Leavings

“It depended on the life of your eyes at that moment, how often the horse’s head and mane became those of a lion’s, ravaging and efficient, and how fast it would morph back and you knew it was a horse all along. The horse was the scarier. It was the divine dignity and stateliness gone cold with its own irrevocable power: this was bound in the horse’s over-long snout and muzzle. It was pent, pointing straight down from its erect neck. Its eyes were the impenetrable shadows of guttural caves up in a grey cliff. In the shower of lightning I did not want it to meet me.”

“You’d rather have the lion?”

“Well…yeah, I guess so. Though he was scary too…no, I’d definitely rather take the lion. But it was the horse all along.”

“You see Jeremy, the horse is that self you are running away from– no, you are indeed very scared of this self. You’d rather make compromises with the prowling lion. The lion is your ego. You want to have it easy, sitting back, watching your cubs play, which represents to you your desire for contentment and producing offspring; or killing a gazelle, which represents your sexual prowess and fulfilment; you want to be able to roar and have others respect you, which represents your desire to roar and have others respect you; eating the cubs, which is representative of your unwillingness to let your children pursue their Freudian inclinations. And you see how the lion wanted to keep coming through the horse; this of course could mean you are bisexual, but it is unclear as yet, which one will win over, that is, if the horse and lion can’t make peace and become bisexual, one will have to come out over the other...the horse is that which you have repressed. The horse is free. The lion is domesticated, but the horse is free. But this also becomes the matter of the primitive you, the self which wants to be unbarred and beat his chest and go into the wild and become one of the animals - a lion for instance. Did you by the way, have any bad encounters with horses as a child?”

“Look, Roger, uhm, Dr. Roger, it wasn’t like that kind of dream. It was like peaking your head for a moment into some other wake-up world. In fact, I knew the horse was something very much apart from myself.”

“Yes, yes, it is like that sometimes. The mind has amazing capabilities.”

“No, I mean there was some message in it…that the horse was apart from myself…I mean, that was why the horse was scary…because it was so much apart, yet I knew I would have to meet it.”

“Yes, your unconscious has I think perhaps decided upon that inevitability.”

“No, Doctor, you're not listening…"

At which point Dr. Roger was scribbling in his notebook: "Attention Deficit Disorder: Flag Red." Then he scratched his balls and put the hand he used to scratch his balls under his chin, two fingers to his cheekbone, the other two curled down.

"Now Jeremy, you must not isolate yourself by creating the illusion that…"

"Doc. Did you ever listen, I mean really listen…to a story?"

"Yes, yes", said Dr. Roger who seemed to be catching on to Jeremy, and lifted his head while closing his eyes, "Yes. The story has always been the tribal impulse beginning with our ancient ancestors who employed it as a psychological means of acting out one's insecurities and certainties and to give the community a sense of belonging, for the group mentality has always…"

But there was nothing on the leather couch but a long indentation in the process of slowly lifting like yeasted bread dough, and the door of the room closing to, as though by an invisible hand.