Clown Cantos, Clown Cantos

I saw a worm. I won’t say it changed my life. Rather, it made clear my life, or, roiled, my thinking about what it is about my life and all our lives, that is worth saving. Worth fighting for. Rooting for. Being connected to such a phenomenal being! I stopped everything. I wrote. I had to tell you. And yesterday, driving, I saw a turkey. I pulled over. I was all over myself in amazement at what Dante calls this our life. I had to tell you. I’m not sure my life roiled by a worm sighting will save your life, or mine, or telling you I was undone by happiness seeing a turkey, but let’s for the moment say it could. Here with me as I see a worm is Radiotopia’s Ian Chillag, saying “Everything is alive.” Dolly Parton, ‘Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way.” Einstein, e=mc2. Emerson, “events must be sung, and sing themselves.” Stephen Sondheim, “Send In The Clowns.” Emily Dickinson, “God be with the Clown/who ponders this tremendous scene.” William Carlos Williams, “My heart rouses to tell you,” insisting (he's a physician) that his news-in-a-poem will save our life. Or as he puts it, “men die miserably every day without” it. I take this to heart in Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing.” Here's news to upend disheartening headlines, a way of seeing, and telling, and writing, our world—that makes the day, that saves the day, to me, a way of honoring the gift of consciousness, to live with appropriate excitement and wonder and redemption, and grace. In these Flash Mob-of-One memoir episodes, I lose my blueberries, an octopus breaks my heart, a backyard bear is beat off with computer, a spider escapes my wrath (my heart’s not in it), and it’s all okay, better than okay, wondrous, because you are here, as this world rises up. You’ll meet my rooster (saved!), my mom who does not believe she is dead (no one does), our son who went to heaven with four toes, who tells me he is alive--you'll meet everybody, singing, alive in their own way.