SUNDAY REVIEW / TEA WITH GRACE & THE JABBERWOCKY

Curiouser and curiouser not long ago pillartopost.org’s travel team fell down the rabbit hole only to resurface in a park inside Madrid, where we shared tea and soap bubbles with the Mad Hatter.

GUEST BLOG / By Guilliermo Sans-Tete--To escape today’s maelstrom of political havoc I immersed myself into film director Tim Burton’s 2010 “Alice in Wonderland” as if it were steaming bathtub (the kind that sits outside a Cuyamaca Mountain cabin).

That did the trick.

        

Down the rabbit hole.

Of course, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter stole the show along with the costume design and the early real life and animation pairings (ala Roger Rabbit).

I also have a new appreciation for the tortured Lewis Carroll, a mathematical genius totally out of place in his era, a soul who should be sharing tea at some New York hotel lobby with Burton, Depp, Lewis Carroll and Grace Slick.

What a tea party that would be.

While in my hot tub, I played 60s rock n’ roll, the kind recorded with a real organ on my small travel fm radio.

Soon Pandora delivered “White Rabbit” by Slick and her Jefferson Airplane and later found on YouTube.  Perfect.

White Rabbit

Jefferson Airplane

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call

And call Alice, when she was just small

When the men on the chessboard get up & tell you where to go

And you've just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice, I think she'll know

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead

And the white knight is talking backwards

And the red queen's off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head, feed your head

Songwriter: Grace Wing Slick

White Rabbit lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Next, I stared up at the afternoon clouds that try too hard to soar over the Laguna Mountains only to spill into the Borrego desert beyond and dissipate like the steam rising from my ancient tub.

There I held one sheet of paper aloft trying to memorize Lewis Carroll’s poem of two centuries ago:

The Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

ABOUT CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON.  Click here.