alice and the fawn

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carrol writes: “… they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the neck of the Fawn, till they came out onto another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arm. ‘I’m a Fawn!’ it cried out in a voice of delight. ‘And, dear me! you’re a human child!’ A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.”

Briefly they had been without names, reference, narrative. Briefly they had only known presence, living the waves of events: Wood wooding, love loving, their being being: Life living. Reality knowing itself.

Came a new perceiving. And, with it, a grasping that veiled reality. Renewed limitation defined by familiar narrative. Everything in its place, neatly labeled. Delight short-lived.

Alarming as it was, at least, the old view brought a certainty.

Question: What if we were to drop the stories we carry about ourselves, others, this world? What if we soften our gaze and see the world in blurrier waves of events? Could we dwell in presence? Then what?

credit: steven wright | unsplash