off with her head

I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was in college. One of the children's lit classes I took--funny how I always knew that was where my heart would lie. It's a complicated tale, made all the more so by the history and psychological profile of author, Lewis Carroll. But, ignoring all of the rumor and implications of his love of young girls and its place in his writing of the story, as an adult, I find reading "children's" stories ever so enlightening (and why I am never as impressed as everyone else at "child" authors; for there is something ever so much more difficult for an adult who looks to reach out and speak to a young mind, to curl up and in point of fact, place himself back into seeing the world as a child, and who recognizes the intellect and cadence of their mind, that than any author of adult fiction can ever know.

Alice, however. There is a fascinating parallel with her that I feel right now. Something about nonsense and misconception; deception and "things that aren't what they appear to be." That seems to be all around me these days.

Having no head (no pun intended) for math or numbers (and some would argue, logic), I find it all the more incredible that this little book of "nonsensical things" would have been written by a mathematician. I suppose one would have to allow that the whole connection between "logic" and "mathematics." But to add to that fiction and story, and "make believe" is a dichotomy not even I can bridge.

So much has been written and dissected about Alice, but what I like most to focus on is the need that she has to express and understand. Chapter 1, as I remember writing about, oh, so many years ago--her "eat me" drink me" was a demand for conversation, the need for conversation and her disappearance down the rabbit hole because of a sense of being ignored, of having been denied wisdom of information and understanding. Lacking a dialogue with others. This is a very basic aspect of human psychology, and also a basic technique of good old-fashioned children's morality tales. Think Aesop or Grimm. When one applies the psychology of conversation and understanding with the art of fairy tale and a child's sense of disconnection with the adult world--the sense of being out of control of one's own circumstance--you get to the basic human feeling of "falling" or, more simply, failure. This relates to a child's lack of understanding of the conscious (and why children's stories are so often based in the world of fantasy and make-believe). And why children, old people, and drunks are often thrown into the same tank together. There is that old saying, of course, about "drunks and fools [read children, "innocence"]" and the fact that they don't allow reality to interfere with their world. It is the figurative "falling down the hole" in order to avoid hurt and damage, physical and emotional--a literal escape, as well.

What is fascinating about Alice, though, is the sense that the first few chapters make--she knows who she is until she comes in contact with the outsiders, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter. She is certain of herself and her emotions--she questions ceaselessly (even when confronted with the gibberish of the peanut gallery)--it is her great concern to find the significance of life (and here is where chess and math and logic play their role in answering her concerns), and more specifically, her current place in the world and the what she should do with with her life. In fact, her great question, posed in Chapter 6 to the Cheshire Cat is, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" To which he replies, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." But, Alice, being a child, doesn't know where she wants to go, she only knows that she doesn't want to "go among mad people" (who among us does?)

This is my joy of her. Her great understanding (or Carroll's, as the case may be), of the concept of Wisdom. The understanding of the "sphere of the visible" and what it means to incorporate consciousness and reason--the chessboard, being the obvious physical manifestation of reason, in this case--more to the point, however, is that Alice understands emotion and environment and all of its many mutable incarnations. Her behavior, particularly in Chapter 2 as she tries to find her way through her new environment, takes her through many emotions that both a child and an adult go through as they look to find their way in the world.

________________
Illustrations by John Tenniel, from the 1866 publication of Alice.

that makes life worth living for the ordinary

I don't know if I'll be able to respect myself in the morning after this post, but, so be it. It's spring and the trees are delicate green and I am finally able to walk outside without automatically cringing at the chilled air. I did not wear black today, and everyone made comment, but I did not feel self-conscious. I believe I may have entered an entirely other realm. Maybe because it was "Take your Child to Work Day" and I had friends' babies placed in my arms every five minutes (not something I usually find any comfort in ...) and spent my lunch hour being fed Cheerios by (how time flies) one-year-old X on the grass in Central Park. Maybe it was because I was able to just do my job (which is a joyful one) and not deal with the murk of office politics (we should have babies everyday).

Whatever it was about today, everything about it just made me happy. And to celebrate children, happiness, and budding trees, I thought I'd post a note today about a wonderful children's book Art & Poetry Series that Welcome Books published in the mid-nineties. And much like that mix of springtime and babies, the editors at Welcome took beautiful poems and songs and equally lovely artwork and matched them up just as naturally. I own, no surprise, Dance Me to the End of Love, which uses that most romantic, nay, giddy as Leonard Cohen gets, songs, and combines it with the ever bold, bright, and joyous (and sensual) images of Henri Matisse in that comfortingly familiar, for me anyway, slim page count and oversized trim. A tactile experience that automatically makes me feel five-years-old again.

The Art & Poetry Series has been out of print for a number of years, however, each of the books is set for re-release, and this time I will not miss snatching up a copy of the perhaps doubly romantic May I Feel Said He, the edition that takes that playful e e cummings poem and one of my favorite artists, Marc Chagall, with his misty-floaty imagery--and creates perhaps the only combination that is sexier, more lyrical, and giddier than the above.

Oh, I'm going to have a helluva hangover because of this tomorrow ...

so it is the basic law of life

A friend recently sent this bit of text to me, and I had never encountered it before. As with all things mysterious about the brain and its functions, I was truly tickled by it:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a
wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.

Ah, chaos. If only the mind could find a set of keys so easily in a disheveled room as it can read the above paragraph. I am struck by redundancy. I notice, when reading--for any reason, be it pleasure, a subway advertisement, or to edit--it is one of the first things I pick at. But, generally it appears to me on a less intricate level. Never so much to the letter, as it were. Having never been good at math, I find the fact that my brain is so good at structure--planning, dates, organization--odd. It seems to come from some unknown piece of myself, yet it is one of the first things people notice about me.

In any event, the trick to the above (though there really isn't one), is that a good reader is able to successfully comprehend the text as written because only the internal letters have been randomized. Essentially, there is a logic to the disorder (there is enough information for one who has some essential knowledge) the mind is able to reconstruct the information so that it makes sense; it can extract, deconstruct, and rebuild before you even realize it has done so.

And amid another twist of connections, this evening's conversation, that at some point turned to the events of September 11 (I may dare touch on the novels that have appeared recently about this date, but I am not certain I can do so without some personal regret for it), brought to mind the children's book Unbuilding by David Macaulay. Macaulay is a fascinating artist and author who is known for is intricate explorations of the mechanics of everyday things. Macaulay's work, though written for children, is extraordinarily complex. His line art is minute and exacting in its detail. He takes items, usually architectural in nature (though also the human form), and he explains their essential being. For him, the forms he examines must be deconstructed in order to be understood--order to chaos for comprehension. Unbuilding takes the Empire State Building and undoes it. Bolts and all; in specific sequence.

There is a spread in the book (and also on the cover) that is a view looking downtown from what appears to be about 40th Street. And the Twin Towers, in their linear certainty still stand. Later, in a similar spread, they are obscured by clouds, and the Empire State Building is half dissolved (and there is one last image of this at night). I remember having the random thought after the first tower fell that, it couldn't stay that way. They both had to fall. To have one and not the other, would have been some kind of cruel rearrangement.

To those of us
who don't always
appreciate things
until they're gone

[the dedication for Unbuilding, published 1980]