DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! 'I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) '—yes, that's about the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Louis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I love how a bookstack maps a person’s interests. Unlike internet rabbit holes, which strike me as impulse-driven curiosity, books collected and carried from the outer world to one’s sanctuary smacks of intention. Last week, I met a young woman who has catalogued all the books she owns (she does work in a bookstore) and has calculated that based on the amount she reads, she will be able to finish all her collection in three years — well, if she stops buying books. The rituals of readers.

A copy of Alice in Wonderland has been tucked in a bookstack near my bed since I found it in a secondhand bookshop in the late 1980s. As a freshly minted college graduate, I was noticing everything and recognizing little. I had moved to New Mexico from the Pacific Northwest, and I had few friends and a desert landscape to learn how to see. Writing became my confidant, reading my grounding.

I gave this preamble to the Oregon State Penitentiary workshop the morning we read the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland to the group. The prompt: Imagine yourself tumbling into your upside-down place, grabbing a hold of objects as you fall. Describe what you see or feel. What do you hold onto? Quentin Harris moves through OSP with an armload of books. He engages with the world through words — though they are rarely spoken! He says: “I am a prison monk who fell in love with books and escaping to the magical place of deep thought and reflection.” If you ask him about the books, he enthusiastically describes what he’s found or is looking to find between the pages. As we think about the rituals of readers and writers, I can’t help but think how a good run of books can be as exhilarating for the reader as sliding across ice.

R. Miranda holds onto the awe, the wonder of life as he imagines not himself, but Alice falling through the interior world of dreams and ones and zeros in A Life Worth Saving. As I read his poem, I can feel myself stretch and search as I struggle to order the words I write:
What she knew of life
What she imagined
life
Could be
Should be
Filled with Awe
Filled with Wonder.

Jai writes Always Edging, a poem as spare as a leggy spider moving delicately to a corner. The process of writing can be aloof, so fickle. The poem tryies to escape our pen. My description of the poem about writing the poem feels ham-handed. Now who is Alice?

One of the PonyXpress original writers, Nolan James Briden has been out of reach to us — he was transferred to the Snake River Correctional Institution’s medium facility. Dualing Captivity jabs at the nature of incarceration “boxed within boxes” the chained and shackled prisoners are as entrapped in their shame. He writes at a desk bolted to his cell’s wall. From this entombed space he conjures the winds that lift the birds. Writing becomes a lever to reorder the upside-down space:
Traversing through the Willamette Valley kicking up asphalt in the ruts of time
The yellow lines and black bird travels alongside
The galloping hooves of the Ponies
Boxed within boxes my bones rattle on the highway as hearts
Tumble through the gorge
I sit feathered in chains of shame, as the feathers of birds fly free
Over the power of rolling hills of mountain peaks.

Cramped sharing too-small bench seats on the six-hour bus ride to Snake River, they watch the open landscape spread out before them — Nolan writes a road song sung in prison.

Writing is tumbled until the edges are smooth, pages turned as we read, ideas circulate like an eddy … and sometimes we are left upside-down, pulled deep into the subconscious like Alice’s dream in order to better understand our own stories. Is it any wonder that readers and writers alike have imbued the acts with ritual? From Quentin Harris:
This book’s promise is that it will never leave me lonely — my sweet exorcist and lover forever — that book, I have to see what’s inside — nothing, just blank pages. That book is the book my lover calls me to write — then, I wake up saying what a strange world we live in … an energy universe saying: “Behold I am your sign.”

And speaking of upside-down, happy 18th Ms. D, how did that happen?! | TDS