Waking up...

Which is worse? To discover it's all been a dream...or to know, for certain, that everything is perfectly true?

















I remain, since the age of eight or so, thoroughly disgusted with this little tale's ending. "Just a dream"?! Oh, please...like I haven't heard that one before.







At the same age~~about eight~~I had a little toy porcupine that would clip onto an edge of fabric with her little arms (do you remember those?)~~she "lived" on the edge of my bedroom curtain...and at night, lying in bed with the moon sifting through those curtains and making a land of shadows on my floor and bed covers~~at night, I swear to you that my little porcupine girl became a rather large spider. Black, grey, spiky...with glimmering eyes and huge fangs. You could never have convinced me otherwise.

And after a few terrible nights, I began to trust that the spider would not bite me...in fact, she seemed to stand sentinel like a strange arachnid angel over my bed. Alice knows better. The ending of that book is to soothe worried grown-ups and placate stupid children (the sort that would rather watch a bit of nonsense on the television and have all of their ideas neatly presented and packaged for their convenience...).






But Alice knows, as do I, that there's a wonderland 'round every corner...



...hatters, chessie cats, queens, and guardian spiders...







Gentle reader,

it's








all








quite








true.



Megan Wommack ©2009





Alice is available at The Paper Poppet and on eBay.

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This piece has, once again, presented the usual "art & life dilemma"~~chickens & eggs, which first? And how very, very, much I feel like Alice! Eat the cake...surely cake is always good? But no...then you're a mile high, full of cake, and so very far away from the earth...and quite a lot of other things (and people!) that matter.

So... a remedy. Drink from the bottle (after all, the bottle says to drink.) And then you find that you're so impossibly tiny...so lost in the vast, huge, earth that you longed to return to....so "vanished". And all you've done is follow the instrutions: "eat me". You've read the label: "drink me". Then to discover yourself!~~ tiny and small~~with a small part of your heart remaining in the lofty clouds.

As much as I despise the "oh, it's alllll been a dream!" easy-out-ending...it is a relief to wake up. To stretch and embrace. To rest and work. To sleep...perchance, to NOT dream! To eat and listen and love... To discover wonderland~~with all of it's solutions, magic, and voodoo~~is not always the best place to be. I'd rather be ill and imperfect....no red queens or hatters, no chessie cats. I'll spare you all the details of my usual medical quandries...suffice it to say, the past few months have been completely horrid. And horrid is sooooo horrid when you expect horridity(?).

And all because I did follow the directions, read the labels, eat me, drink me....the resulting misery has done absolutely nothing to quash my massive authority problem. It's fanned the flames. And given me so many ideas--

My next treatment? I do believe I'm going to implement my own therapy program--Meg's Alternative Medicine, "MAM" for short (I'll have the site up shortly).

Twice daily, I shall sting myself with bees and apply a poultice of chicken poo thereafter. I will meditate upon my personal wellness while not listening to Yanni or Kitaro. I will avoid reading Slyvia Plath excepting the third tuesday of each even-numbered month, and on those particular tuesdays, I will only read the seventh line of each poem. Wearing my 3D glasses from Coraline.(There's no way I was going to re-cycle those after the money-grubbing ticket price. Let alone the gouging that goes on at the candy counters. You're worried about gas prices? I'm alarmed at the fee I'm charged for a HUGE half-empty box of junior mints!!!). Candy at the movies? "Civil Disobedience". I'm just sayin'....

Finally, I will read "The Godmother" every day:

"...I give her sadness,

And the gift of pain,

The new-moon madness,
And the love of rain..."

Dorothy Parker

NOTE: Should you be seeking an alternative cure for multiple sclerosis please be advised that MAM is in clinical trials here in the US, though there's a rumor that everyone's doing it in Canada. So in other words, don't take me too seriously. I take myself seriously enough for the both of us.

Blessings,

Meg

PS~~a riddle for you...not a hard one...do you "see it"?

A boat, beneath a sunny sky

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear -

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream -Lingering in the golden gleam -

Life, what is it but a dream?

Lewis Carroll wrote this about the "real" Alice...