Ladies &; Gents, I Give You Pedus Hilariosus

Pedus Hilariosus by J.B. Pravda

As the artisan ran her hypersensitive fingers over the newly tanned
animal hide not so much as a secondary porous aperture escaped the
lovingly tactile reworking for which she and her handiwork had gained
deserved renown.

No urban center with even a modicum of cultural entertainment had
suffered sad exemption from the charms of her craft, whether worked
upon the awestruck eye of the child or the scarred soul of some aging
Everyman having dwelt in some too-dark corner of obscure frustration,
all joined in the motley chorus of her bemusing genius.

Most to her credit, however, was a penchant for prominence despite
apparent surroundings of chaotic swirlings of activity, the exaggerated
showiness of life itself---indeed, her creations tended to accentuate
that raw disorder and distortion which inhered to humankind's
existential angst since modernity itself stormed the final redoubts of
natural innocence. Yet, despite such striking contrast and the
starkness it lent to the elaborate costuming meant to accompany the
ever-classifying complex masking demanded by the Ego and its desperate
need for distinction midst the madding crowd, this one ironic
complement to this now cumbersome 'uniform' of civilization had, alone
garnered highest honors to such an extent that it was to be featured
among the rarefied entries on permanent exhibit at the Museum of Modern
Art as kinetic sculpture nonpareil.

Having tragically passed from mortal existence prior to this seminal
honor, the representative of Madame Reboant was invited to present her
remarks to the assembled dignitaries: "Ladies and Gentlemen, how I wish
that my dear mother could have lived to enjoy this truly prestigious
honor which you have today bestowed upon her life's work which,
fittingly, has come to be represented by her monumental homage to
modern life, her masterwork, Le SabotAge. (applause)

In an age gone machine-mad, how fitting that this work should be
enshrined here, a temple of modernity and, in this case, its
fundamental absurdity. (hushed silence, bemusement) For, as she often
told us through her endless variations on this defining thematic, we
are, all of us, Clowns, crying, as it were, on the
inside&;#8230;&;#8230;.doubtless, the result of our assumed
egoistic masks&;#8230;masks which, to quote her favorite author,
Poe, in his Marginalia, urged "unmasking which, also, tears away the
face."

As she proudly motioned to stage left, a phalanx of Clowns, of all
sizes and demeanors, reminiscent of Sondheim's essential extras,
paraded in donning the now immortalized symbol of our bathetic
mortality, The Clown Shoe.