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

Philosophers’ Stone 77
zine these days without falling over your nose. He’s kind of tricky,
like one of those characters you read about in folklore; just when
you think he’s going to reveal the secret of life, he turns into a rabbit.
But any eighty year old who has the chutzpah to recite poetry
standing on his head will get my vote.
I got back a little later than I’d planned. I stretched a couple of
canvases and started a new etching, then Sunny forgot where she
lived and I spent half an hour looking for her. She finally slunk out
of a back alley covered in snow and the smell of fish. She knows
right away when she’s been naughty. D. greeted me at the door
with a jolly big smile and even Arnold gave me a hug. I suppose
they’d had a few, but that’s no big deal to me. D. said he’d spent a
couple of hours correcting page proofs and clearing up correspondence,
with Norman in a corner browsing through my portfolio. D.
has a few pieces of mine in his office, including a self-nude you
wouldn’t see in a family newspaper—“so you’re always with me,”
he says. I like that. Intimate at a distance.
The four of us were gathered around the fireplace in the living
room when Brillig made his entrance. He was freshly showered and
his goatee had been newly trimmed. So he likes to look his best,
well who doesn’t; I don’t mind a degree of vanity, it shows self-respect.
He was dressed in khaki shorts and a bush shirt, long woolen
socks and lace-up mountain boots. On his head was one of those
Tilley Endurables you see in ads of people on top of sand dunes or
beside Land Rovers in the Alps.
D. gave me a weak smile, pointing to his knees. I couldn’t tell if
he was pretending or if they were really shaking at the possibility
of an expedition.
I blew him a kiss and would have jumped him then and there if
we’d been alone.
“Yes, certainly,” said Brillig briskly, responding to Arnold’s invitation.
“A glass of claret frees the soul. The frenzied followers of
Dionysus didn’t know the half of it,” he laughed. “Tearing people
to pieces isn’t nearly so satisfying as loving them.”
The old guy seemed in pretty good form; I guess a little rest was
all he needed.