The Sun Is Rising

But Today Doesn't Feel Like Yesterday

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared on March 22, 2025 from the mythopoetic Grand Praxis Series. It feels relevant today somehow. So I am republishing today for a Sunday read.

The sun is rising. The people will be here soon. The clowns are putting on their clown makeup.

They don't think of themselves as clowns, of course. They call themselves analysts, experts, commentators. They review their talking points in mirrored rooms, rehearsing expressions of grave concern, of righteous indignation, of measured objectivity. Each face a careful construction, each voice calibrated for maximum effect. The red nose invisible, but always present.

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

The circus never announces itself as such. That's the first principle of the spectacle—it must present as reality. The ringmaster never admits to orchestrating performances; he simply directs your attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll look to your left...” And we do. We always do.

Today will bring new outrages, fresh impossibilities, another round of the familiar cycle: shock, anger, analysis, distraction, forgetting. The machinery is well-oiled. The audience well-trained. We have become connoisseurs of our own manipulation, critics of the very spectacle that consumes us.

Yet something is different this morning. There's a quality to the light—the way it catches on the dewdrops, the way it filters through the tent flaps—that suggests possibility. Not hope, exactly. That would be too strong. But perhaps a momentary clearing, a brief opening where we might see the circus for what it is before the show begins again.

The flood always rises. That's its nature. But what if, in this moment between darkness and performance, we could find the rhythm that holds? What if, instead of drowning or retreating to higher ground, we learned to build differently—structures that don't resist the water but transform it, that don't deny the chaos but channel it?

Our soul is meaning. Constructed, such as it is. And today, as the sun climbs higher and the clowns apply their final touches, we have another chance to construct it anew.

The people will be here soon. They'll take their seats, eyes wide with anticipation. They'll gasp at the right moments, laugh on cue, forget what they've seen almost as soon as they've seen it. But perhaps a few will notice something else—the space between performances, the silence between notes, the truth that lives not in the spectacle but in their own capacity to perceive it.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And despite everything—despite the noise and distraction, despite the carefully orchestrated absurdity—meaning can still be made.

Hold the center. Push back the flood. Keep walking the wire.

The sun has risen fully now. The tent glows from within. It's almost time.

But for this moment—this brief, precious moment before the day's performances begin—stand here with me. Feel the solid ground beneath your feet. Breathe the clear morning air. Remember what's real.

The clowns are ready. The ringmaster clears his throat.

And so it begins again.

There's a peculiar tension at the ticket booth this morning. Watch them carefully—the way they approach, hesitant yet determined. The way they reach for their wallets with a slight grimace, a momentary pause, as if engaging in some internal negotiation. The way they avoid meeting each other's eyes as they hand over their money, a transaction tinged with something like shame.

They know something isn't right. They've suspected it for some time now.

Yet still they come. Still they pay. Still they enter.

This is the deeper deception—not the circus itself, but the illusion of choice surrounding it. The fiction that they freely chose to attend, that they could just as easily have stayed home, that their presence is an endorsement rather than a resignation. The anger in their eyes contains this knowledge: that alternatives have been systematically narrowed, that the day's entertainment is less a choice than a default, that the ticket price is merely the most visible cost of admission.

Look at the father in the worn blue jacket, counting out bills with deliberate slowness, his son bouncing impatiently beside him. His expression carries the weight of knowing better but feeling powerless to offer an alternative. What would he say? “Sorry, son, we're boycotting the circus on philosophical grounds”? The personal cost of refusal is immediate and tangible; the collective benefit, theoretical and distant.

Or the young woman in the green scarf, scrolling through her phone as she waits in line, her face illuminated by its glow. She's reading critiques of the very spectacle she's about to witness, absorbing analyses of its manipulations even as she moves closer to the entrance. Is this irony? Hypocrisy? Or something more complex—the modern condition of participating in systems we simultaneously critique, our awareness and our complicity running on parallel tracks.

I find myself standing to the side, notebook in hand, observing this parade of conflicted participants. A man catches my eye—middle-aged, glasses, carrying a briefcase that seems too formal for the occasion. He notices my writing and approaches.

“Quite a scene, isn't it?” he says, gesturing toward the ticket booth.

I nod. “They don't look happy to be here.”

"And yet, here they are." He smiles slightly. “Here we all are.”

“Are you a regular?” I ask.

He considers this longer than the question seems to warrant. “I suppose I am. Though I come more to watch the audience than the performance these days.”

“And what do you see?”

“People learning, slowly, to see what they're participating in. It's painful, that awakening. But necessary.” He glances at his watch. “I should find my seat. The show waits for no one, especially those who've begun to see through it.”

As he turns to go, I notice a small notebook similar to mine protruding from his pocket. A fellow observer, perhaps. Or something more.

“Do you think anything will change?” I call after him.

He pauses, turns partially back. “It already is. Not the circus—the circus remains the circus. But the way people experience it, that's shifting. They're beginning to hold the contradiction rather than surrender to it.”

He smiles again, this time with a warmth that seems to acknowledge some shared understanding between us.

“Ah, yes. The circus,” he says, the words carrying the weight of both resignation and resistance. “You've been in the ring long enough to know how this works. The clamor, the spectacle, the high-wire act of meaning-making in a world that wants to pull everything apart.”

He gestures toward the tent entrance where people continue to file in, their faces a complex mixture of anticipation and doubt.

"But here, in this fleeting moment—between the ticket purchase and the performance, between complicity and awareness—this is where meaning gets made. This is where the note gets passed."

From his pocket, he withdraws a folded paper and offers it to me. I take it, our fingers briefly connecting in the exchange.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Just an observation. A moment of clarity between the acts.” His eyes meet mine with unexpected intensity. “We're all watching and being watched, all performing and being performed upon. The only choice is whether we do so consciously.”

As he disappears into the crowd, I unfold the note. The handwriting is clear but hurried, as if captured in a moment of insight that might otherwise slip away:

The sun rises. The people come. The clowns apply their makeup. And in this moment before the show begins, a truth becomes visible: we are not merely spectators but co-creators of the spectacle. The anger in their eyes contains the seed of recognition. The reluctance in their step betrays the awakening conscience. They know, even if they cannot yet articulate, that another way is possible.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And meaning, though threatened, can still be made.

Hold the center. Push back the flood. Keep walking the wire.

I look up from the note, scanning the crowd for the man, but he's gone—absorbed into the audience or perhaps watching from some hidden vantage point. The final stragglers are entering the tent now. Soon the entrance will close, the lights will dim, and the performance will begin again as it has countless times before.

I fold the note carefully and place it in my own pocket. The sun has reached its morning height, casting few shadows now, illuminating the scene with unforgiving clarity. The ticket booth closes. The barker falls silent. The moment of entry—of decision, of complicity, of potential awakening—has passed.

And this, too, you, dear reader, is my Note. From the Circus.

The show begins. As it always does. As it always will.

But now you've seen what happens at the ticket booth. Now you've glimpsed the faces of your fellow audience members. Now you know that you are not alone in your conflicted participation, in your reluctant witness, in your growing awareness.

The circus remains the circus. But how we experience it—that can change everything.

---

This is part of the Grand Praxis Series. The next movement is already in motion—Tap or Click to Continue the Journey.

To go deeper, explore The Philosophy of the Circus—my living document that weaves my ideas into a single, evolving framework. Or step beyond the simulation and into The Mythology of the Circus, where meaning and metaphor intertwine.

The tent is still standing. The wire still holds. The journey continues.