Down the Rabbit Hole

I have gone down the rabbit hole. I am trying to follow where Alice is going because I have every cause to believe that she is in danger and I must do what I can to protect her.

I can see her there. She is talking to some very strange looking animals and birds. It seems that they have all got soaking wet in a huge puddle and they are talking about how to get dry again. One of them looks just looks like pictures I have of seen of extinct Dodo birds.

The Dodo is saying that they should all run around in circles until they get dry again. He calls this a caucus race.

A caucus race? Isn’t that what they do in Iowa? I watch as the runners all start when they want, stop when they want, and have no idea afterwards whether they have won or lost. That sounds just like Iowa!

The Dodo is saying that everyone has won and all must have prizes. Alice is being made to hand over her bag of sweets and give one to each of the runners – with nothing left for her.

I don’t like this Dodo. In every race I have seen there is one winner and all the rest are losers. The only loser here is Alice. Could the Dodo be the danger that Alice must avoid? Why isn’t this Dodo extinct like all the rest?

Alice is moving on.

A mist has descended over everything and I cannot see where Alice has gone.

Ah – there she is! She is sitting at a table with three other people. At least, one of them is a person, a guy wearing a red peaked cap. The others are a huge hare and a small dormouse, who seems to be asleep. They are drinking tea, and the man with the cap is drinking cup after cup, it seems that he cannot get enough of the stuff.

I can hear Alice talking to the man, telling him about someone else she has met. This was in another place that she reached after falling through a mirror into a backwards world. Apparently she came across two brothers called Tweedle, and one of them, who was also called Dee, was able to explain to her the meaning of a very strange poem she found in a book just after she fell through the mirror.

Alice is clearly worried about the dormouse, which the man in the peaked cap keeps poking with his finger when he is not drinking tea. The man says that the dormouse rarely wakes up, which is why he calls him “Sleepy Do”.

I am finding it very hard to make sense of all this, but one or two things seem to be falling into place. In this world there are people and creatures who can be trusted and others who cannot and who must therefore be kept away from Alice.

For one thing, the Dodo is clearly not to be trusted. He has weird ideas and has already harmed Alice by stealing her sweets. There must be a link between the names – Dodo and Sleepy Do – so I must make sure that Alice gets away from here before Sleepy Do wakes up.

I am sure that Dee was trustworthy, as is the man with the peaked cap who is always drinking tea. Is that a clue? D and T – should I put two and two together and urge Alice to find and trust someone with those initials?

Alice has now left the table, which is a relief. The man has suggested that she finds a turtle down by the shore, because that is where she will unlock the key to the mystery. I must follow where she goes.

Here she is, but I cannot see a turtle. However, something is breaking the surface of the water and rising up. Horror of horrors! It’s an enormous shark! What should I do? Is this the ultimate danger from which I must rescue Alice?

But I was wrong. The shark is talking to Alice and I can hear what it is saying.

“Good afternoon!”, it says. “The turtle has gone for a swim, and I am here in its place.”

The thought crosses my mind that maybe the shark has eaten the turtle, but it sounds like a very friendly shark, so perhaps I am misjudging him.

“I have a final clue for you”, the shark says. “Listen very carefully to this sentence and tell me what is missing from it: ‘The brown fox jumps over Buick, the lazy dog’.

What? That is a clue? I can see that Alice looks puzzled, and I am no nearer to an answer than she is. Something is missing from ‘The brown fox jumps over Buick, the lazy dog’? And that is the answer to everything?

The mist is returning again and getting steadily thicker. I can no longer see Alice, the shark, or anything else. Am I waking up after a dream, or was it a nightmare? Have I got myself into something that makes no sense and never will? Will this strangeness drag me under into an even deeper rabbit hole from which there is no escape?

Is this where madness lies?