“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
The tale of Alice in Wonderland has always been one of my favorites, it toys with reason in what is described as the literary nonsense genre yet there was a time that fantasy was so very real to me and I still trust that the curious characters that assembled for the Mad Hatters Tea Parties were some of the most beguiling characters ever written and though I have wondered often how high on life Lewis Carroll was when he wrote the classic fable, I have always held it in the highest esteem and considered it to be fictitious genius.
The truth is, like Alice, I was a wildly imaginative young girl and I miss those days when I sought guidance from the man in the moon and I imagined Mother Nature as an untamed spirit with bruises on her feet. I believed that the trees were my best friends and each day I abandoned all logic and ran through the woods, hair blowing all over my face; barely able to contain my excitement over my next adventure. There was a large stone I passed everyday, I called it my “Blarney stone” and I would kiss my hand, touch the rock and make a wish.
As I grew older I quietly maintained some of my foolhardy notions, I admit to occasionally talking to the man in the moon, wishing on stars and I still have mad respect and affection for Mother Nature. When putting together a list of some of my favorite movies and coming up with classics like Pans Labyrinth, Spirited Away , Alice in Wonderland, Bridge to Terabithia and Miss Perigrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, I realized that though I miss that wild hearted, untamed girl with the gigantic imagination I believe that she still very much exists inside of me.
I still go back, I still remember….
The past was gone but a trace, the future was irrelevant, nothing was done in haste. With a furiously beating heart and dirt on my cheeks I discovered that the world was alive and that somehow, I was important to all of creation…
Looking Glass Girl
I counted sheep and wished on stars. Heaven was a place that wasn’t so far.
He was a dancer and I sang off key, he was an artist and I was the sea.
The storms made me tremble, yet he was so steady, coaxing me forward when I didn’t feel ready.
We read by the light from a sweet cherry moon, escaping to magical places, smiling at mysterious faces.
Our creation was small yet spanned worlds and realities. Joy was as common as a mid day breeze.
Skies were marshmallow and rivers were gold, it was a place where we would never grow old.
Boredom….never. Youth lasted forever.
…and love was as boundless as our imagination. Life was a wild vacation.
Animals were pets roaming free. You were never limited to have just three.
Rainbows WERE the treasure, their candy store colors brought us great pleasure.
You were the King and I was your Queen. We sailed on ships to islands that had never been seen.
I made you a crown from branches and leaves. Together we collected happiness like a small band of thieves.
We lived by the sun and slept by the moon. I’ll never forget that endless sunny June.
You were the photograph, I was the flash, we were snapping for glory, stacking up cash.
You trained the army, I waved the flag, I wore pretty gowns made from a discolored rag.
You said I was beautiful and handsome you shined. We were a poem that never quite rhymed.
We skipped through the dessert and sailed seven seas. You brought the sparkly juice, I brought the cheese.
Summer, it ended, as quick as it came. We traded our wonder for a new type of game.
We traded our crowns and carried our books. We stayed up to late and studied in nooks.
It didn’t feel real or inviting or free. I missed my soul, I longed for the sea…
Dancing in the rain! 