Fourteen
In my university days, I was quite invested in the mysteries and riddles of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s, aka Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland. There was something about it that was undeniably spatial - falling down a hole, shrinking and growing, going in and staying out. Moving across, up and down, and games, playing and riddling. Of course, lots of playing card imagery.
Something about it all inspired: you could start anywhere and end up anywhere, one supposed. And all within the one- or two-dimensional confines of the text. (Is text one- or two-dimensional?)
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
Iconic characters, striding across the board-game surface of an empire of nonsense, all of which seemed to make sense within the terms of the text. In its own terms, it is all logically consistent: I like this. I still aspire to this, in my writing. What is the moral of this story? Does it even have a ‘moral’, or is that a quaint and outdated notion?
“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
