Fantasia of the Unconscious | Page 7

center of their own isolation. And there is no straight
path between them. There is no straight path between you and me, dear
reader, so don't blame me if my words fly like dust into your eyes and
grit between your teeth, instead of like music into your ears. I am I, but
also you are you, and we are in sad need of a theory of human relativity.
We need it much more than the universe does. The stars know how to
prowl round one another without much damage done. But you and I,
dear reader, in the first conviction that you are me and that I am you,
owing to the oneness of mankind, why, we are always falling foul of
one another, and chewing each other's fur.
You are not me, dear reader, so make no pretentions to it. Don't get
alarmed if I say things. It isn't your sacred mouth which is opening and
shutting. As for the profanation of your sacred ears, just apply a little
theory of relativity, and realize that what I say is not what you hear, but
something uttered in the midst of my isolation, and arriving strangely
changed and travel-worn down the long curve of your own individual
circumambient atmosphere. I may say Bob, but heaven alone knows
what the goose hears. And you may be sure that a red rag is, to a bull,
something far more mysterious and complicated than a socialist's

necktie.
So I hope now I have put you in your place, dear reader. Sit you like
Watts' Hope on your own little blue globe, and I'll sit on mine, and we
won't bump into one another if we can help it. You can twang your old
hopeful lyre. It may be music to you, so I don't blame you. It is a
terrible wowing in my ears. But that may be something in my
individual atmosphere; some strange deflection as your music crosses
the space between us. Certainly I never hear the concert of World
Regeneration and Hope Revived Again without getting a sort of
lock-jaw, my teeth go so keen on edge from the twanging harmony.
Still, the world-regenerators may really be quite excellent performers
on their own jews'-harps. Blame the edginess of my teeth.
Now I am going to launch words into space so mind your cosmic eye.
As I said in my small but naturally immortal book, "Psychoanalysis and
the Unconscious," there's more in it than meets the eye. There's more in
you, dear reader, than meets the eye. What, don't you believe it? Do
you think you're as obvious as a poached egg on a piece of toast, like
the poor lunatic? Not a bit of it, dear reader. You've got a solar plexus,
and a lumbar ganglion not far from your liver, and I'm going to tell
everybody. Nothing brings a man home to himself like telling
everybody. And I will drive you home to yourself, do you hear? You've
been poaching in my private atmospheric grounds long enough,
identifying yourself with me and me with everybody. A nice row
there'd be in heaven if Aldebaran caught Sirius by the tail and said,
"Look here, you're not to look so green, you damm dog-star! It's an
offense against star-regulations."
Which reminds me that the Arabs say the shooting stars, meteorites, are
starry stones which the angels fling at the poaching demons whom they
catch sight of prowling too near the palisades of heaven. I must say I
like Arab angels. My heaven would coruscate like a catherine wheel,
with white-hot star-stones. Away, you dog, you prowling cur.--Got him
under the left ear-hole, Gabriel--! See him, see him, Michael? That
hopeful blue devil! Land him one! Biff on your bottom, you hoper.

But I wish the Arabs wouldn't entice me, or you, dear reader, provoke
me to this. I feel with you, dear reader, as I do with a deaf-man when he
pushes his vulcanite ear, his listening machine, towards my mouth. I
want to shout down the telephone ear-hole all kinds of improper things,
to see what effect they will have on the stupid dear face at the end of
the coil of wire. After all, words must be very different after they've
trickled round and round a long wire coil. Whatever becomes of them!
And I, who am a bit deaf myself, and may in the end have a
deaf-machine to poke at my friends, it ill becomes me to be so unkind,
yet that's how I feel. So there we are.
Help me to be serious, dear reader.
In that little book, "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious," I tried rather
wistfully to convince you, dear reader, that you had a solar plexus and a
lumbar ganglion and a few other things.