I was teaching last year (2019) in Leamington Spa - a special in-house course for a dance theatre company. As part of teaching Clown State, I mention finding an image for your heart.
In a break, one of the participants came up to me and said what is the image for your clown heart? Ha! good call. I often work from the heart centre, put my energy and focus there, but had not stopped to actually visualise a personalised image for my heart in clown mode.
So I thanked the woman for her question and just dropped the question into my intuitive thinking - and then I remembered an image from a book I read in childhood.
I did some research recently and found information about the author: Ivy Wallace. As a firm believer that accidents are 'manna from heaven', I was delighted to read how the illustrated story had come into being by accident: 'While working on a police switchboard, she doodled a picture of a fairy sitting on a toadstool with a little rabbit in front and by chance it appeared that the wings belonged to the rabbit. She then decided that fairies were "two a penny" so she erased the fairy and kept the little winged rabbit ... and wrote his story.” As well as working as a Police Officer, Ivy Wallace also founded her own book company!
Pookie - (I know, even as a child I found the name somewhat cutesy - but check this - Ivy Wallace's father was Scots and here is a Scots definition of the word pooky) - we meet Pookie living with his family. He has these two tiny useless wings and his siblings tease him because of this. He sleeps in a bed with all his brothers and sisters and that looks cosy except it's not because Pookie is an inconvenience because of his wings. Pookie's mother actually bandages them up at night. Omg - something as wondrous as wings must be tidied and bundled away. Like foot-binding! Something unique about you makes you both ridiculous and resented even in your own family - Pookie is an outsider and an underdog.
As you see from the book cover illustration, he takes a classic bundle-on-a-stick and goes out to 'seek his fortune'. He is on a quest even though he does not know what he is looking for; and no one he meets, no matter how magical, can offer him any advice or guidance. Ah - the clown (and spiritual) practice of not-knowing.
At the end, having journeyed far, a snowstorm overtakes Pookie and he is swept by the wind onto the doorstep of a kind and lonely little girl. When she puts him by the fire to warm up, two little broken, frozen fragments, bright as rubies, fall out of his fur. The girl mends Pookie's heart and pops it back into his fur. Oh and his wings grow beautiful and big.
The under-valued Pookie's intrepidness in the face of uncertainty and his mended-broken-ruby-bright heart make interesting ingredients for Clown.