A Fable of the Forest's Fauna: Featuring the Dancing Millipede & Karma Incorporal as the Oliphant, but not Descartes...
“A centipede was happy – quite!Until a toad in funSaid, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”Which threw her mind in such a pitch,She laid bewildered in the ditchConsidering how to run.”
In Sherwood Forest, there lived a millipede who was the most beautiful dancer. At the gatherings of the forest's fauna, she was always the center of attraction—her myriad appendages all in step, a picture of exquisite coordination. So graceful was her tarantella that the toad began to envy her."
I could gobble her up," he mused, in tantalizing toadlike fantasy, "but everyone would notice she was missing." Then the clever amphibian hatched the meanest mischief that had thither to transpired under Sherwood's boughs...
At the festival of Midsummer, the grandest of the year, the pretty millipede danced, sure as day, in all her wonted grace. And sure as the night that followed, the toad stalked her every step. Finally, when she paused to enjoy some of the festivities herself, the toad saw his opportunity...
"Madam le millipede--" he addressed her, "I am your toad-alest admirer. Indeed, my admiration waxeth such that it becometh unbearable & I cannot help but inquire: when the music achieves its climax, what sequence of steps do you employ? Do you lift first leg number two-hundred and twenty-seven & then volteface back to the contralateral appendage number 666? Or is it with the number two-hundred twenty-one that you begin? I eagerly await your kind response...
"The poor millipede, confronted with such a question, found herself confounded. "I don't know," she confessed completely to the smiling amphibian. "Let me try—"
But alas, something in the circumstances left her incapacitated. Before, her thousand feet had frolicked, lifted not by her volition, but as if born by the music itself. But when she sought to recreate this magical choreography on demand, she faltered. "I-I can't an-answer," she stuttered, & crept away into the sylvan shadows in sheer misery, never to be seen again at any forest festival.
The toad watched her every hesitant step. Pleased with himself by the part he had played in another's demise, he made the most wicked grin. And he was to be found so grinning right up until the instant he was squished by the Oliphant, who had observed the entire exchange and had dutifully lumbered over to do his duty as Karma's minion and step on the evil creature. The festival continued afterward, but all were deeply saddened by the whole affair. They greatly missed the millipede & her graceful gamboling. They even came to miss the toad, but not so much.
What's the moral of this fable? Whatever it is, the good posture from a Rolfing® session won't hurt...
Epilogue
In the fable, the Oliphant stepped on the toad & all lived happily ever after. This was the end of this particular storyline. But when the millipede crept away into the gloom, she initiated her own divergent storyline, which we will forthwith pluck up and follow. It was recounted in the fable that the millipede wandered off into the shadows, never to be seen again in Sherwood's glades. This is because she left Sherwood. Greatly troubled by her confounded dancing, the millipede journeyed far & wide in search of something that would allow her to regain her former grace. After many months of hopeless wandering, she stumbled into The Way of the Elbow's office in downtown Anchorage. Here she discovered Rolfing® SI & after only three sessions, was once again the gracefullest jitterbug West of the Mississippi. That's because, through the Rolfing process, we help to differentiate not only the various layers of soft tissue so that each unit can function with autonomy but also develop differentiation in the various strata of the psyche. We discover harmony when every aspect functions according to its design. Then the thinking brain can think, the emotional brain can feel, and the dancing brain can...
DANCE
