Alice in Wonderland II

Cherry smoothie. Cherries are packed with antioxidants, and when paired with almond milk and a few drops of vanilla, you’d almost think you’re having an ice cream! For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a thing for Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Years ago, I found this book, which is a fine partner to Carroll’s books about Alice. It's well-written and richly illustrated and will give you a sense of who Carroll and Alice Lidell (the real Alice) were.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was quite bright but quite bored and one spring day when she had nothing else to do, she saw a rabbit hole and decided to jump. It wasn’t her first rabbit hole and it wasn’t the first time she jumped. You could say she had an affinity for jumping down rabbit holes.

The first time she jumped down one she discovered Alain Robbe-Grillet and crème du menthe.

This time she discovered a wonderland right up her alley: Stranger than strange yet seductively familiar and all wrapped up in humidity and heat. In other words, far too exciting to pass on. It had a name: Texas.

Here women wore hose even on the hottest day of the year (“hose” was a new word, she had thought they were called “stockings”), and those women were loud and had “pancake” make up and sprayed their hair into stiff platinum clouds. Men wore tight jeans tucked into Western boots, said “Howdy, ma’am” and tilted their cowboy hats. Cars weren’t just vehicles to take you places, they were destinations in and by themselves, refrigerated little things, well not so little really. They were temporary dwellings in which you flowed down the highway. Highways, highways everywhere. And take-out restaurants so you didn’t even have to get out of your car.

She learnt about so many things. Such as spray-on hair for the balding and clap on-clap off lights for the old. She saw roaches for the first time, and raccoons, and even an armadillo.

Is it any wonder she got sucked in?

Everything was bigger in Texas. And louder. Big and loud and proud Texas. When she asked for an ice cream, she got a whole truckload of it, “Texas style”, wheeled up in front of her and served complete with chocolate sauce (or “fudge”, another new word), sprinkles (not to be confused with “sprinklers”), vanilla wafers, whipped cream (sprayed on in the same fashion as the spray-on hair) Maraschino cherries, and five sliced bananas.

She spent hours walking up and down the air-conditioned aisles of the supermarkets. She’d never seen so much stuff, so much food in her life. The white bread in Texas was spongy and bouncy like a rubber ball. She once threw it on the floor to see if it would bounce back at her. She began wondering what they put into their food. Everything came in plastic.

And then she got depressed. Everything is bigger in Texas, so also her depression. Suddenly there were days when she didn’t feel like getting out of her bed (with its ruffled, mauve bed skirt) and into her car (a liver paste-colored old Chevrolet). Days when she didn’t feel like walking up and down the grocery aisles. Days when she didn’t feel like doing much at all.

She tried treating her depression with a variety of techniques, and found that the Houston Symphony was the best answer. She sat through concert after concert. And afterwards she’d peruse used bookstores in search for something to ferry her over a night of insomnia. 

Then one day a friend invited her to come visit New York. She left Texas on a Delta Airlines flight. When the plane landed at LaGuardia a rainy, gray day, she overheard someone say in that nasal twang of the East coast:
“There are no endings, Sweetheart, just a string of beginnings”

And that sentence, and New York itself, became a brand new start.