Alice, meet Alice, meet Alice. Which Alice is the true reflection of self? Of my self? Of hers? Of theirs? Sometimes I wonder if my story was meant to be shared as to be spared, so I have someone else’s timeline to carry me through pain, to blame for what consistently drives me insane. Life in Wonderland never goes according to Alice’s plans, and someone made sure of this. What was predictable to Alice was unpredictability – that consistent sense of lack, of helplessness drenched in curiosity. Alice was never allowed to know what came next, nor follow in her own footsteps, for they were laid out by a man with a ravenous desire to write his story over hers, word by word – Why is a raven like a writing desk? – Lewis Carroll loved his riddles, but never considered the need to answer them, in particular, the aforementioned one that has stumped Carrollians long after his death– maybe he didn’t care to realize an answer to this riddle because he was the raven, he was the one scouring for pieces of little girls to piece together his own broken mind, to give him life as he wrote a new life for them out on the page from his lofty little writing desk.
In his own twisted little way, Carroll was an obsessive journalist writing for tabloids, spinning a believably unbelievable (or rather an unbelievably believable) story for others to eat up ravenously, so he would not be all alone in his desire to destroy a little girl’s sense of self and story. Alice was real, Alice Liddell was real, I, Alice Rosenthal, am real – and who’s to say who’s right it is to steal our respective stories for an attractive byline? From a bygone era to a present day hysteria, Alice, meets Alice, meets Alice. If I were born when Alice Liddell was scorned, I would likely be like the Cheshire Cat, struck by madness, encased in sadness, enshrouded by pretty prison stripes, too queer to be here, too far gone to be drawn in my true form, in my full self. I would be a caricature of a woman, made by a man. You have to understand, Alice never had the right to her own story, to write her own story. Lewis Carroll, or rather, Charles Dodgson stole that from her, society stole that from her, history stole that from her. This is why I demand to be heard, to share what I dare to believe she would say if she could do so today.. but who’s story is it to tell? The scary truth is… I Don’t Know… if it were hers, she would be here to be heard… if it were his, he would not write about a little kid who he photographed naked… if it were mine, she would tell me it was fine to put pen to paper… so, how is a raven like a writing desk?... who knows… All I know is that with every new story shaped off of the mysterious misery seen as a masterful work of magic, Alice is pulled further and further away from her own right to self.
The allure of Wonderland and the power of storytelling is all too strong. The skewed perspective is fossilized with every new sharing of the wrong message and it will continue to live out way too long, with its falsified truth only evident to those who search for it. And so, I’m scared for Alice’s soul (God rest), hers, mine, ours. And so, I don’t want to go out saying nothing of what I have seen… I can’t sit by and watch as children watch Alice on TV, as they are vicariously groomed and gaslit by Disney. Dodgson and him have too much in common, a life of sin, a posthumous glory stemming from glorified gory stories. So please, next time when you marvel at Alice, recognize the marvelous lie that is everything you know about her and have been shown about her. Recognize how we are trained to refrain from our own power, to cower to the many men of the hour who steal our stories and pretty little heads in the process. Recognize the filth that lies beneath captivating colors and wild adventures, that which preys on the youth and trains us to give in before we’ve even begun.