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

90 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
I’d be writing this all down in my journal if I still kept one. It’s
where I always felt I came closest to the truth. I was ten years old
when I started my first diary—a record of events, nothing more, but
how I prized my secrets!—and sixty-two when I stopped. Over half
a century of intimacy with myself, whoever that was. Then one day
I realized I was hedging. Somebody’s listening, I’d think—or
should be. More vanity.
The unexamined life, said Jung, is not worth living. I do agree, I
just don’t write it down any more. Nothing lost, though, it’s all
stored in my head.
Come to think of it, is the unlived life worth examining? I don’t
know if Jung said anything about that.
“Professor Brillig?”
I opened an eye to see Ms. Rachel in a long velvet robe, holding
a tray.
“Tea and cinnamon rolls,” she announced. “I thought you might
like something to hold you till breakfast.”
I mumbled thanks.
She set the tray on the side table. Bending over, she brushed
aside my night cap and pecked my bald spot.
How sweet. She does get my blood going. If I was half my age
or she twice hers, I’d doo-wah-ditty. 93 Guess there’s some spark in
me yet. Not that I do much with it these days, but dear me I had a
pretty good run. There was no getting away from it; what went up
had to come down.
She was half out the door when I found a voice.
“I wouldn’t mind . . . if you stayed . . . ,” I said.
“Thought you’d never ask,” she smiled, pulling up a chair.
There was an aura about her. Self-possessed, confident, thoroughly
feminine. I clutched the covers to my chin. It was years
since I’d been in such a situation. I didn’t know quite what to say.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked.
“Peaceful as the damned,” I said.
“Bad dreams?”
93 This is so like Rachel’s thought (above, p. 77) that I can’t help seeing it as an
example of how the unconscious flits about in time and space.