![]() To put ourselves in the path of the total eclipse, that day we had driven five hours inland from the Washington coast, where we lived. The clown print was framed in gilt and glassed. His thin, joyful lips were red chili peppers between his lips were wet rows of human teeth and a suggestion of a real tongue. The crinkled shadows around his eyes were string beans. The clown’s glance was like the glance of Rembrandt in some of the self-portraits: lively, knowing, deep, and loving. Inset in his white clown makeup, and in his cabbage skull, were his small and laughing human eyes. Actually, he wore a clown’s tight rubber wig, painted white this stretched over the top of his skull, which was a cabbage. During those years I have forgotten, I assume, a great many things I wanted to remember-but I have not forgotten that clown painting or its lunatic setting in the old hotel. Two years have passed since the total eclipse of which I write. Some tasteless fate presses it upon you it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go. It was a painting of the sort which you do not intend to look at, and which, alas, you never forget. ![]() It was a print of a detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown’s head, made out of vegetables. I lay in bed and looked at the painting on the hotel room wall. This article is adapted from Dillard’s recent book.
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