Clowns, dolls, and The Pumpkin King
Or, why the Joker was right all along
The image meme below, which popped up on my #flakebook feed last night, reminded me of something:
Not only are we (seemingly) living in a time when mass “mental illness” is celebrated like a traditional Thanksgiving meal (I know, I know… we haven’t even hit Halloween yet — more on that in a second)…
We are also simply one #creepydoll ALERT away from realizing maybe, yeah just maybe, the Joker has been the most enlightened person in the room — the whole damn time!
As my friend Chris Campbell points out in his excellent expose, The Joker: EVERYONE is Dead Wrong, the metaphorical version of, say, a legit Robert “Haunted” Doll (pic below)… it’s the least of our worries…
IF we don’t come to accept the very fantasy we bestowed upon the poor little bastard in the first place.
Yes, we’re all living in our own production of pure magic, of magnificent fantasy in which everything is simultaneously real and illusory. To come to terms with this is called expanding self-awareness.
A bit of metaphysical claptrap on the surface, yes!
However, I bid you a challenge:
When you study the saints and sages of the world — whether Ram Dass, Carl Jung, Rumi, Yogananda, Krishna… or, yes, even the Joker — you start to come to one big fat ass conclusion:
[In the words of Campbell]
We’ve all got it wrong.
Nobody has a grasp of the full picture.
Nobody truly gets it all.
The picture below, however, and no matter how much folklore comes attached to it, still creeps me out. I caught this little guy staring right at me as I was in an off-the-beaten-path Antique store 4 years ago.
Annnnnd, I swear he wasn’t sitting on the chair when I went from the front of the store to the back. He was on the horse. Yet, on my second round upon exiting the store, well… ya know, shit happens.
This Friday me and my gal are heading to none other than the city in Oregon, St. Helens, that Jack Skellingtons’ Halloween Town was modeled off of (or, maybe instead, the city stole it’s vibe from Hollywood. Hell I don’t know).
Oh, by the way, about my secret life, one dark night two years ago, as The Pumkin King, well here you go….