via Daily Prompt: Carousel

“Don’t pay to be the clown.”  That’s it.  My great advise to the world.  It’s not even mine, just a hand me down from wiser than I.

Picture the midway.  The smell of cotton candy and those damn funnel cakes tempting you.  Flashing lights of games and carnies hawking the chance to win the one in a million prize, they are cheaper if  you order in bulk.  Farther on the rides, more lights, high tech gears and hydraulics spinning and clacking, screams and laughs.  But in the middle, majestic, bright colors with white lights, painted horses, dragons, dolphins and seahorses, old timey cars or trains.  Brilliant and boring.  I always ride the carousel, wish it could run faster or be more exciting.  I ride it anyway.

Maybe it reminds me of when I was a child and the simple things could make me happy.  Make me laugh like clowns tumbling out of a tiny car, getting pies thrown in their face.

There is a secret about clowns.  It’s just makeup and wigs.  After we all leave, they are the ones that have to clean up.  haul the trash and shovel the elephant yard.  Hence the advise, never pay to be the clown.  Eat the cotton candy.  play a rigged game for a Kewpie doll.  Ride the carousel

The phrase trained observer gets thrown around, cops, reporters, scientists.  It all comes down to the same thing, watching, taking note and remembering whatever you see and hear or sense.  Feel.

I’m watching again.  It sucks.  A friend is fighting.  I can’t send back up or ride in to kick someones ass who desperately deserves it.  I want to give in to my rage and destroy the threat, swallow the sun and use the power to crush my enemies and protect the ones I love.  Instead I watch.

I remember.  Laughing at stupid jokes.  Picking on each other because letting the true feelings show aren’t manly or tough.  Sharing the joy of hearing engines rumble and the communion of the road.  Good beer and bad food.  All of it.  I remember.  I’ll remember the fight, too.  The courage to try for one more day, because life and love are precious.

I’ll remember the feeling, the law of emotion.  For every feeling, there is the potential for an equal and opposite reaction.  The more we love, the more the loss hurts.