Of Purple Rabbits

I chased a purple rabbit through a hole in my backyard hedge this morning.  It was an odd experience because my backyard has never before had a hedge and usually the only signs of wildlife are deposits left by the neighbor’s dog.  Yet this morning both the rabbit and the hedge were there.

Beyond the hedge was a world filled with fairies, unicorns, centaurs, children lost on islands, and a secret valley full of bird-winged people.  The very landscape was strange; lush valleys sat high atop volcanos, and a river ran with liquid rubies.  It was completely unearthly … and totally familiar.  I used to live in such places before my mind filled with grades and SATs and mortgages and diapers and laundry.

I’d come home to a place I thought no longer existed.  All the strange and beautiful residents of those lands looked at me.  Eyes of every shade and shape studied me; asked me where I have been; wondered why I had abandoned them.

The answers I have to give are solid, reasonable.  They sit heavy in my hands, and their very solidity fades the worlds and people, who attenuate so far that the merest whisper of wind could blow them away.  Quickly I shift my solid reasons to one hand and reach out with the other to grasp at the mist.  I realize now that I need both.  I need to be able to fly on the wings of story and I need a solid place to land.  I’d forgotten, but as he did so long ago for my six-year-old self, that purple rabbit has led me through the hedge and taught me to fly.

Today is Lewis Carrol’s birthday, so many people are journaling Down the Rabbit Hole.  I wanted to join the fun.  The story above makes more sense if you know that the very first story I ever wrote was entitled “The Purple Rabbit”.