I came across this poem a few months ago, and I'm not a huge poetry lover but I loved this. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious academic, there is something about this poem that just struck me. I don't know whether it was the unstructured line by line poetry, or the fact that it flows even smoother in French, or the fact that the poet, Henry Michaux is almost a lyricist. I suppose I just like the way he uses words, they tend to sum up some of what I'm feeling each time I read it.

The poem itself is supposed to be about how the grotesque mask of the clown is the man himself, or rather the man is not hiding behind anything but rather showing us what his reality is.

But i say take from it what you will, leave it behind, have a giggle, weep. Just read it.

Clown- Henri Michaux (translated)

One day. One day soon perhaps. One day I will tear up the anchor that holds my ship far from the seas. With the kind of courage needed to be nothing and nothing but nothing. I will cast off what seemed insolubly close to me.

I will slice through it, overturn it, I will break it and I will send it tumbling. Disgorging all at once my wretched delicacy and, my abject contrivances and fiddling logical sequences. Drained of the abscess of being someone, I will drink nutritious space anew.

With blows of absurdity, with falls from grace (what is a fall from grace?), by explosion, by void, by a total dissipation derision on purgation, I will expel from myself the form believed to be so strongly attached, composed, co-ordinated, appropriate to those around me and to those like me, so worthy, so worthy.

My fellow men reduced to humility befitting disaster, to a perfect leveling after being intensely shit-scared. Brought down beyond all bounds to my real rank, to the lowly rank which some idea-ambition I can't name had led me to the desert.

Annihilated in terms of arrogance , in terms of esteem. Lost in a distant place (or not even that) with no name, no identity.

Clown, Smashing down in mockery, In grotesqueness, in howls of laughter the sense of my own significance that I had given myself against all light.I will plunge, Penniless into the underlying spirit- infinity open to all, open myself to a new and incredible dew on the strength of being zero, and a clean slate... and laughable...

Clogs.

So at the moment it's hip to wear clogs. It's kind of the new shoe trend and I can't say I'm hating it... I'll admit, they do remind me of a clog magnet my grandma keeps on her refrigerator from Holland but I think I quite like them.

Then again I am still unsure, I see a lot that I hate, some are wayyy too high and have enough studs on them to look like a trashy football boot, but sometimes, just sometimes, you see some gems.

Someone once told me I'd suit them too, (how one can suit a massive Dutch shoe more than anyone else is beyond me) So i think I've just put them down in my mind as something to investigate, whether or not I suit them will be a different matter entirely!

So here are some clogs, the GOOD ones that I like anyway. Enjoy mes amis.