. Faliol reached out for the wildly patterned costume with the jeering mask."

Thomas Ligotti - "Masquerade of a Dead Sword"

[Bleak&Icy]

For GSC, our cosmic prankster:

We drift groggily out of the shadows: comfortably rooted in oblivion, we do not particularly enjoy being pulled up into the burning air for the amusement of some unknown mischief maker, some cosmic prankster, master of the trick. But perhaps there is an old farm where once abundant fields, neatly rowed, now lie fallow and abandoned by all but a few straggly stalks. We witness the scene and, with what remains of our mouths, we smile. Beneath a sharp scythe of moon, we now become eager to fulfill ourselves.

-- "Autumnal" by Thomas Ligotti

[G. S. Carnivals]

The children always followed him
When they saw him hopping by
A funny walk, a funny man
A funny funny funny man -
He made them laugh sometimes

He made them laugh, oh yes he did
He did, he did, he did, he did
Oh, how he made them roll

One day he took them to a place
He knew - a special place -
And told them things about this world
This funny funny funny world
Which made them laugh, sometimes

He made them laugh, oh yes he did
He did, he did, he did, he did
Oh, how he made them roll

Then the funny little man
Who made them laugh - sometimes he did -
Revealed to them his special plan
His very special funny plan
Knowing they would understand
And maybe laugh sometimes

He made them laugh, oh yes he did
He did, he did, he did, he did -
Their eyes grew wide beneath their lids
And how he made them roll

Thomas Ligotti - "I Have a Special Plan for This World"

[Bleak&Icy]

Before Verdier a man sat on a box, a sleeping child on each knee, a slipper and stocking on one leg, an ankle-jack and bandage on the other: a broad-faced, dark-bearded clown, whose wild black eyes had yet seen star-visions of which Fox and Selwyn, making yonder for Howard and Gibbs, the Jews, after a hard night at Brooke’s, never once dreamed.

--"The Man-Stealers" by M. P. Shiel

[Bleak&Icy]

The Jester

“Was she fair?” I asked, but he only chuckled, listening to the bells jingling on his cap.

“Stabbed,” he tittered; “think of the long journey, the days of peril, the dreadful nights! Think how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, through hostile lands, yearning for kith and kin, yearning for her!”

“Stabbed,” he tittered listening to the bells jingling on his cap. “Was she fair?” I asked, but he only snarled, muttering to the bells jingling on his cap.

“She kissed him at the gate,” he tittered, “but in the hall his brother’s welcome touched his heart.”

“Was she fair?” I asked.

“Stabbed,” he chuckled; “think of the long journey, the days of peril, the dreadful nights! Think how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, through hostile lands, yearning for kith and kin, yearning for her!

“She kissed him at the gate, but in the hall his brother’s welcome touched his heart.”

“Was she fair?” I asked; but he only snarled, listening to the bells jingling in his cap.

--"The Prophets’ Paradise" by Robert W. Chambers

[Bleak&Icy]

The Green Room

The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.

“If to be fair is to be beautiful,” he said, “who can compare with me in my white mask?”

“Who can compare with him in his white mask?” I asked of Death beside me.

“Who can compare with me?” said Death, “for I am paler still.”

“You are very beautiful,” sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.

--"The Prophets’ Paradise" by Robert W. Chambers

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Behind another door, one with a swastika splashed negligently on its front in such a way that the paint had dripped from every appendage of the spidery symbol, was a scene similar to the previous. Inside, some colored lights were angled down upon the floor, where a very small man, his hunchback possibly artificial, knelt with head bowed low. His hands were lost in a pair of enormous gloves with shapeless fingers which lolled around like ten drunken jacks-in-the-box. One of the numb fingers was trapped beneath the pointy toe at the base of a lofty boot. See the funny clown! Or rather jester in a jingly cap. His ringed eyes patiently gazed upwards into the darkness, attentive to the hollow voice hurling anger from on high. The voice was playing up the moral disparity between its proudly booted self and that humiliated freak upon the floor, contrasting its warrior's leaping delights with the fool's dragging sack of amusements."

Thomas Ligotti - "Eye of the Lynx"

[Nemonymous]

Did Charles Dickens really write a whole book about a famous clown?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008...kens.biography

[G. S. Carnivals]

In the dark corridors
of our brains
and the black chaos
of the world's marketplace,
we will rush about,
as if in a dream,
to grab at every piece
of pulsing inventory
paraded out -
a galaxy of
arbitrary objects
in all shapes and colors,
a full array
of unrequested needs,
unrequested impulses,
and of course
every accessory imaginable
for those motley costumes of agony
we are forced to wear
every day of our lives...
seizing such merchandise
with a death-grip
and recoiling only
when our hands
feel nothing
in their closing grasp.

Thomas Ligotti - "Insanity and Nothingness"

[G. S. Carnivals]

There were brown ones and blue ones
And white ones and whiter,
In the hidden and forbidden
Downtown of Clown Town.
There were horrid ones and horrider
In the brown and yellow corridor.

Cordwainer Smith - "The Dead Lady of Clown Town"