If you've stepped in shit, spread out your toes

"If you've stepped in shit, spread out your toes." Whatever does that mean? It's one of the teachings in Thus spoke Pranch!, a book about a crazy and timeless philosopher who emerged to make conjectures on how the great minds of humanity had insights for their famous works, or in other words, what could have inspired such thinkers to leave their grand ideas as a legacy for all mankind.

Pranch appears as a leitmotif to justify the exact moment of disruption and epiphany of classic thinkers, philosophers and artists. By means of imaginary, singular and tenuous relationships with each of these figures, Pranch manages to awaken in them the insight for their main works. It's as if a brief acquaintance or moment with someone could be enough to totally change a person's life, to the point that the latter might even reinvent themselves. Thus, Pranch caused the breaking of pre-established patterns and processes, very similar to those that exist today.

The book invites its readers to a curious exploration of insight itself or to what a great thinker really wanted to express. It's an invitation to disruption, imagined at the precise moment when thinkers challenge pre-established concepts and cause behavioral changes in the way people think and act. And Pranch, of course, was there in that moment of insight.

All philosophy and poetry, our philosopher appears as a mysterious entity that populates the collective unconscious through his moral teachings. Don't look for too much sense in some of his aphorisms though, as many of them truly transcend common sense. And even if they mean nothing, they do have an interesting effect, especially after a few drinks. There is a Pranch in each one of us and we shall find him, after all: "if you've stepped in shit, spread out your toes."