Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Part 4
Life lessons from deeper down the rabbit hole...
I’ve been spending a lot more time in my garden of late. I need to because it needs me. It’s a collaborative project shall we say but a mighty one where in order for its natural power to really come to the fore needs better supporting structures, clearer boundaries, nourishment, more access to light.
I can envision its bounty and beauty at the end of all the trussing and packing and feeding. Every day I edge a little closer to believing it might actually happen. It’s exciting and daunting in equal measure. I almost want to start an entirely separate Substack to track its journey towards full flourish. I also recognise that its a path I am treading for myself. Both the garden’s transformation and its needs are perfectly aligned with my own. I feel called to it, to spend time with it.
Right now I am having to clear some of the long-dead branches and bracken just to be able to move around the space and take it all in. And when I say clear, I do not mean to remove. It’s important to me that everything I am shifting is going back in to the land from whence it came, to naturally break down and be integrated back into the soil, to nourish it and support the environment it is a part of.
I am already muddied-hand deep into the lessons it has to offer which can sometimes feel a little relentless and tiresome — Alice too is a bit overwhelmed with everything she is having to learn this week in Wonderland. She also simply cannot seem to find herself at the right size at the right time. I know the feeling.
The further down the rabbit hole we go the more I am utterly convinced that this is a story inspired by dreams over hallucinogens. A phantasmagorical washing machine tumble of stoppages and obstacles, hidden messages and riddles — received in our own language but somehow different and often impossible to decipher.
By the end of the chapter, Alice knows what she must do but she hasn’t yet worked out how to do it — and yet and yet, a part of her does. The part of her which allows her to pause for a moment, to take in her surroundings, gather her bearings and examine her perspective from all sides not just under it, both sides of it, and behind it, but to look on top of it too.