Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

32 Typology Revisited
“Lucerne, Zurich, it’s all Switzerland to me,” he shrugged.
It was quite amusing at first. I’d never been close to anyone quite
so . . . well, so different.
Time meant nothing to Arnold. He missed trains, he missed appointments.
He was always late for class, and when he finally found
the right room he didn’t have anything to write with. He didn’t
know a budget from a budgie; he either had bags of money or none
at all. He didn’t know east from west, he got lost whenever he left
the house. And sometimes in it.
“You need a seeing-eye dog,” I joked.
“Not as long as you’re around,” he grinned.
He left the stove on overnight. He never turned out lights. Pots
boiled over, meat turned black, while he sat on the porch watching
the sky and musing. The kitchen was forever filled with the smell
of burnt toast. He lost his keys, his wallet, his lecture notes, his
passport. He never had a clean shirt. In his old leather jacket, baggy
jeans and two different socks he looked like a bum.
His room was always a mess, like a hurricane had hit.
“It drives me crazy just to look at you,” I hummed, adjusting my
tie in the mirror.
I liked to be neatly turned out, it made me feel good. I knew precisely
where everything was. My desk was ordered, my room was
always tidy. I turned out the lights when I left the house and I had
an excellent sense of direction. I didn’t lose anything and I was always
on time. I could cook and I could sew. I knew exactly how
much money was in my pocket. Nothing escaped me, I remembered
all the details.
“You don’t live in the real world,” I observed, as Arnold set out
to fry an egg. A real hero’s journey. He couldn’t find the frying pan
and when he did he put it on the cold burner.
“Reality as you know it,” he said, quite hurt.
“Damn!” he cursed. He’d burnt himself again.
I need not say much here about the added aggravations due to
Arnold being an extravert and me an introvert. Enough to say there