Category: Alice from Wonderland

Cherry

She lost him. She stopped as soon as she could to catch her breath. The platform was empty, save for one man, standing by himself wearing a low, soft felt hat with a curled brim and the crown creased lengthwise. He looked at her. Cheater. Quickly, she darted her eyes toward the staircase. She half expected him to come up, but he didn’t.

Instead he played chess and she was alone at last. Cherry slid down onto the cold, non-foliated metamorphic rock commonly used for sculpture and as a building material. Her hand searched for a mushy, ham and cheese sandwich. Eat? The odd man turned and walked toward her using a device consisting of a circular canopy of cloth on a folding metal frame supported by a metal rod. It was his first. She didn’t understand the significance of the red and white peppermint patty stripes though. A big chunk of sandwich wedged in her throat.

There is no resting place in Paradise, Chona. Just the constant chase of Dreams and Toys. Whatever then. I don’t need the job anyway. They need themselves and that will never change. I reached into the fridge, the bright neon light glaring in my face. What’s it going to be tonight? 3% milk bought one week ago, or taro cream buns from yesterday? Her black, acid wash cut-offs were riding up her legs, a product of skipping two workouts over the weekend he supposed. Cherry didn’t want any of it. She slammed the fridge door for Each Other and climbed onto the kitchen island marble.

Boom, boom, boom.

Silence filled the entire apartment.

Dang it, he’s here.

She didn’t even have time to prepare.

Some empty containers of Nanö fell onto the floor. Cherry didn’t wait. Nothing. Then, suddenly again –

Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!

She didn’t have time to leave.

Outside the window, the landscape was lavender purple.

The air inside her apartment was as cold as stone.

Cherry remembered the Toys in her closet. There was probably enough in there to pay him off. Jared didn’t take cheap toys as a barter. He was looking for some form of permanent reimbursement. She wanted to try to run away. Running to her room, she pulled her closet doors open and found him. A retro blue Ty bear stuffie, sewn together with black thread. His beady eyes were made of wind-blown agate, a mystical find these days in Chon.

Wasn’t it ridiculous to think gems held power these days? Jared was specifically looking to enhance his perception and analytical abilities. The agate eyes on Cherry’s Toy could heal the  anger inside and create a sense of security and blankets, much needed bling required at Life Space.

“Cherry!!!” Jared started, “Open the frigging door! NOW!” She grabbed Blueberry, stuffing it into her shirt, which had a hidden metric built-in. The bear quickly disappeared and she yanked the entranceway agape.

“Where is it?!?” Jared stumbled inside, her apartment was already in shreds. Cherry had old jars of Dream everywhere. But they were empty too. Users. “How fast can you put together a cheat sheet?” Jared stopped and looked at Cherry. They both began to laugh hysterically. She blinked her eyes. One by one, the jars started to break up into small parts, a result of impact and decay. She checked out the window. The purple haze was gone and replaced with a mauve checkerboard.

In the next moment memory, everything sat still and Jared was suddenly a statue, his eyes staring blankly at Cherry’s gaze. It was only going to last another 30 minutes, she thought. She moved taking a short time – the journey was going to be fast and furious. She ran back to her window and stuck her head outside. It was wet and sticky and humid. Further out she could see the retro blue Ty melding into life. Tiny pink flecks, stars, were also starting to become actual fact.

That was on her right brain. Her left was angry, used and taken for granted. She didn’t know how to fix him. It was probably going to be impossible. So why not just skip living and buy some cigarettes?

 

9 – Coming Down

I’m so tired, Daisy thought. You’re always tired, retorted Cherry. She was just sitting there, twiddling her thumbs, looking at her green shoes. She turned her head right, was there something there? She suddenly felt uncomfortable. Someone was watching them. They didn’t know who.

It’s time to pack, dear. The routine was the same every June. Alice from Wonderland would arrive to take Daisy home. Daisy couldn’t do it without help. It was a sad time for her. She was remembering the death of her mom, those last few cigarettes she had outside with her dad, in the snow. She was really angry Being because of Ben. He ruined her life, led her astray. She was an addict when she was with him.

Forget thinking about it, darling. Alice stroked Cherry’s hair, handing her a cheese and ham biscuit. This is ridiculous. I’m practically choking on this bread, it’s getting lodged in my throat! I can’t take it anymore! By then, their tears were flowing, ruining everything including a pink dress and a gigantic muumuu.

All of the pupils present today were busy writing down their answers. Not me. I’m just going to sit it. Read his brain. Oh shit, he’s looking. The girls looked away, frantically grabbing their miniature Navajo backpacks, matching, gifts from the Philippines and their Auntie Stella.

Daisy? Can you contribute something to this discussion we’re having? Her teacher was frustrated, but tried his best to be kind and patient. Daisy twitched her mouth. No, I don’t think I can. They could feel every single eye in the room blink. Then, 999,999 heads turned to look at her. What were they expecting? She wasn’t going to put on a show. And especially not in this muumuu. Do you have anything to say, young miss? Neither had enough bitcoins to argue. Clearing her throat, Miss Daisy stood up. Cherry budged in front, knocking her sister to the floor. I bought these with my own cash! Dreams, actually. It was Toys clearly. Can any one of you in the room debate that? We highly think naught. And with haste, they flipped their skirts and left the room.

Flying through the wind, Cherry grabbed her big sister’s hand. They were going to be just fine.

Meaningfulness

Editing could quite possibly be the treachery of writing! Overly edited content may tell readers, “This is not false.” On the other side, the raw construction of content is meaningful, but we should argue that the deliberate deconstruction of content to reveal a greater point of view (proper editing) more readily achieves the goals of an SEO/l or a communications strategy – to uphold popularity, relevance, authority and credibility and to distribute a message that is transparent, accurate and responsible.

C122F4BD-D35D-4EF5-AAFA-0AFAF1447EFD

This piece is inspired by a very popular surrealist painting, Ceci n’est pas une pipe by René Magritte. Ironically, my image overloads the viewer with elaborate messages (a commentary on keywords perhaps), whereas Magritte’s painting is a basic review of signified and signifier. Here’s some additional information taken from Wikipedia –

The Treachery of Images (French: La Trahison des images) is a 1929 painting by surrealist painter René Magritte.

The painting shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe“, French for “This is not a pipe”.

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying! (Magritte)

Do you enjoy the process of editing? How do you know when to stop and is this action directly related to the meaningfulness of a  message, because content becomes inherently closer to ‘an answer’ or ‘a reality’? Which one for you?

7 – Breathe Life

The train made its usual stop at Chon. Chon was the last remaining urban centre, where transforming humans dabbled in post-consumerist delights like colourful French macarons and antique Balenciaga dad pants. It was a place for fun and rest.

Daisy sat up. She was awake for the last little while, finishing her sandwich and still wondering about Mr. Beaver in the hat. He was gone, probably somewhere between Life Space and Elevententeen. She was happy to be at Chon. She wondered if her best friend from Calgary was there. It was Linz, she worked for WestJet, a now defunct flight carrier that was sold off to Indigo, a distributor of Paradise Colours. Really, the world was so different now. The practice of social media marketing was a language in and of itself. Depending on one’s digital cognition, it could provide sustenance to an audience or increase the relativity of binary disease. After all this time, survival of the fittest was still the game. Humans didn’t want to be sick. They didn’t want to be dead or alive. They wanted to be living, breathing real air and doing regular chores.

As she stepped off the bus (she’s been off the train for A Day now), Daisy headed to the Nike outlet, so she could change her clothes into something more beguiling. Her mind thought of lime green, neon orange polka dots and always-always white eyelet lace. Daisy picked something out. While waiting, she made her third eye blind to prevent identity thieves from crushing her steez, then headed to the wall of bags to pick something out to put it all in.

Afterwards, she stopped at Yoga Passage. It was that time of day again to reset and recharge. Yoga was literally a moment to decompress. Everything left your body as your soul lay suspended in a hue of neon pink. Rearranging locations and transformations, so you could see properly. Daisy practiced yoga once, when she was young and did not finish her teacher training practice. Alice from Wonderland stopped a sour pursuit of a man named Justin Patterson, as he would have led her to full-fledged inebriation. The relationship was stopped by a major car alternative.

Lying in Savasana, Daisy fondled her mat, remembering that life filled with creativity and ideas can shut places to smithereens. She closed her lids and drifted off into space. She could see letter z’s italicized, drifting into time followed by baby emoji apples and puffy digital rainbows. It was the stuff of her man-made dreams. Visions, they come in Elevententeen.

Do you see orange or blue?

Gadgets

A digital object is checking gadgets. Tiny beads and shards. Daisy felt fuzzy and warm. Life Space smelled like a contradiction. Did you see it? Wait! Come back! You didn’t even ask! Daisy runs past in a fluff. Ugh, what is this stuff?1704E55B-54C3-4A4A-A095-F94906EA87D0

Start

Hi everyone! This is a story about taking naps. What would you do if you could start your nap over again?

Day by day, she fought to stay awake. At night, facing the wall, she could see her breath come back, stirring her into place. Her gaze could only see an odd, black shadow.

The plague.

Napping feverishly on an ex-boyfriend’s mattress, my breath came to me, rousing my face. There was no odd black shadow, only the installation piece (University of Calgary, Faculty of Art, 2001) I completed about a red cross and red intersecting paint brushes. Over time, the red morphed into a black matte surface, replacing the glowing red symbols with something different…

The sound.

I gasped for air, clutching my heart staring into Kevin’s barren closet. I saw myself as a ‘doctor’, healing the world from every known pain of mankind. In that moment, my heart sung and I cried. I felt adorned, yet I was confused as to how this could have happened. How could this be a reality that I, Chona Fe, changed the world? Healed it, in fact. How could I be the charging force that put everything into place?

The only other time this happened, I was napping, this time at my aunt’s house in one of the empty rooms. (Note: Filipino homes always have empty rooms; they’re probably accommodating ghosts.) All of the 90s furniture, including a stark, reflective black master’s bedroom set, had no meaning or design in that place. That place where I slumbered and was suddenly awoken again. I think I was 13, sitting up abruptly on the right side of the bed, staring at myself. Yelling. Screaming at the top of my lungs.

Stop!

I wasn’t looking at a reflection of ours.

The reflection.

My brother (Alan Abad) and cousins (Ryan and Vanessa Skinner), ran home from the playground in the centre of the crescent (71 Maryvale Cr. N.E., Calgary, AB). They heard me scream. They were horrified to think something horrible had happened. But nothing did. I was alive. I wasn’t attacked or eaten by monsters. Vanessa grabbed my shoulders, shaking vigorously and I blinked slowly three times, “What. The. I…don’t know what just happened, but I think…I died and saw…a different person…in…” I couldn’t even continue. It was that bad.

Scared?

4 – The Sycophant

This cannot be happening right now.

Daisy expired and shook her head as time and time again she did. We don’t exist. We are bars of Nanaimo treats screwed up on Haloperidol mixed with a touch of boxed salad greens.

So where do we begin?

She approached Alice who was expecting her. As she sat cross-legged on a slice of Dream, Daisy asks, “Miss Alice, are you here? Did you have anything?” This role reversal thing was just so complicated.

They were all messed up. The transition from wifi to digitization wasn’t her, pretty much everyone in town KNEW and it felt like people could FEEL the change, but no one would talk about it in actuality.

It’s just so much more interesting. 

What? 

This new job!

I figured out 5 routes to sudden insight in writing, they are –

Fast, 

Open and shut, 

Take your time, 

Who cares and 

Believe.

Shall we keep going?

The weekend felt like an eternity. She wished she could swoon over these feelings, but she just craved having her own office and working. Daisy gathered her yellow skirt which had fine white polka dots, a fine white mesh of squid tulle and an admirable edging of white eyelet lace. She pronounced with a deep breath to whomever was not there – Here ye, here ye are. We are short, we are tall, we are bright, we are dull. We are equal and there is something out there telling us we aren’t. Try not to be confused, but to trace your steps back towards home, it isn’t where you feel your bones turn cold and your face falls flat.

That’s all she had to do for today, but she was exhausted because she spent days preparing. Social media nowadays did just that. Having to bring together Others was painstakingly dull, hence why the word always made its way into her announcements. Daisy tried to remember why she wanted this job in the first place.

I don’t feel right. 

Alice from Wonderland awoke from a banana split second to comment, “Recall in your sleep, then awake and for the next every day of your life, return to your commonplace and remember what stands as your truth and reality – resolve, confidence and ultimately, sobriety.” Then her eyes shut, but bulgy and half-peeped. She yawned, turned around onto her Dream and went back to bed. 

Chona had a look at where she was. White Spot…hmm…Telus and an escalator…as ‘white’ as pine chairs…hmm. She was just waiting to see Seventeen and Each Other. It was A Day and she felt 92, but was probably more like a 93. “Don’t forget to measure your immeasurability.” Ugh. It always came out the wrong way. Immeasurability is when one does not make sense for various points and reasons not to be discussed. Still, wearing a t-shirt from which her periphery seemed pink, she was holding onto a couple of secrets and there was a good reason for it.

“It has left.”, “It has gone for good.”

I just get worried because I force myself to smile for having an image of my face cropped up in my mind where I look exhausted and homeless. Dr. Waterson at least said I always look flawless.

Daisy quipped brightly and dull, “Ya don’t NEED to eat dessert, hasn’t this body image disturbance issue been cured?”

Oh ok, as you say.

They were both wearing matching lumber jackets. Difficulties often arose in their marriage, however as times were different at least they still had the capacity to travel through about the same rate of simultaneous combustive think. It frustrated them both – training – making them more porcelain and less matte.

“We are old.”, “Yes, we are.” 

Daisy remembers crashing the car in 2006, there were banks of snow everywhere as large as clouds plopped down from the sky. She was psychotic and he was possibly Hindu, but as she sped away jacked on thoughts and cigarettes, A Tree followed her, off the main road. She tried to get away, but she just couldn’t and then, they stopped right next to a previous residence to talk. He parked behind the car and walked up to her window that was crusted with ice. 

Daisy remembers the solid air inside her vehicle, her paranoia and delusions stuck amidst cold breath and the dark matter of her leather seats. She was so scared, more scared than she had ever been in her life. A burly thick man with a bushy red beard approached her on her left side. She rolled down the window and two pairs of eyes extremely intense, proceeded to think. There was silence and patches of foggy air between them. He questioned her actions realistically, but Daisy was determined.

“He didn’t die! He was protected by a higher being, I swear this on my life!” It was as if two different realities were panning out at the exact same time, one that was cold and real and the other which was super paranoid and just too hard to bear.

A Tree stood there in silence in between moments of questioning, sort of half-intrigued and semi-empathetic to Daisy’s arguments. And then, he just let her go. Just like that. She drove away, further and further into it all, arriving at an underground graffiti show that wasn’t worth any of her time, but as per usual she showed up, walked around like she gave a fuck, because that was her job. 

Allow me to circumvent. How many years did it take?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe 10.

I don’t think we can act godlike. The brain gets confused. Then, we become accountable for our actions and if we cannot explain what we’re doing (and these days, throw thinking into that pot), we might be in trouble!

3 – A Day

“Dude, I’m not coming up yet.”, “I’m not ready.”

Daisy was so frustrated. Why did he have to control her like that? Why was he in charge and not her? The green tag of her Champion jumper rubbed the back of her neck and she irritatedly scratched, like a black spider would trying to climb a slippery tent. From here on out, she was done being told what to do. “I am going to succeed, if it’s the last thing I’m capable of, dangit, I WILL!” She expired her smoke, while tiny violet pills leapt off her dress making their way down onto pillows marking the street. Today there were no jewels or yams protruding from the earth. Wait, what? Where…am…I? Daisy slapped her forehead feeling silly and stern. “I thought the map was taking me through that way…hmm…I am going to have to reconfigure.” She stuck her finger down her throat to feel the recess between her clavicle and sternum. The bump was still there, and it felt mightier than before. With a giant sigh of relief, Daisy whipped her hand out and quickly rubbed her brow of the pink and yellow sweat trickling downward toward the edge of her puffy orange UVC (never reaches the earth) slippers. The colours were debating with the sunset, arguing in agreeance with this theory: Can we reproduce smells using sight? If only I could see my thoughts, Chona thinks.

“Is it still not working yet or?”, “No.”

Okay, well then…let me think. I have zero capability of calculating the difference between time and space using true visuality AND I have thus far only found value in doing nothing. Everything was trying to pinpoint the exact ‘moment memory’ Chona experienced most frequently while driving. Today, June 24, 2019, she smelled/saw the winter time, the time around Halloween and a few other things. But they came and went so fast, she couldn’t ascertain every detail in time to truly discern the event. And, she most definitely could not determine how in the hell this was working and how she would even begin to explain it. Everything was creating. Everything was putting it together. Everything was adding it up.

Daisy’s mind went blank. She sat solemnly in the imitation art chair wearing a torn out neon pink giant Cotton Ginny t-shirt, and appropriate underwear of course. “To shower or not to shower, that is the key,” she thought. Her boss quipped, “To remember everyone! Cucumber! Coffee! And, no sex please!”

According to the Kama Sutra, a person with the principles of this science, who preserves his virtue, his Artha and his pleasure, will obtain the mastery of Each Other.

“Daisy, are you listening?”, “Yes.”

Seventeen always looked like that, predisposed to sleep, knowing she needed time for rest. Chona Fe yawns and gives up for a bit, then hands the paper over to Alice. She bites into it like a rabid snail, because snails are like tricky people. Alice goes back into hiding and the teen just shrugs again. The adventures have now begun, but where will they take us? Because in this moment, none of this makes sense, right? And, do you truly think it will be a thing? A real, true, regular, normal way of being? Chona thinks, “Probably yes. But, I dunno! I just have to try and will probably die doing it!”

Daisy was listening, darting her eyes toward the light. Alice puffed some letter s’s in the same general direction. Can we begin to read it now, the way to it should read?

2 – The Hiatus

Our explorer has taken a hiatus, she is tired and as she peers across the street, he seems tired as well. She puts on her best coat and slips her feet into some cherry red rain boots. The moment she steps outside, she feels the cold tingle in her bones and her hair sashays as the wind hits her with a warm whisper asking again, “Hey. Are you there?” Flipping your hair in A Day can take you somewhere.

Don’t worry, just keep it as it is, she said. She says these types of things happen to her often, she must partially remain motivated to live and she must secondly rid herself from the despair of The Need. I need my comb, where is it? She reached into her purse, not the one from Vestiaire, but a second-hand Coach made of well-used garbage beige calfskin tin.

A desperate voice in her head urges, “These are the lines, the shapes, the colors, the values, the forms and the textures. There is no SPACE.” Repenting and refusing, Daisy shakes her head vigorously and steps into an oily pink puddle seeing only her reflection for a brief second in time.

“Come to the spot, dabble in delight, peruse my space with wonder and might; question clients A, C and J. Find a way to see, see connections and see separations. Come from away, come from near, be the bearer of untimely cheer.” – The Pause and the solemn inquirer of Where

And with that, Alice from Wonderland appears, presenting Daisy with another conundrum, this time more real: “Where can you gather your answers from? Is it online, has it been written by another? When the answers come, make it right, make it right, make it right.” She takes off in a haste, not really caring about her hair and for some reason this time, she is riding an umbrella as if it were from Life Space.

Hmm. That was somehow puzzling. But onto the next block, still in the rain, the sky still bleak, wet, gray. Daisy just can’t seem to pull up her head. She envisions red and yellow amongst oily pink and purple.

“Why is this taking forever?”, “What has become of the perspective?”

It is all askew and small, but still very vast. Very vast? I used to dream in this perspective, really…well…I was awake, burning my eyeballs trying to fall asleep.

“Somehow, there has been someone toying with this section.”

Elevententeen was just that, a constant slideshow of places that required definition.

There was no consistency or realness.

There was so much dismay.

Her entourage had miniature plastic smiles plastered to their faces and there was still that nagging colour red pinned to each user like a little umbrella badge stitched with tiny banana-shaped thread.

Chona has nowhere to go, although her urge to run, to run uphill…is strong.

1 – The Pen

How do you write anew? How do you continue to post after a long weekend of stuffing your face with turkey and cranberry sauce, to the point where, by holiday Monday you’re lost in a hazy misconstruction of football episodes, your daughter’s Super Monsters Halloween edition and extra pumpkin pie/pumpkin coffee cake streaming through your veins?

I drove into work this morning feeling like I took a 5 month mental hiatus and that it would take another 5 years to get back to where I was last Friday in terms of thought processes and drive. But this sobering feeling, is it better than the former? Which should I be chasing?

I finally arrived and tried my best to ignore CBC and Stephen Quinn. Parked and ready to nap, Daisy thought frustratedly, “If I don’t get to my desk, I will fall further and further away into this sluggish slump. It will impact the rest of my week in a very negative way. I can’t be doing it this way!”

Dang it. “It’s starting already,” quipped a voice on the radio, when suddenly two of them proclaimed, “I’m not ready to travel! Dang you, dang it, DANG YOU!”

Are YOU ready?

I’ve fallen! This will last for 2 hours, then the clock will stop ticking on October 21st. I only have so much time to regroup and reiterate my success using succinct words and a logical progression of content.

She’s gone again. Don’t worry, she will return!

Daisy looked upward, toward the roof and saw a glowing star leaning on its edge, skirts away from abandoning friends and arriving onto a dust covered pillow. Puffy like an oyster, she rolled over in bed, drawing her arms over her face and pushing down to feel that cozy, cold feeling she longed for throughout the day. Today was bright and sunny. Bold rays peered through large windows, allowing light to enter her Brooklyn studio apartment. The girl was ready for A Day, ready to do the job she did best – ‘social media marketing’ for an up-and-coming TED startup company in the SoHo district of Elevententeen.

Elevententeen was a designated area for a group of bright communications pupils. They had three things in common. One – they were all Bipolar Type 10. Two – they had recently quit ‘drinking’. And three – they lived with the intent to impact the digital landscape, as no previous humans could have done it before them.

Daisy grabbed her pillow and immediately clicked on Instagram. That nagging suspicion to see The Need fed her like a rich, decadent chocolate drink costing tons more than a third-hand Prada bag nabbed off Vestiaire (for Seventeen). She quickly clicked, but then something else happened. It did not open, she did not see the grace of her favorite celebrity and his infantry women. She just heard a sound, a long-drawn, slowly creeping vibration of ‘digital air’. The only thing she could think of was, “The content has become redundant however, I can see the validity in re-writing and re-working the same concept several times. That way it will not become null and void. The success that emerged from it originally will still be there. That’s editing!”

“It’s locked!”, “Were you able to get back in?”

No. So, I decide to just write. Write down your thoughts Chona, write them down and write them down again. Get back to your spot on the list, get back to you, this new you. But sadly, I have already developed a headache from the idea of it. Will she be able to leave the content as it is? Will she usurp the value of its flow by editing it down, editing it all out to make complacent sense? Can you back away and still smile and feel success? That is something Alice from Wonderland would say, “Things aren’t worth that much once you start editing out the originality Miss Chona Fe, but I think this is what you think then isn’t that the way?”

Chona looks inward at her periphery, flips her hair, then walks away.