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

A Stitch in Time 89
as I can say where and when. I don’t regret the past, what I was.
But it’s a long time since I had much interest in what goes on out
there. So much fuss, so much noise; action and reaction. Plus ça
change, plus que la même chose.
The only thing that matters to me now is what happens inside.
Everything else is for the birds.
D.’s mice were out in force last night, scuffling in the walls.
Very comforting. I shall recommend that he keep them. It took me
back fifty years, to when I holed up in a tenement in London to
write what I was pleased to think of as my next book. I’d bang the
typewriter for hours, and when I ran out of steam I’d press my ear
to the floor and listen to the rats. I imagined them stowing away old
bulbs and seedlings for the winter. There’d be a flurry of feet, then
silence—when I fancied they were listening to me . . .
For now and then they stop awhile,
Nothing much of value.
It’s not as if the place abounds
In carrots, leeks and marrow.
Oh, that the rot would not set in!
I’d give a left or right arm
To stop it crumbling to the ground—
Quite a lot of value.
You forget so much if you don’t keep tabs. How to distinguish
one day from the next; by what yardstick to measure past sorrows
and gladness; how to select from the dross of routine a stream of
valid and significant recollections, memories not defaced in the
retelling, experiences that retain their original glow when recounted
to an unknown listener; how to recreate with truth and
honesty the atmosphere of fading emotions; how to sift and separate,
file and classify, the trivial, the important, the monstrous, the
repercussions of a chance encounter, the implications of an unanswered
invitation; how, in short, to relive a lifetime—that is the
fate of the lonely, the old, the abandoned and the voluntary exile.
Like a drunken sailor who has missed his boat and finds himself
marooned in a hostile port, that’s the man who has cast away, or
lost, his connections with the past.