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

24 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
criminal offense. I instructed him in how to make cinnamon toast
and boil an egg. 31 Arnold and I have had our disagreements, for
sure, but being with him puts me in touch with sides of myself that
are otherwise a closed book. Projection, I suppose some would call
it. The power to constellate, says Arnold.
Come to think of it, he had had a significant hand in my Chicken
Little paper.
“Well,” said Arnold, crashing on the sofa with that boyish grin
he has. “Looks like you’re on the line, old boy.”
“It would help if you said we,” I replied.
Rachel came back about six. She found us face to face in the living
room, going at it. Arnold was on his third tumbler of straight
Scotch choked with ice. I was sipping mint tea to keep my head
clear. There were papers everywhere, notes on this and that. A
good half of Jung’s Collected Works were on the floor, sharing
space with von Franz, books on mythology, cheese and cracker
crumbs and writings on Chicken Little.
I greeted Rachel and rolled my eyes.
All afternoon Arnold had been pushing possibilities. I had listened
intently, taking careful notes, as usual, while resisting, as
usual. Okay, so he’s intuitive and I’m not, but I’ve been bewitched
by Arnold more than once and I’m gun-shy. He’d been suggesting
things that would certainly disturb my life and what’s more might
ruin my reputation.
Now he threw up his hands.
“So it’s not entirely safe. But don’t you see? That’s exactly what
you need!”
“Thou sayest!” I shot back.
That’s one of Arnold’s favorite rejoinders, meaning, “That’s the
way you see it, with your complexes, your typology, your background,”
and so on. I sometimes use it just to make him mad.
“I have quite enough on my plate, thank you,” I said.
I followed Rachel into the kitchen, where she was pouring herself
a spritzer. I dished some food into Sunny’s bowl and told Ra-
31 These few lines do scant justice to the author’s long-standing association with
Arnold, which is a recurring theme in my Survival Papers and Dear Gladys: The
Survival Papers, Book 2.