alice-in-wonderland

I__ not broken. Not really,_ I sighed. __y name is Novaleigh. Novaleigh Darrow.

I looked around I realized I was standing on the edge of the muddy bank with tall trees in the distance. I could see the sun rising over the water just as the sky glistened a beautiful rose gold with ombre shades of purple and blue___ust like in my dream. But this wasn__ my dream or was it? I can openly admit I have been mentally lost for months, but now as I sit here with an irate otter yelling at me, the idea of lost took on a whole new meaning.

Trust and faith have left you._ __e will help guide you back to them._ __lessings to you on your journey.

The day I let all that fear and worry consume me was the day it all changed. I slipped off that bridge and fell into the void I__ always dreamt about. The thing was, that was also that day I started to live.

Without the journey and crucial moment of understanding, I would still be questioning everything before me. I know now that I must trust what comes next, for there is a plan greater than the one I can see at work.

Stop thinking about all that is wrong, and focus on what is right. It's there that you'll step out of the crazy, rise out of the rabbit hole, and start living again.

I fell into the water with a large splash and sunk like a stone. My feet guided the way as I drifted further into the murky depths. Down. Down. Down.

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky:My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality.I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood":[S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!"This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here".The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out.What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words.From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

It his mind, they reminded him of __weedle Dee_ and __weedle Dum_, with an extra emphasise placed on the __um_!

When one finds oneself in the kind of strange, unsettling circumstances as I presently find myself, it is only natural, after all, to have a few, unusual, vivid dreams.

Lewis exasperated her, always talking about life before the Plague and how it would be if everything was different. He was a dreamer. __t would be nice, but it__ not gonna happen, Lewis. You shouldn__ spout off talk like that, giving false hope to people. It__ be better if they focused on surviving. It__ more important than some silly dream._ __ut Alice, dreams are how people get by in a place like this,_ Lewis countered. His freckles faded with his smile. __e gotta find somethin_ to hold onto, else we__l all go mad.

Speak in French when you can__ think of the English for a thing--turn your toes out when you walk---And remember who you are!

Everyone knows: people who cross boarders do so for a reason.

If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.

Why it's simply impassible!Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible? Nothing's impossible!

Yes!" He says. "Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature.

What do you call yourself?" the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!"I wish I knew!" thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, "Nothing, just now.""Think again," it said: "that won't do."Alice thought, but nothing came of it. "Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?" she said timidly, "I think that might help a little.""I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on," the Fawn said. "I can't remember here."So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me, you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.

Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.