As Alice grapples
with the
question of
"Who am I?"
Let’s step back
and ask
"Where am I?"
Alice’s journey began Wonderland
underground tumbled into
until she (and Carroll)
Wonderland
is not
where our
journey
ends.
Chapter three
finds Alice
with a mouse—
regaled
by a tale
(a long and
sad tail).
She also hears
of history
and politics
(the “driest thing I know”).
Alice joins
a Caucus-race
(but who has won?)
everybody
or nobody,
if you ask another Alice.
In 1907
Alice fell again
(by train)
into Blunderland,
a place familiar
yet
not
quite
right.
Blunderland is
filled with
old friends
whose
faces
now launch
a movement—
(a parable,
or
a parody)
home to
"copperations"
and taxes
in a city
the Mad Hatter
a socialist(!)
built.
How do we know
a Blunderland
from a Wonderland?
Perhaps only by the rules
it breaks
and makes
and remakes
(rules best made
and broken
by "grown-ups").
When Alice next
finds her way
to Blunderland,
though she may not
know herself
as Clara
and the rules
have changed,
she is advised:
"believe nothing you see,
and only half you read,
even in print."
Wonderland is first
born and born again
in print
as Alice tumbles to
grammarland
beeland
orchestralia
puzzleland
quantumland
otherland
sunderland
dreamland
euroland
jumboland
(or wonderlawn)
and now
dataland
she is, perhaps,
more changed than ever
(but what's in a name?
just ask Alice).
