Useless Advice

Whilst frolicking through the wayward path towards enlightenment I tripped and fell, rolling down a steep hillside and ending up stuck in a particularly unpleasant pricker bush. I lay there for several hours, wondering how I could have ended up in this horrible predicament, and why I had foolishly thought I could travel unfettered in my quest towards ultimate knowledge. Greater men than I had become stuck in the rather elegantly symbolic pricker bush, as was evidenced by the fact that they lay even now beside me, flailing their helpless legs like frightened piglets, their overcoats flipped upside down to reveal their heart-patterned knickers.

"How did you come to be here?" I asked one of the great men, a philosopher of the highest degree whose studious desk I had passed on several occasions in the city library before I embarked on my fruitless journey.

"I came to be here..." he paused thoughtfully before giving me an eggshell full of useless advice that I would have spit back in his face were I not so starved for knowledge and uncomfortably squashed between a fat soothe-sayer and a restless young prodigy, who just so happened not to be wearing any knickers at all. "I came to be here...by going."