Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

102 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
out her, and secondly, I became intrigued by who she was, without
me. In other words, I discovered the otherness of Ms. Little.
“I don’t mind telling you that this has turned out to be incalculably
more valuable than anything of myself I’d seen in her. It meant
that I could actually have a relationship with Ms. Little—not just
dote on her as a reflection of myself.”
D. and Rachel exchanged smiles.
“To make a long story short, my attachment to the stone increased
rather than diminished.”
Arnold stood up and clapped, slowly. “Well done, Prof,” he said.
“You replaced one fantasy with another. Pardon me for wondering
why the second is any more admirable than the first.”
D. groaned. For a minute I thought Adam was going to stand on
his head again—he’s pretty good at that, I’ve only seen him fall
once—but he took a more gracious tack.
“Sir,” said Adam, “your skepticism is quite in order. Indeed, you
have hit on the salient background to the erratic progression of my
life: I am weak and I long not to be; I am little and long to be big; I
am nobody and long to be known. I am besotted with Ms. Little and
she is not available.”
He conjured up a tear. He’s good at that too.
“Between Ms. Little and a stone, others may see a considerable
difference. But to my mind it does not amount to much. I relate to
this tablet as to an abandoned child. To me, you see, on top of everything
else, it represents the neglected Goddess, and thus compensates
the patriarchal conception of the feminine as a mere trifle,
something not worth bothering about.”
“Bravo!” cried Rachel.
“Thank you,” bowed Adam. “Let others call this a misguided
fantasy, but like the stone the builders rejected—flung into the
street like a worthless piece of dung—it has become the guiding
light of my life—my personal Grail.” 106
Adam crossed the floor and selected a book from D.’s shelf. He
leafed through it, found a passage, then read:
106 Brillig later confirmed that he was thinking of the Biblical “stone which the
builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.” (Psalms 118:22,
Acts. 43:11; mentioned by Jesus in Mat. 21:42)