Pick a card, any card.
“That must be uncomfortable,” says Alice, indicating with her eyes the elaborate construction of chains and restraints that binds the swollen body.
“Oh, that! I hardly notice it any more. One learns to adapt to circumstance! Now if you will excuse me, I have a deadline to meet. These cattle aren’t going to slaughter themselves.” With a theatrical flourish of his cleaver, the butcher shuffles off toward the killing floor, humming a discordant tune to himself.
“Why is it that none of these mirrors reflect the same thing?” Alice wonders to herself as she wanders down the long, thin corridor.
“Every image looks somewhat like me but none of them are exactly right!”
“The problem isn’t with the mirrors,” says a sleepy voice from her pocket. “The problem isn’t even with your eyes.” The hedgehog pokes his snout above the pocket and twitches it in the air, sniffing the curious scent of bouncing light. “The problem is the internal Alice. She doesn’t actually exist, you know.”
“What are you doing here?” asks Alice, as the wolf, looking decidedly sheepish, adjusts his tie and glances awkwardly at his Rolex.
“Well, the deep, dark forest isn’t what it once was, you know,” he says, still avoiding eye contact. “Not enough grannies and too many woodsmen, if you get my drift. Thought I’d move into town, look for something more stable.”
He glances up, a flash of desperation in his eyes. “Don’t tell Red Riding Hood you saw me. I’m trying to put all that behind me and move on.”
Alice takes a long pull on the spliff. “Yeah, whatever.”
The room seems to Alice to be growing smaller, whereas the music is growing louder. So loud, in fact, that it begins to take on physical form. Great slabs of bass move like urgent glaciers over the carpet, causing the skin to shiver. Shards of high treble scatter in the air like shattered ice, thin and sharp. Pulsing waves slither up the shores of her mind and crash, sparkling foam catching the interior light of her thoughts, delicate melodies folding in on one another to roll away into the silence. Alice finally floats out on a particularly large swell, pulled into the blue by undercurrents rising from the deep.
Using a move taught to her by an old Chinese gentleman many years before, Alice kills the rabbit and quickly stuffs the furry corpse into the nearest drain. “It was self defence,” thinks Alice, “That obsession with timekeeping was threatening my spiritual integrity.”
Alice sits between the two rotund boys, listening to both intently. In her left ear one is shouting, “QUESTION EVERYTHING!” over and over again. In her right ear the other is screaming, “ACCEPT EVERYTHING!” repeatedly. In the centre of her mind, Alice feels a line of utter silence open up, no wider than the edge of a razor blade, stretching out of time and into emptiness.
When Alice closes her eyes she sees herself surrounded by snakes, writhing under, over and around her. This would be perturbing but for the fact that Alice is a snake too, and the feeling of being so closely intermeshed with others of her kind is at once both stimulating and comforting.
Without warning, the scene switches and Alice becomes a maggot, squirming amongst countless others. The feeling remains the same, although the sensory perceptions are different. Just as suddenly she becomes a starling, whirling in an enormous murmuration as the sun sets, maintaining an integrity within the greater mass with a sensitivity that is faster than thought could ever be. She feels the unbridled generative power of life in all its manifestations, endlessly blossoming in a rain of form, rising and falling, writhing and calling, as each being plays out its part in the great pattern.
Alice’s conceptual apparatus chooses this moment to shut off, seeing its own limitation. Unlimited, she expands into the silent, timeless presence beyond separation.
Alice lies on the riverbank, staring into the water. The light flickering off the surface etches hidden worlds onto her eyes. Countless civilisations grow and crumble away before her, endless living forms rise to dance their dance before falling back into the flow, their songs of of sorrow and joy creating layer upon layer of crystalline deposits on the riverbed. Alice has the curious feeling that her entire life is just a momentary play of light on water in somebody else’s eye, of no more or less consequence than a wave on the surface of a river, returning slowly home to the vast and silent ocean depths.
“I dreamt I was just a pattern, changing only under the influence of the greater pattern. Something else was experiencing the pattern, aware of it and at the same time completely outside of it. It was the ground in which the pattern took place, that which manifests, the source beyond time and space.”
Alice held the caterpillar with a steely gaze. “You really need to cut down on smoking that shit….”
Alice stumbles upon a clearing in the forest which contains a derelict house. On closer examination she discovers that the house is constructed entirely from candy of many different kinds. The roof sags down in twists of liquorice strands, walls of fudge crumble around gaping holes, the toffee doors and chocolate window frames are filled with deep bite marks.
She ventures in through the remains of the front door and discovers two incredibly fat children on the floor. Hansel and Gretel stare up at her, eyes wild with the flush of their perpetual sugar rush. Their bodies swell across the floor as they drag their great bulks from wafer chairs to peppermint tables, gobbling desperately as they go, sugary treat after sugary treat sliding into their distended stomachs.
Alice glances over to the oven and sees the charred remains of a human skeleton spilling from the open oven door, twisted into a shape that communicates the agonies of its formation.
“One would not wish that death on anybody,” Alice thinks to herself, “Even a child-eating witch!”
Behind her, the sound of ceaseless munching continues. Alice looks back at the masticating duo and, realising there is nothing she can do to help the situation, she picks her way through the candy, slobber and excrement and heads back into the deep, dark forest.
“Why are you here?” Alice asks the enormous creature.
“I have the biggest tusks in the world.” says the elephant. Alice doesn’t doubt him, for they are extremely long tusks.
“One would think that this would be a glorious thing,” murmurs the pensive pachyderm, “But I have become a prisoner of my own uniqueness, chained to the gaze of others, a thing of purely symbolic value. Few even notice the pain within me, for to do that they would need an empathy they do not yet possess. They know to stay clear of me though.”
As he speaks, his trunk wraps around a large branch that has fallen close by. Taking careful aim, he tosses it at the nearest group of camera clad tourists, who scatter from its path, screeching like frightened apes.
“Small pleasures, but mine own,” says the elephant.
Alice strolls absentmindedly through the winter forest for some hours, letting the rain fall on and around her as it sees fit. The low, grey cloud hangs like a ceiling above the treetops. Sounds lose their spacial definition, as if the air has somehow grown thicker around Alice without her noticing it.
Finally the rain stops, just as Alice notices a gentle slope leading upward to a shelter constructed from leaves and branches, outside of which a man sits dressed entirely in foliage. “Even his skin has a greenish tinge!” Alice thinks to herself as she approaches. She begins to introduce herself, but the forest dweller silences her by raising one long finger to his lips. He indicates a dry patch on the slope next to him and Alice sits next to him, wondering vaguely for a moment how the patch is dry after so much rain. He indicates toward the vista of leafless trees which stretch out into the distance, countless raindrops clinging to every twig and branch.
As she looks, a beam of sunlight breaks through the cloud cover, low and wide, and every raindrop lights up like a star in the clear night sky. For a moment all that is Alice is temporarily suspended as she becomes one with the dazzling spectacle, a pure canvas of consciousness upon which the scene is etched in light.
As quickly as it appears, the hole in the clouds seals and the sparkling vista is no more, lost to the endless stream of the past. Alice looks at the hermit, wide eyed with wonder. He raises his eyebrows and smiles a wide smile, before fading like a mist burned off by the sun.
“What are you grinning at?’ asks Alice, gazing up at the bewhiskered beast.
“You, if you really must know.” says the cat, staring at her with a disconcerting gaze. “I am a watcher, occasionally a licker of fur too, I admit, but mainly a watcher. I watch stories unfold – some dull and empty, some filled with suffering and struggle, yet others filled with magic and wonder. Yours makes me smile.” He raises a furry paw to his mouth and licks the pads with a meticulous care. A single claw pops out and lazily scratches his nose. Behind his head, the tip of his tail moves sinuously in the air like a snake dancing to the movement of a charmer’s flute.
“Well I don’t think it’s particularly funny!” exclaims Alice. “Everything here is topsy turvy. I can’t seem to make sense of it at all!”
“There’s your problem,” giggles the rotund feline. “What makes you think it should make sense?”
“I can do any dance at all,” says the frog, shimmying in front of Alice like a pro, dapper in his evening suit and patent slip ons. “Just give me a fly and away I go, tap tap tappity tap tap.” He illustrates this by back flipping into the splits, leaping onto his feet and tap dancing à la Fred Astaire.
“I can also sing like an angel!” he says, bellowing out a raucous yet tuneful version of Greensleeves.
“I don’t care if you can recite the entire Arabian Nights,” says Alice, “I’m still not kissing you.”
YOU HAVE REACHED THE RABBiT HOLE
Alice takes a large bite from the apple. The apple screeches. Alice looks about her, expecting some troublesome ventriloquist to leap out from behind a tree. The apple remains passive in her hand, waiting to see what Alice will do next. Alice looks down at the apple. “Was that you?” asks Alice, feeling a little stupid talking to a fruit.
“Of course not, apples can’t talk,” says the apple, voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Thank goodness for that!” Alice exclaims, and takes another big bite, doing her best to persuade herself that the screaming is all in her head.
Alice lies down on the bed, intending to sleep. However, immediately she becomes horizontal, a deep throbbing pulse passes through her body and a noise suddenly rises to enormous volume, which sounds to Alice like a giant machine boring through the wall by her feet.
“Don’t fear,” says a whisper in her ear, “Just relax and allow things to happen.”
Alice feels her awareness being pulled up through her skull, as though something has reached in through the top of her head and grabbed her essence. She exits the top of her head then springs back with great force. The tugging continues and three times Alice exits through the top of her head, each time getting a little further out. On the third tug she breaks free of the body completely and finds herself in another place entirely….
“Who might you be?” asks Alice, as the wizened crone tugs at her wrist, wheezing and hacking.
“I am The Divine Feminine manifest!” cackles the gnarled creature through blackened rotting teeth, dipping into a mocking curtsey. The cackling collapses into a terrible coughing, culminating in a large gobbet of phlegm leaving the flaccid quivering lips at great speed and landing wetly in the old crone’s palm. She examines this momentarily, then wipes it on her sleeve.
Alice looks on with barely disguised disgust. “You’re not quite what one would expect.” she says, trying unsuccessfully to extricate her arm from the old woman’s grip.
The crone pulls Alice closer, enveloping her in a cloud of foetid breath. “Let me tell you something, my little one. Expectation is the womb which gives birth to disappointment, and disappointment begets violence, either toward oneself or toward the other, or in both directions. Beware expectation!”
The ancient hag releases Alice and lifts her withered arms to the sky. Her body cracks down the centre like a husk, and a delicately patterned butterfly of alien hues flutters off into the darkening sky.
Alice finds herself at the bottom of a densely wooded mountain, staring at the faint trace of a forest path. An old man appears by her side, long flowing hair and beard as white as the distant snow at the summit.
He hands her a golden sword and a silver dagger and signals toward the path with his hands, as if offering her a rare gift. Alice glances back toward the flickering lights of the distant city then turns and begins the ascent.
“Do you like games?” asks the Queen, gathering up a clump of chocolate covered delicacies in her chubby hand and delivering them deftly into her eager mouth.
“I like some games…” said Alice, warily.
“All games are the same at the root. We could play the spiritual game if you like, or the knowledge game, or the power game…so many games to play! All of them have been played over and over again in endless permutations. But we shouldn’t let that stop us, should we?” proclaimed the Queen, “For what is life without a game?”
“Now that,” said Alice, “is an interesting question.”
No matter which path Alice takes and how many new turns she makes, she eventually finds herself back in the centre of the maze again. This time is different though, for when she bursts out of another turning to trip into the familiar stillness at the core, there is an old king cobra coiled in the middle of the clearing.
“You took your time.’ says the cobra, tasting Alice’s scent on the air with his flickering tongue. “Come and sit with me.”
Alice swallows her fear and sits cross legged in front of the snake. He slithers behind her and Alice feels him slide up along her spine, spreading his hood at the back of her skull.
“The maze is generated by your movement, Alice,” he lisps into her ear. “The maze is you, and only when you cease to believe in escape, understand entirely the futility of it, will all possible pathways become known to you. Then you can really move…..”
Alice gazes down the row of neat and tidy little gardens, all fenced off. In each one is a family, or a couple, or a group of friends, or someone on their own, all soaking up the energy of the bright sun. Underneath the fences, the vast field remains undivided.
“How funny!” thinks Alice. But it is the kind of funny that is quite sad, really.
“More tea, Alice?” The voice drifts in as though from a badly tuned radio. Alice is staring at her hands, which seem to be vacillating between pale, elegant, almost translucent tendrils and coarse, meaty stumps which remind her of pig trotters. “It appears that I undulate between an angel and an ungulate!” giggles Alice, as she reaches for another cup of the delicate fungal brew.
