The Fawn and Alice, part 2

She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a LITTLE timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: “for I certainly won’t go BACK,” she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.

“This must be the wood,” she said thoughtfully to herself, “where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of MY name when I go in? I shouldn’t like to lose it at all — because they’d have to give me another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be, trying to find the creature that had got my old name! That’s just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose dogs — ‘ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF “DASH:'” HAD ON A BRASS COLLAR’ — just fancy calling everything you met ‘Alice,’ till one of them answered! Only they wouldn’t answer at all, if they were wise.”

She was rambling on in this way when she 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 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!”

She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then she suddenly began again. “Then it really HAS happened, after all! And how, who am I? I WILL remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!” But being determined didn’t help much, and all she could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was,”L, I KNOW it begins with L!”

Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened. “Here then! Here then!” Alice said, as he held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at her again.

“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 move a little further on,” the Fawn said. “I can’t remember here.”

So they walked on together though 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 a full speed.

— Alice Through the Looking Glass

The story, which I can’t quite tell in its entirety yet, has something to do with the “swimming through the bees” post I wrote about Counting Crows, where I mis-identified the lyrics to that song, which means the world to me … and how I just recently learned the REAL lyrics to that one particular line. But I will still think of my hand “swimming through the bees” with pleasure and little pricks of pain. It is what it means to me, ultimately, that matters … and that is the beauty of music. And literature too, which is related, but which I can’t really talk about yet.

It seems like my blog is personal, but I really don’t reveal SHIT, which is important to keep in mind.

So, on March 10, I posted this. I know that people like Oliver (ha!!) are upset at the “insider” feel of the blog, but whatever, traffic is up, so I don’t worry too much. Maybe the mystery is intriguing. Who knows. So I was going through something at that point, on that day in particular, where I felt like I needed to be Alice, coaxing the fawn into the glade. That was how I remembered that episode in the book, having not read it in years. I remembered it as Alice walking through a magical wood where animals are tame, and the fawn approaches her, and it is sweet and open to her, and she puts her arm around its neck, and they walk together, through the wood, not afraid of each other, or suspicious … until they exit the wood, and the fawn realizes its species and what it is supposed to be afraid of … and bolts in terror.

That was how I remembered it.

I felt like my role was to be Alice, coaxing a wild animal to trust me. Be very quiet, very still, calm … no sudden moves … The point was to project: I’m okay, I’m safe … Tenniel’s image was my guiding spirit for that week. I always look to literature to show me how to be. You can always find something in literature if you’re lost. “Oh wait! I’m being like Dorothea Brooke right now! So you have to STOP THAT.” “Uhm … is he as weird as Mr. Rochester and how do I feel about that? And why is he wearing a dress?” “Harriet [the spy] writes that sometimes you have to lie. Well, allrighty then, here I go. Lying.” I was so in danger of spinning up into the atmosphere on March 10, that I needed an image, something to tell me how to be. Yeah, I have arrested development. I don’t know how to be. I need help. So that image, of Alice cradling a wild animal, spoke to me.

Needless to say, it was successful. Thanks, Lewis!

But now I see that my understanding may be upside down about all of this. Which wouldn’t surprise me, because I am, actually, as dense as fog.

Yesterday was a crazy day where again I felt myself spinning up into the atmosphere, leaving a trail of wild sparks behind me. Nothing to latch onto, or hold me down. It was just experience – immediate – coming at me, in the moment … something to be dealt with in the here and now, not some theoretical future. Again, I turned to literature. Not to mention my unbelievably patient friends and siblings who have been talking me off cliffs on sometimes a moment-to-moment basis.

I thought again of the fawn. Of Alice hugging the wild animal, and what a comforting image that was.

Well, a lot has happened since March 10. And yesterday, in the middle of my mania, I went back to Alice Through the Looking Glass, looking up the exact part of the book that I felt I needed. The magic wood part. I needed to read the whole thing.

Imagine my surprise (and delight … and terror) that I had mis-remembered the whole thing. It’s not that Alice finds herself in a magical wood where the animals are tame. No, because that would mean that Alice is still HERSELF, that would mean that she is the one with all the power, that it is solely up to HER to make the fawn trust her.

The actual episode in the book is subtler: It is not a wood where animals are not afraid of humans. It is wood where nothing has a name. Alice enters the wood and forgets the names for everything, including herself. She does not know who she is, what she is, she struggles to label things, but the labels will not come. Classifications and definitions fall away … even as Alice struggles to hold onto them … and in the middle of this, a shy fawn comes up to her. It wonders about her, she wonders about it. But neither of them have a word for their particular identities. They cannot say, “Hey, I’m a predator – ie: human being – therefore you should not trust me” because all of those “names” have melted away. The fawn doesn’t know to be afraid, and Alice doesn’t know to be a predator. They walk together, nameless, comforted, enjoying their time together, which is mostly wordless. They just walk together. Not too much chat about how weird it is that all names for things have vanished.

Once they exit the wood, the fawn realizes the position of danger it has put itself in, remembers the “names” for things – “fawn” “human girl” – and basically flips out, leaping away in terror and remembrance. This leaves Alice, who has the complacence of a natural predator, with sadness and regret. Why was the fawn afraid of her? She was just a little girl … and wasn’t it nice to walk, arm in arm (so to speak) with the fawn for a time?

I suppose I needed to mis-remember that particular episode the week of March 10th, and needed to see myself as the calm still center of power, drawing trust to me, through my own willpower and a certain kind of magic.

But now, in this new world I am in, that is not at all an adequate metaphor.

Alice forgets who she is too. Alice doesn’t remember herself. They BOTH are lost.

During the events of yesterday (before I went back to the book), I suddenly had a revelation (based on my incorrect memory of the book – but no less correct or profound): I am no longer Alice. Now I am the fawn. We all need to be drawn out. We all need to be told that the coast is clear. First it was me doing the telling. Now it is me trying to do the hearing.

But what a miracle, what a GIFT, to go back to the book yesterday and realize that no, no, I had it all wrong. It’s not a matter of power dynamics, of one person being Alice, the other person being the fawn … and then switching places … No. As potent as that image was for me (and, ultimately, helpful and beautiful) … it’s not as potent as the other, based on the real episode in the book: two creatures, with their long-dredge of past and engrained-in-stone species-classification, suddenly coming together in a magic quiet space, where they can walk together, quietly. And yeah, they connect, but the end of the wood is nigh, and what will happen then? Connecting requires a surrendering of all that you have known up until that point. Nobody even knows their own damn name in that environment.

Just fancy calling everything you met ‘Alice,’ till one of them answered!

Someday I will tell this story.