Welcome back to the exhibition.  We are sorry for the circus clowns being late, they have not been performing up to capabilities of late.  We have sent them to be lectured on giving the audience more bang for their buck.  It seems of late that their noses haven't been giving the people what they paid for. 

You have to understand that being a circus clown requires that you cannot harbor any feeling of inadequacy.  Being caught up in your own pity is only going to make this job rougher than it already is.  The paying hordes don't want to see your sorry timid hide quivering in your rubber boots; they came to laugh at your hapless bungling, and laugh is what they're going to do.  Not everyone appreciates us though, those stone-faced academics, but you know, you can't get them here. 

The big story in the county this week was a second-grader who got left on the bus and stayed there all school day long.  Let the speculation begin, whatever happens, the parents are bound to see what kind of cash is in it for them. 

Then there was the death of the man who owns the cornfield the separates our house from the highway.  Apparently he fell in his silo into a sea of corn and couldn't get his way out.  You ain't heard nobody cuss like his brothers when they found 'em, somebody told me. 

Frozen prayers upon my lips,
Inside the blood runs hot,
He was reviled, yet He reviled not.

When everyone in your own family doesn't expect you to make much of yourself, what expectations of anyone else could you possibly expect to meet?  What solace is there in knowing they're right?  What relief in understanding how your own simplicity and naivete and ignorance is what got you in this mess to begin with? 

Can you get out?  Can you reach? 

My old grandfather whose mind is given to wandering occasionally says that my cousin is getting married, but he's not sure he's supposed to say that.  Hey, did you read in the newspaper where your former classmate is getting married?  Everyone knows you don't have it put together to get to that point.  Who wants a braindead and twisted old drifter?  They've got it all right, right about me. 

All the wisdom of men is vanity.