My hand twirled around my pen as I stared at the curvy lines I had written. I carefully added another line of verse. I smiled at my work and read it over again. This was going well. Maybe. I read it again, hmm. I thoughtfully considered how to go on.  The conclusion came that I had no idea what I was doing. ‘Don’t stop now,’ I told myself, ‘you can do this!’ My pen hovered over the paper. Nope, this creative writing thing isn’t working out for me. Leaning back in my chair I went through my story notebook. Pages and pages of planning for a story I’ll never write.

* * *
As she peered down the rabbit hole she couldn’t stop herself from going down it.With honest curiosity she had followed the white rabbit to this path. As she fell, she went down past logic and a world reason that she would desperately reach for later. The clear picture of Identity gets covered up in a fog of madness. Making choices, with no direct path or rhyme. Hidden schemes with their own motives pull her every which way.

* * *
The idea of writing seemed mysterious and wondrous at the time I decided to do it; but so did soccer, gymnastics, reading, drawing, sociology, color guard, cooking, acting, working, ballroom dancing, video games, and many other I don’t care to recall. Things seemed so sparkly at the time, and I thought, even if just for a moment, I had found it. My thing. Then, something would be missing. This wasn’t it.  Life would be easier if I was that prodigy for the violin, or an academic scholar.

* * *
The people of this land down the rabbit hole seem have things figured out. And ever so willingly give their bits of twisted wisdom. Riddles tie into an impossible puzzle. Condemned to wander around in a strange world attempting to put all the pieces together. Unwittingly Alice becomes one of them. There was no doubt that as she fell, looking around with curiosity and frustrated wonder, could barely even begin to wrap her head around the mess she had fallen into.

* * *
When I was young my mom would put me in sports every year. The only two I remember are two years worth of soccer and a month or two of gymnastics.  I look back now and I would have preferred my mom put me on a instrument instead, like the violin or piano. My older brothers and sisters all had their time on something, whether it be the trumpet, flute or piano. As the youngest sibling, I slipped out of the spoiled stereotype and got duped, no playing fingers on a keyboard, no coaches giving me instruction, no nothing.

* * *
“‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’ the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. ‘No, I give it up,’ Alice Replied: ‘what’s the answer?’ ‘I haven't the slightest idea,’said the Hatter. ‘Nor I,’ said the March Hare.”

* * *
All of my siblings found things that they enjoyed and took off flying in them. I looked to my older brothers and sisters in silent wonder. It seemed that knew where they want to go in life. I wondered how they knew what they wanted. I wanted to know. My oldest sister in particular I looked toward as a role model. I would do as she did, and compare my work to hers. In many ways I would do what she did, because it appeared to be working out for her. She drew, I admired her work, so I wanted to draw. She had a passion in high school for color guard, I decided I should give it a shot as well. They weren't really thing I chose, I just wanted to be like her. I remember I wanted to play the flute, because she played the flute. Not because I thought I would enjoy it, but because for awhile I wanted to be her.

* * *
Throughout the story Alice is always searching for an answer. She asks questions to every character. And every time she gets an answer she doesn’t like. She questions their motives, because it just doesn’t add up to her. There’s plenty of places to go in wonderland. The Mad Tea party, where it’s always six O’clock, a mouse tells questionable stories, and butter is how to fix your pocket watch.The Queen of Hearts, she readly orders for heads to be chopped off, and eager to play a rigged game of croquet. She questions everything and confuses herself more than anybody else. Every question is answered, but brings up more questions.By the end of each converstaion Alice gives up on them and leaves. Everybody has their own little way to do things in the book, and admittedly it doesn’t make a lot of sense to, Alice, the outsider.

* * *
I once thought I had found it, in art. The colors drew me in like a magnet. I fell in love with the feeling of holding a pencil in my hand. I just felt so right. Structure, beauty, the flow of the lines, a poem on paper. A page that was blank a second ago now had something that came from me on it. I was the one who put it there. However, just like everything else a problem arose with it. I found myself not drawing what I truly wanted to draw. Instead of painting meadows of color, and blue light glowing from  cities, I found myself stuck on one thing that I could draw. I like it at first, but it got repetitive and I couldn’t bring myself to expand. I drew, and tried to make them my own, doing new things with what little I could do. Piling up layers to make a picture. I everything I imagined in my head stayed there and while something foreign went onto the page. I wasn’t a Bob Ross, or a Pablo Picasso who knew what they wanted to create and the skill to do it. Art just wasn’t enough. I couldn’t fulfill the fantasies that I dreamed up.I needed to be better, and there was no way to do it.

* * *
“-And she went on.‘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 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.”

* * *
Every time I meet someone knew they ask ‘what do you like to do?’ Just one answer would be enough. Something I excelled at, I was a master of. But nothing came to mind. ‘Do you play any sports?’ Nope, I didn’t have very much interest in those. ‘Then you must play an instrument, which one do you play? I take you for a flute or the violin.’ I’ve played. ‘If you don’t play a sport, and don’t play and instrument, than what do you possibly do with your time? What’s the one thing that you do?’ I don’t know, I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet; That piece of my puzzle is missing.

* * *
As Alice wanders about she finds herself with strange characters who tell her stories that have no moral. She decides she’s done with one characters nonsense leaves to go “somewhere”, and finds herself in another awkward situation. She wants to get somewhere, but has no idea what that somewhere even is. She lets all the other characters tell her what to do. She looks for something constant in this nonsensical world, but finds the only thing that makes any bit of sense is how much every thing doesn’t make sense. She has no goal. The only reason she got out of wandering around the maze of bizarre happens. In an attempt of putting  together a puzzle was never complete in the first place.

* * *
I tried dancing. The hops, skips, and the grace of movement between me and a partner. Just didn’t work out. Gymnastics never got the chance to shoot off. I  left to admiring the champions perform on the olympics. Singing was a good option, but my voice wasn’t suited for it. The question of ‘what do you like to do,’ had turned into ‘What’s that one thing that you’re really good at? You’re center?’ I don’t have any talents like that. So I would answer simply, ‘I like to draw and read, I suppose.’ And get an indifferent response, because most people can’t go anywhere with that in a conversation.

* * *
“‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice Replied, rather shyly, ‘I-I hardly know, sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’” 

* * *
I flip around my pencil in my hand as I stare at the passages I’ve written so far. The page is mostly empty, with room begging to be filled. My hand aches to do something about it. But nothing new comes to mind to complete that poem. My chair squiggles and I sketch out a picture next to the lines of verse while I think. ‘It’s ok if you mess up on it. You’re trying something new after all. No need to be a master at it, that’s what practice is for.’

* * *
As Alice goes about wonderland meeting confusing situations, she find herself changing, in shape and size, and in more than one way. In the beginning a talking animal was foreign to her, by the end taking orders from a animal or talking to a card is normal. She allows herself to be configured to the strangeness of the world. Her view changed from a innocent reality to a fantasy mixed with an underlying layer of death. Alice goes along with a risk of drinking from different “DRINK ME” bottles, “EAT ME” cakes, and different sides of a mushroom in the book. Each one changes her size: smaller, larger. Some give her an advantage in a situation, another would put her at a disadvantage. She changes her size, and each time she finds she wants to change size again to get back to “normal.” But by the time she’s finished shrinking a growing there’s no way to tell what her true size was in the first place.

* * *
Maybe I should have chosen something different to write about. My mind goes fuzzy at all the possibilities. ‘What do you want to be?’ The poem topic was. There’s a million things I want to be. But I can’t find one that fits just right. I need to be perfect at it. If I chose more than one, I need to master all of them. Why is this so hard? I shake off the irritating thoughts and scribble down one more line to finish up the poem. I would love it if I could just be me.

* * *
Alice doesn’t ever find her place in wonderland, among all these people. However, the story ends right where she started with her beside her sister on  the riverbank. I took my stroll around wonderland, got frustrated at it’s confusing answers, and ended up getting nowhere. I ended up right back where I began, and I realized something. It’s alright to be where I am. I don’t need to a master at that one thing , no need to impress anyone. I’m just fine where I am.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. London: Vintage, 2007. Print.