We're All Mad Here

I know that I should be trying to sleep, but I don't feel like sleeping. I feel like writing--is this a compulsion?

Anyway, last night, I talked to A.H. on the phone, and he said that he was reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for a class he was teaching on Avant Garde something. So I've been thinking about Alice ever since.

I think that my favorite part of the story is when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat (don't you love the above graphic?), and he says, "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. . .You must be [ mad]. . .or you wouldn't have come here." But of course the thing about Alice is that she isn't mad. It's Wonderland that's "mad." Alice is a fairly normal, healthy seven year old. It's the world around her that's "mad." And I so often feel that way. I wonder if I'm mad or, which really seems more likely, if the world that surrounds me is simply mad. I suppose that the Cheshire Cat would make the argument that simply because I am here, in a world that is apparently mad, that doesn't seem to make sense, that simply because I am here, I must be mad too. But I won't believe it. I know that Alice isn't mad, even when her surroundings are. And I have to believe that I'm not mad either.

Alice escapes Wonderland only when she sees things, the pack of cards particularly, for what they really are--nothing more and nothing less. Is that the way out of the apparent madness of this world? To simply learn, through growth and experience, to see things for what they are, no more and no less?

I will not believe that we are all mad simply because we happen to be "here," either in Wonderland or in the "real" world.