Grasshoppers and drought (sun before the clouds)  represent  the mercilessness of Nature, which bankrupted my father, a farmer, and brought out of him the cornered beast.  The thorny, stony ground is a kind of T.S. Eliot Wasteland - spiritual and cultural barrenness:  the pile of excrement with flies on it represents my view of the world and the people that live on it.  The loosened red ribbon [linking the 2 halves of the skull] bound together the head of a T.S. Eliot Hollow Man, and was untied by psychotherapy (Dr Cormier), but since the outside world is still unappealing, the rat remains inert. 

Before the head was opened, burrs (bitter experiences) choked the throat and pricked the sensitive underside of the tongue, and when it was opened the sawdust and shavings (tasteless education) spilled out from on top the tongue:  mixed with the sawdust are symbols of (to me) equally tasteless Art, painting, literature and music.  The burrs also represent, in the eye socket, the successive evaluations of my character by any friend during the process of acquaintance, all repellent but hopeful till the last, when the heart is discovered to be a grub. 

On the tongue and in the throat, the Kurelek family (big burrs produce little burrs), representing my father as the hard domineering blue burr opening up the mushy yellow burr, my mother, to release a common lot of burrs, my brothers and sisters, and one unique orange one - myself.  The last burr, spearing culture, is I at the university.  The inverted one is I as a child, trapped painfully between two aspects of my father, the one I hated and the one I worshipped.