Clowns, Women, But First A Rainbow

Monday evening, right around sunset, I went out for a walk. I wanted to work on a couple of story ideas for Impossible Kisses so I took my notebook—I mean a paper notebook, not my computer—with me.

I walked a block out of my way to avoid the dark sidewalk and on a corner I looked up and saw the most beautiful rainbow I’ve seen in years.

Immediately my thinking switched from writing to picture taking. I’m still using just my phone for taking pictures and the color-response of a phone camera is pretty awful, but I got a couple of pictures that were at least reasonable.

I’ve fussed with these a little in Windows Picture Manager to bring out the color as best as I could. And I’ve cropped both pictures a little bit to cut out landscape details. (The wires visible in the left picture run east and west. The wires in the right picture are different wires running north and south.)

In real life the full spectrum was visible, from red on the outside down through violet on the inside.

I’ve mentioned rainbows a few times here.

My favorite use of the word rainbow is in my post “Expeditions.” I wrote:

It’s always disconcerting, venturing
after the creature from the Black Lagoon
and encountering Frankenstein’s monster
or going out looking for UFOs
and seeing a rainbow that collapses
down around you like colorful rubble
but rubble that grows hands and reaches up
colorful fingers that somehow you know
would grab you and strangle you if they could.

That’s kind of what happened to me Monday evening. I went out to think about a couple of story ideas involving evil clowns—a hot topic now among Forteana buffs—and the rainbow grabbed me with colorful fingers and made me take pictures of it.

At least it didn’t strangle me.

Now I’m going back to trying to work out one or two evil clown stories.

A long time ago I knew three women. When I first met them I thought of one of them as the most interesting. Over time, I got to know, slightly, the other two and the experience was less than wonderful. I never got to know the third at all, the woman I’d originally thought of as the most interesting of the three. It has always bugged me that I didn’t follow my instincts way back then and chat up the woman I thought would be the most interesting. I’m trying to work that into some kind of story involving evil clowns who somehow manipulate people into doing their bidding.

Clowns, of course, are fair game as metaphors for women:

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Women paint their faces. Clowns paint their faces. Clowns are fair game as metaphors for women.