ALICE

by
Nelson Borelli

delivered to
The Chicago Literary Club
March 12, 2001

When on that tranquil afternoon, a Wednesday in last September, the telephone rung I thought nothing of it. However this time it was not a routine call but, was Bill Barnhart asking me whether I would like to write a paper for the coming year of Exercises at the Chicago Literary Club. Bill's suave but firm voice, demolished what would have been my normal fright and negative response. Instead it left me with the strange sensation I was in some kind of limelight. A flash on the back of my head was telling me "Bill Barnhart has chosen you to write a paper". Hundreds of Tribune's columns with Bill's picture piercing through a low window as well as his book on Kerner flashed through my head in a split second. "Glory, you can be famous too", the flash concluded.

"Surely", I said as soon as I was certain I had regained enough composure and voice. "Good", said Bill; "what title?" "Alice" I said leaving no lapse between Bill's last sound and mine. "Alice?" said Bill with a tone of surprise or suspicion perhaps due to the speed and firmness of my response. "Alice" I repeated promptly. I do not think the dialogue went much farther than the customary departing pleasantries after Bill remarked that the title was "interesting".

It is true that the story of "Alice in Wonderland" has always fascinated me. It is also true that for many years I have secretly held the wish I could dig into my soul to find out and articulate the reason for such fascination. However at the time I let that "Alice" out, to Bill Barnhart, I had no idea what, if anything may be in storage in my soul. Nor do I have it at this moment except for the fascination for the subject which is not in my intellect but in the penumbras of my heart.

I hope the preceding lines may serve to alert this distinguished audience to make an informed choice: to listen or not to listen. This practicing galen whose literary skills are none better than the average practicing galen's, is thus propelled by his curiosity and fascination and thanks to Bill's good services, to go into a hole and the tunnel of mysteries, tinkering the best he can, with the strange words of the English language, let alone its grammar. You have the choice to either relax and take a nice postprandial siesta or you may embark with me into an unexplored, unplatted journey of vagrancies and surprises. Please govern yourselves.

We shall begin at the beginning: why did Alice go into the rabbit hole and why did she stay in it?

Well, yes, the rabbit was full of life. Alice was bored, lifeless. Alice wanted to have life just as the rabbit did. So she imitated the rabbit and followed it into its hole. What a grave mistake! The poor child was the casualty of an epistemological mistake often symbolized by the grammar of common language. She took the "life' of "rabbit's life" to be a generic substantive. As a substantive of essence rather than a qualifier dressed as a substantive. In reality "rabbit" is the substantive of essence whereas "life" acts as a quality of the rabbit.

Yes, we are in the rabbit hole already. Feel free to get out of it before it is too late

The rabbit's life was the rabbit itself, whatever the rabbit was or appeared to be. Alice's life was not the rabbit's life. Her life was inside herself. It was herself. It will not make any difference how well she imitated the rabbit and how deeply she went its hole, she would never find her life in the rabbit's life.

Now, if we were to bite into the right side of the mushroom we would see how Alice's mistake grows bigger and bigger to the size of the grown ups' mistakes. Monumental scientific mistakes. For example, scientists give alcohol to mice or rabbits for them to drink, get drunk and get habituated to the alcohol in order to learn why humans become alcoholics. Grown-up scientists try to find the answer to the nature of human love, altruism, passion, rage and behavior by studying and experimenting with all kind of creatures from insects to primates. They publish their results in seemingly serious journals with the same matter of fact demeanor Alice exhibited at the face of the many absurdities she witnessed. Then the scientists will try to apply to humans the same modifications or cure they utilized in the creatures they study and experiment with. Upon failing they conclude that humans are stubborn or that the experiment went badly. So they try it again and again...

Alice was bored and she was alone. She did not know whence the boredom came. Nor did she know how to get rid of it. She was afraid she would never be able to get rid of it. She was even embarrassed by her powerlessness over the boredom. Since no one else was with her she went to the rabbit as a means of solution and perhaps triumph, over the limitations she had or that she thought she had. Or was she too lazy to tap into her internal sources of life and happiness?

Let's further digress to pay a visit to the Queen. But, please, please, be quiet; do not upset the Queen. She gets very upset when her queenness is not properly recognized and respected. When her servants do not serve her in a queenly fashion. After all she has, by virtue of her own decree, a God-given license to do as she pleases just as her servants have a God given obligation to serve the queen unconditionally, this is to serve her at her wits and will. All of which brings us back to Alice, the child-queen. The real queen by the grace of God as is the case of all children. Grown up queens, or kings for that matter, are nothing but pretence royalty. God gives full, temporary, royalty licenses only to people at birth. Then, after a few months of life, God begins to taper off such licensee. By the age of 20 or so there is no more God given license left. Any statement to the contrary would be a shameful falsehood. Off with their heads. Absolve Alice.

By the grace of God Alice has the privilege to transubstantiate things as she wishes. To make believe that rabbit life and child life are the same thing. That for something to be really real it has to be on television. And more and more.

It is too bad Alice's parents weren't around when she decided to do such foolish thing, to imitate the rabbit and follow it. Had the parents been there they would have served her well. They would have provided her with queenly service. They would have distracted her away from the rabbit. They would have used whatever sweet and engaging means parents have under similar circumstances to see that their child queen, or king, as the case may be, does not get into trouble. After all parents know very well that when royalty gets into trouble they, the subjects, get into bigger trouble.

Done with genuine royalty and back to the world of the grown-ups' make- believe royalty whose boredom and sense of powerlessness over nature's mysteries leads them to do foolishness of oceanic proportions, far more foolish than Alice's foolish things. No mercy here. Off with their heads. Their God-given license to the world of make believe is over. They know it or they should know it. They should know that the picture of a pipe is not a pipe. That Coca-Cola is not refreshing but the pause is what refreshes. They should know that virtual reality and reality are not the same thing no matter how realistic the pictures are.

Perhaps the greatest foolishness conjured by the make-believe grown-ups' queens and kings, is that the human act of thinking can be either healthy or sick . Not metaphorically healthy, meaning good thinking or sick, meaning bad thinking, but literally sick just as a heart is sick after a coronary infarction. Worse, they follow the first invention by two other inventions guided, perhaps, by the advice that the bigger the lie the greater the credibility. The second invention is that thinking, this is minding, is not a verb but is a noun. So they transformed thinking, which happened to be the essence of humanness, into "mind", a prosaic noun with anatomical aspirations. After such despicable desecration of the human soul, the only thing left for them to do was to locate the "mind". "The mind is in the brain", the queens and kings said. Their word became deed, by their decree. The circle was thus completed: no more human minding but brain activity. No more human virtue or evil but neuronal activity as determined by the genome map. It is all brain activity, either healthy or sick brain activity. Once the invention was completed and attractively packaged, they sent it to the advertising and distribution department, which proceeded to, marked the new product as "Mental Health" and "Mental Illness" respectively. The same marketing department felt free to add another foolish claim with the hope the claim would benefit its client. It announced that the only possible salvation for humanity resides in the skillful hands of the queens and kings of the scientific community. That with proper brain surgery the scientific queens and kings will to place the humans on the road to Paradise.

"Well! What are you?" "I can see you are trying to invent something!" said the pigeon thinking that Alice's long, long neck was a serpent trying to eat her eggs. "I-I'm a little girl," said Alice. Poor Alice she was almost killed by the pigeon. Trouble after trouble. Yet neither then nor before or after would she give up her interest and pursuit in metamorphosis. She did not seem to be able or willing to learn by her experiences. The worse the troubles the more stubborn she became. The deeper she was in the rabbit hole the more she went for it.

Which brings us to the second and final question: why did Alice persist so much despite the fact she was getting into deeper and deeper troubles? Why didn't she call it quits? Why the pursuit of silly brain mythology and other make believe systems so prevalent in our society. Why the heroic fight to sustain the foolishness until too late to end? Is it boredom? Is it the bad loser mentality? Is it the inability to accept the fact that God is not dead after all?

I do not know.

That is my way out of the rabbit hole. I do not know. Nor do I know why the rain is wet. Nor will I fall into the temptation to try to find out why it is wet: lost in my failure I may invent the reason. And then I would invent another reason to cover for the first reason until I get caught in the web of my own delusions.

So ladies and gentlemen its is now safe to reawake and to enjoy the pleasures of a good drink and camaraderie.

Thank you.

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