Fantasia of the Unconscious | Page 6

."
That's the kind of man I really like, chirping his insouciance. And I
chirp back:
"Though it be not true to thee It's gay and gospel truth to me. . ."
The living live, and then die. They pass away, as we know, to dust and
to oxygen and nitrogen and so on. But what we don't know, and what
we might perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into
life itself--that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead souls
fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the
living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed thoughts
and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my forehead,
I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they have a good
time. And I hope not too many are bats.
I am sorry to say I believe in the souls of the dead. I am almost
ashamed to say, that I believe the souls of the dead in some way reënter
and pervade the souls of the living: so that life is always the life of
living creatures, and death is always our affair. This bit, I admit, is
bordering on mysticism. I'm sorry, because I don't like mysticism. It
has no trousers and no trousers seat: n'a pas de quoi. And I should feel
so uncomfortable if I put my hand behind me and felt an absolute

blank.
Meanwhile a long, thin, brown caterpillar keeps on pretending to be a
dead thin beech-twig, on a little bough at my feet. He had got his hind
feet and his fore feet on the twig, and his body looped up like an arch in
the air between, when a fly walked up the twig and began to mount the
arch of the imitator, not having the least idea that it was on a
gentleman's coat-tails. The caterpillar shook his stern, and the fly made
off as if it had seen a ghost. The dead twig and the live twig now
remain equally motionless, enjoying their different ways. And when,
with this very pencil, I push the head of the caterpillar off from the twig,
he remains on his tail, arched forward in air, and oscillating unhappily,
like some tiny pendulum ticking. Ticking, ticking in mid-air, arched
away from his planted tail. Till at last, after a long minute and a half, he
touches the twig again, and subsides into twigginess. The only thing is,
the dead beech-twig can't pretend to be a wagging caterpillar. Yet how
the two commune! However--we have our exits and our entrances, and
one man in his time plays many parts. More than he dreams of, poor
darling. And I am entirely at a loss for a moral!
Well, then, we are born. I suppose that's a safe statement. And we
become at once conscious, if we weren't so before. Nem con. And our
little baby body is a little functioning organism, a little developing
machine or instrument or organ, and our little baby mind begins to stir
with all our wonderful psychical beginnings. And so we are in bud.
But it won't do. It is too much of a Pisgah sight. We overlook too much.
Descendez, cher Moïse. Vous voyez trop loin. You see too far all at
once, dear Moses. Too much of a bird's-eye view across the Promised
Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow. And you
won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of duck's eggs. All
the dear little budding infant with its tender virginal mind and various
clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at all, my dear chap. No such
luck of a promised land.
Climb down, Pisgah, and go to Jericho. Allons, there is no road yet, but
we are all Aarons with rods of our own.

CHAPTER II
THE HOLY FAMILY
We are all very pleased with Mr. Einstein for knocking that eternal axis
out of the universe. The universe isn't a spinning wheel. It is a cloud of
bees flying and veering round. Thank goodness for that, for we were
getting drunk on the spinning wheel.
So that now the universe has escaped from the pin which was pushed
through it, like an impaled fly vainly buzzing: now that the multiple
universe flies its own complicated course quite free, and hasn't got any
hub, we can hope also to escape.
We won't be pinned down, either. We have no one law that governs us.
For me there is only one law: I am I. And that isn't a law, it's just a
remark. One is one, but one is not all alone. There are other stars
buzzing in the