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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