Deception
Wonderland
iii.
The Cat thinks that it's funny, how the white roses are painted over. Pure love exchanged for primal passion. The Cat watches as the soldiers paint and paint and the paint comes off-why won't it stay on? They ask themselves in sheer desperation, and the Cat only smiles and watches. The Cat shall never tell them they're going about it the wrong way.
If you're going to turn a rose red, it will have to be from the inside out.
But he can't say that, no. Because every time the Cat opens his mouth he thinks he'd rather tell a lie. Or the truth. They are the same thing in the end. No-the Cat-the Cat would rather say nothing at all. He decides he shall just grin.
The Cat dances in and out of shadows, hides in the forest and sometimes, sometimes he deigns to go to the duchess and drink some milk. Because the Cat is never tame. Oh no. The Cat is wild magic and silver sunlight. He is the golden mercury that drives the Hatter mad. Oh he likes the Hatter well enough. To him the Hatter is the immovable object and the Cat the irresistible force. The dance they dance is more complex and the Cat is thrilled to see someone match him step for step on the checkered board, until, of course, he gets bored. But he always comes back; there is no one else who can match the Cat's madness. Genius or insanity? They have erased all the boundaries.
The Cat always answers, if someone asks the questions. The Cat answers, but-oh no, no the Cat never lies. He hides his truths in plain sight and waits for his listener to wander away puzzled. You know better, he shall say someday, than to ask me how I feel. The Cat will never answer a question properly, everyone in wonderland knows that.
The Cat knows how to evade, how to adjust. He can change form quickly and fast, and he knows that no one can believe he wasn't there a moment ago. He wasn't. He was. The Cat can dance and throw shadows and laugh like he is innocent, laugh like he is guilty. The Cat knows better than to take sides, to judge. He does not equalize, he merely equivocates. The Cat sees, with cat's eyes, he sees and perceives, but he will never judge, because that is not a cat's job. That Cat watches from the sidelines and offers amusing, unhelpful advice-unless you're paying enough attention. Then he gives no advice at all. It is better to see and learn and gather and hold in, then to let it out. This the Cat knows.
The Cat disappears. He reappears. The Cat is gone, the Cat is back. And every time he leaves, no one remembers anything but his grin. Because that is all they see. The Cat knows now that how to call attention to his smirk. I'm amused, it says, I'm mad. But never his eyes, no. His eyes that prove that even if he knows-he knows, the answer, to tell the truth would make his voice break and his mask shatter and he will never do that, no. It is easier to fade away, and leave nothing behind but a smile.
Mercury
Wonderland
ii.
The Hatter used to expect the unexpected. Now he expects nothing, and he is never surprised. All he can do is take another sip.
The Hatter smiles and plans un-birthday teas on the day he is born, just to see what will happen. Nothing, of course. Everything, of course.
Sometimes, when he has tea and scones on his own, he dances and balances the cup on his brim and tries to count until he spills a drop. The Hatter has nothing else to do anyway. But the Hatter has so much to do, why does he waste his time? The Hatter hurries-quickly, quietly, with poise that scare the dormice and the hares, the Hatter commands without commanding. The Hatter declares with a whisper that sounds through the clearing and calls together anyone who knows how to listen. Tea is served.
The Hatter has been poisoned. Mercury poisoning, because mercury slowly-quickly corrupts. Mercury, the fastest planet orbiting the sun, that can be seen sometimes performing its revolutions on the brims of his hats or the rims of his teacups.
Mercury, the quicksilver element that escape from everyone's hands but his own. The Hatter may be mad, but he knows that he can never try to tame Mercury. Mercury has tamed him.
Mad as he is, the Hatter is gifted. No hatter can make a hat as well as he. But the Hatter never sells them. Because he is Mad? Maybe. The Hatter makes the best hats because he understands the quicksilver more than any man. He understands, and has forsaken his beloved water to swim in mercury instead.
Mercury, Hermes, Mercury. God of Eloquence, of Magic. Mercury, the psychopomp that leads the souls away after poisoning them. Mercury, the orator, the mathematician. Mercury, god of knowledge, of debate, of persuasion, of information. God of dreams, of speed, of flight, of cunning, of commerce, of contests and luck, of merchants and of thieves.
For Mercury is a fickle friend and can give you profits and steal them away. Mercury, the tricksters; jesters and magicians, for they are both the same thing.
Mercury, the Hatter thinks as he pours Earl Grey for a violet non-stranger, Mercury is a cat.
The Hatter knows better than to worship Mercury. He would much rather have a fair-weather friend.
The Hatter knows Mercury. He knows that he is not Mercury. No. Never that. For the Hatter always stays the same, and it is when he is the most static and unchanging that he is the most unpredictable.
"Let's get up," he says to his guests, "Let's switch seats."
He can never say, "How do you do?" or "Fine weather we're having." The Hatter tries to speak on more than riddles and poems when he's giving out his tea. But he can't. The Hatter hides behind cured felt, his unanswerable riddles and silly poems and waits for someone who can make him feel sane in this never ending world of hearts and spades and dreams and death.
"Why is raven like a writing desk?" Are you as mad as I am?
--
I suspect I am, my good sir.
through the looking glass
Wonderland
i.
She falls and falls and wait, why isn't she waking up now? No. She keeps falling. She can't see anything, just a blur of bookshelves and cabinets and stars, the universe as it slips past her fingers and she falls. That it isn't dark is her first realization. That she can think coherently is her second.
She falls and she falls, and after realizing that she resigned herself to following the rabbit as soon as she closed her eyes, she gives up and waits. She doesn't know what she is waiting for, to wake up, or to land.
--
She can see the grin in the darkness, before she anything else. She thinks that she knows.
"A-" she begins but a gloved hand silences her.
"You know who I am." The Cat smiles at her, smiles and the dark tail moves back and forth in lazy anticipation. "You know where we are. But." And the Cat stops, and the smile is gone and all Alice can see in the not-quite darkness are two eyes that already know every single thing she is going to do and has done. I know. Just as quickly, the smile is back, the eyes are dancing and Alice blinks, because she cannot have made that up. "But, do you know why we are where we are?"
Alice shakes her head, and there again is that pause, that calculation, before the smile that is not a smile, "Because," and the voice is lower, "we are all mad here."
And then the Cat is gone, and Alice tries to remember-something, anything, but the smile is the only thing left.
--
The smoke makes Alice cough, but she bats it all away to see the dark figure.
The caterpillar reclines peacefully, only raising an eyebrow when Alice steps closer.
"And who are you?" Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? And yet, from those lips, there are no inflections and Alice does not know what the meaning is anymore.
"I don't know who I am." She expects sarcasm, perhaps an acerbic remark. But there is neither sympathy nor contempt in the obsidian eyes.
"Then you have a lot to search for." She can only nod.
--
Alice sits in the chair across from the most impassive being ever. N-no. The Mad Hatter. She thinks she understands.
The Hatter sips the tea peacefully in the silence and places the cup on the saucer without a clink. Alice stares.
"Why are you the mad hatter?"
The laughter could have been genuine or caustic. "You can't tell? I have played with far too much mercury."
And then Alice is sent back. Mercury, mercury, the Cat. The Cat drove the Hatter mad. Or maybe sane? The Cat's smile is still in her mind, flitting out of focus when she thinks she has captured the image, slipping through like quicksilver drops racing away to find something interesting.
The Hatter smiles, "Would you like some tea?" We are all mad here. We are all mad here. We are all mad here.
--
She chases and chases the white rabbit, but can never reach him.
She tries and tries and runs down the roads and gets hopelessly lost in a sea of teatime cakes and bottles that say "drink me." Drink me, drink me, I'm not poison. As if she weren't poisoning herself enough already. Drink me, drink me. Alright, she shall. And she does and then she sees the world through the eyes of a mouse, the world that is so bright and big and she doesn't know why she thought the world was ever ordinary. How could she think that? If the world was ordinary, then Alice would be ordinary. And ordinary girls don't chase white rabbits.
--
Alice is lost. Alice stares.
"Which way should I go?" she asks the disappearing-reappearing figure that she has given up trying to focus on.
"That all depends on where you want to go."
"I just want to go somewhere." Alice cries, frustrated with the riddles. She doesn't understand anymore. She doesn't know what to think.
"We all go somewhere. You can get somewhere." The Cat talks like he's a patient teacher. And Alice stopped scowling-she doesn't understand. She knows better than to try to understand. Instead, she listens like she's a patient pupil.
"How do I do that?"
"Just place one foot in front of the other."
"Then, where will I go?"
The Cat smiles. He's not telling.
--
The next time she meets the Hatter she is on trial.
The Hatter is still impassive. He does not take off his hat when he bows to the queen, and somehow keeps his head intact. It's quite alright, it's quite alright. I'm just mad you see. And Alice tries. She tries her hardest.
"You can't be mad. If you're like everyone else, then no one is mad." But the Hatter just looks and gives an almost smile and Alice doesn't know whether or not he is amused or just shocked by the dreadful accusation that he might just be sane.
--
The White Rabbit is nothing like how Alice expected him to be.
He looks at her and the others as if he's the only sane one surrounded by madmen. Alice is beginning to think she agrees. The rabbit looks at her with clear grey eyes and listens to her argument. And matches every point with a counterpoint.
"I don't belong here."
"And yet, here you are."
"If I only knew which way to go."
No, The White Rabbit says. Listen to Logic, the White Rabbit says, Listen to Reason. Think rationally, young lady. And Alice says that she is, why doesn't he listen and the White Rabbit blinks and looks at his pocket watch.
"You are running out of time," he mutters. But his watch has stopped at quarter to three. Alice looks at the White Rabbit's grey eyes and realizes that she is looking at the clarity of madness. Silly little girl, we are all mad here.
--
The Queen of Hearts is cold and cruel and heartless.
She looks over Alice and tosses her head and continues to recline in her throne.
"You can't entertain me." She doesn't smile, Alice feels like she has never smiled-no, that isn't right-the Queen must have smiled sometime, but now it's gone. The dark ringlets that frame her face catch the light as she leans forward. "Tell me why I shouldn't behead you."
"Please?" Alice asks. And the Queen blinks and let's go of her staff and her "Off with her head"s and invites her to a game.
"Can you play chess?"
"No." Alice is never timid, she is never quiet, but something in the Queen makes her sad and lonely. Very well. No chess, then.
Alice tries to play her games, but she has never played croquet with flamingos, and mustn't it hurt, to be used as a mallet on hard wooden balls across blades of grass? They are blades of grass after all. And they seem to be dripping with blood.
"Oh no, that's not blood. That's paint." Alice blinks and looks up at the roses dripping red paint and says nothing. Alice knows better than to say anything at all, because-
As they were leaving the palace, Alice glanced up at the beautiful florid queen and saw her gazing silently at another throne. There is no King of Hearts.
--
When Alice wakes up she sees the eyes of her sister. Calm cerulean meets a wild sapphire.
"Alice! Alice! You were sleeping! Was it a dream? Or a nightmare?"
"It was both." Alice whispers, giddy on insanity and wisdom, "Both."
Her sister blinks, Alice's eyes are still wild and glowing with something she can't describe. "Alice, you're acting quite...
mad."
And then Alice laughs, suddenly she is older-younger than she ever was-has been-will be-"It's okay sister," she whisper-screams, "we're all mad."
The next day her sister passes it off as reading too much fairytales. Alice waits until she leaves to look at the mirror with brilliant eyes.
---
Jag vet att detta inte är helt korrekt, om man går efter filmen, och att det finns en King of Hearts, men han är en pushover, så jag ignorerade honom.
Ego
But I digress. Jag är inte jag. Melancholy och nostalgia. Sommar och vinter. Det får räcka med det.
