A Mad Tea-Party. .
There was a table set out under a fake, plastic tree in this strange cafeteria, and Humpty Dumpty and the Mad Hatter were having tea at it; the Cheshire Cat lay fast asleep between the unlikely pair, who were using the poor critter as a cushion. “How cruel,” thought Emily, “as surely that would be most uncomfortable for the cat. It is asleep, however, so maybe it just doesn’t mind.”
The table was large, perhaps excessively so, yet this peculiar trio were cramped together in one small corner of it: “The table is full! The table is full!” they cried out when they saw Emily and Alice approaching. “Good grief! Not only is there plenty of room, but this is important, and we haven’t time for tea, anyway,” scoffed Alice indignantly. Emily decided this was an appropriate opportunity to share her thoughts on their crazed choice of cushion, and said, “Don’t you think it’s a bit mean to use a sleeping animal like that?”
The Mad Hatter seemed shocked by her suggestion. “Why would you say that,” he said, “for the cat is not asleep. He is wide-awake, far more awake than you or I!”
Emily, who was now quite confused, said, “But he’s snoring! He must be asleep!”
“Nope,” replied the Mad Hatter, “he’s just purring. His mind just works faster than most. Ask him anything, I bet he knows the answer.”
Emily was not convinced in the slightest that the cat was not asleep, and so she slowly edged over towards him. She looked long and hard at the cat; it’s eyes were closed and he seemed very relaxed. She remained adamant that he was asleep, but she poked him softly on the top of the head, just to make sure.
“That’s not very nice, you know,” said the Mad Hatter, who seemed genuinely taken aback by Emily’s behaviour. “Just ask him a question.”
“Do I have to?” asked Emily.
“No,” replied the Cheshire Cat.
Emily had not expected this. “Oh,” she said, “I was sure you were asleep, I guess you weren’t though, hey?”
“Zzzzz….I am asleep,” replied the cat. “I’m so fast I’m asleep.”
“So fast you’re asleep? Do you mean you’re fast asleep?” enquired Emily.
“No,” said the cat, “I’m just so fast, so quick in the head, if you will, that I’m asleep. That’s how things work around there parts. You know, you also have to run to stay in the same place, otherwise you start going backwards.”
Emily, who was always ready for an argument if she was certain she should was right, said, “But then surely we would be going backwards right now, wouldn’t we? I mean surely-”
“You clearly have no understanding of Time,” interrupted the Mad Hatter.
“What’s to understand? Time is what it is,” argued Emily.
“Preposterous!” cried the Mad Hatter. “Not only is it not just what it is, it is not an “it” but rather many “its!” the Hatter knowledgably declared. The Mad Hatter removed a pocket watch from his blazer pocket, and looked at it curiously: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing more to say and so he sighed disappointedly. Emily and Alice looked at him with wonder and confusion.
“What’s the time?” asked Alice, “Because all this seems like a bit of a waste of time, and we haven’t time to waste.”
“My dear, if you knew Time as well as we do, you would never be so mad as to talk about wasting it! It does not like being treated like a commodity. And it’s the fourth.”
“Do you mean four o’clock?” enquired Alice.
“Heavens no! I believe I know what I said, and I said that it’s the fourth,” said the Hatter.
“But do you mean that it’s four o’clock?” asked Emily, “For Alice did not ask what you said, but rather what you meant.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alice, “You should say what you mean.”
“I do,” the Hatter hastily replied; “at least- at least I mean what I say – and I think that’s the same thing.”
“Not at all true,” Emily said confidently, “for you may as well be saying that “I see what I write” is the same thing as “I write what I see.” That’s too much writing for anyone!”
The Hatter chortled. Then he said, “I can write what I see! I can see your shoes, and I can write them as well.” He quickly pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket, and scrawled the word “shoes.” “See! I told you,” he confidently cried.
Emily did not seem impressed. “That’s just a word,” she said, “It’s not my shoes. It makes me think of a shoe, but you didn’t write my shoes. You just wrote the word, there‘s a difference, you know.”
The Hatter looked at Emily. He seemed confused. He raised one finger into the air, and shouted, “Ahah! I’ve got it!” Once more he grabbed his pen and paper, and wrote “my” just before the word “shoes.”
Emily put her palm to her face. She was dismayed by the Hatter’s insistence that he was right. “Don’t you see,” she politely said, “It’s still not quite the same.”
“Zzzzz…What I think she means, Hatter,“ said the Cheshire Cat, who was still so fast he was asleep, “is that the word signifies those ugly little things on her feet, but no matter what you do, it’s still only a word. You can never actually write them, you can describe them and do this and that and, but no matter what you do with that pen and paper, it shall never be anything but words. Words, words, words! Meaningless things!” the cat cried. He then vanished in what seemed like a puff of logic. After all, this does seem the kind of place where logic is not allowed.
Alice, who was growing increasingly frustrated by this very silly conversation, once again asked the time.
“Well,” said the Hatter, “back in the day, when Time and I were very good friends, I was able to persuade him to altering the time to whatever I liked. However, we had a falling out. We quarrelled a bit, you see, after I was singing a song about him. Would you like to hear it? It’s important to the story!”
“I’m not sure we have the time,” said Alice.
“There’s always time, nowadays. You’ll understand that very soon!” he happily yelled. He went on with his story. “So I was singing a song about Time, as I was about to say-”
“You already said that; you said that before,” interrupted Alice.
“So as I was about to say, I was singing a song about Time,” reiterated the Hatter. “Perhaps you’ve heard it,” he went on, “it went a little something like this:
‘Twinkle, twinkle, little time!
Don’t you know you‘re so divine!’
Do you know this song?”
“It reminds me of another song I know, it’s very similar,” said Alice.
“It goes on for longer,” the Hatter said, “in this way:
‘All around the world you fly,
Like a spectre in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle – “
The Hatter suddenly stopped singing his song. He glanced about the room suspiciously. Then he whispered, “This is where everything started to go wrong! Mr Dodgson decided I must have murdered time, since I implied it’s a lot like a spectre – that’s a ghost, by the way – and so he suddenly screamed, ’Erase this hideous madman! He’s Murdering the time!’”
“Oh, good gosh!” exclaimed Emily and Alice together. Alice looked at Emily and said, “perhaps we don’t want to find him, I don’t want to be erased!” She seemed genuinely scared by the idea.
“And ever since that day,” the Hatter went on in a sombre tone, “It’s been stuck at six o’clock for me.”
“Why did Dodgson react so cruelly?” asked Emily.
“Well, I was looking for my Author, and once I had figured out that this was his library, I thought he could help me,” said the Hatter.
“Wait!” cried Alice, “I’m looking for my Author right now!”
“Funny place to look for him,” snarled the Hatter. His voice dropped and he said, “And between you and me, I’d stop looking now. Dodgson has some weird secrets he’s trying to hide. He’s a total madman!”
“So what made you stop looking? And does this mean you don’t know where Carroll is?” Alice asked.
“There is incongruously no point in searching for him!” said Humpty Dumpty, who had been quiet until this point.
“Because there is never any time anymore! It’s always six o’clock, which is also dinner time. I just don’t have the time to look for him, and I don’t even have the time to wash up after dinner! We have to just keep rotating around the table so we can keep having dinner,” interrupted the Hatter. “Wait,” he continued, “why are you searching for Carroll? You may as well be searching for me or Humpty!”
“Speaking of Humpty,” said Emily as she turned to face the eccentric egg, “what’d you mean by there is “incongruously” no point in her searching for her Author?”
“I meant “there’s a definitely a hundred percent certainty that there is,” said Humpty Dumpty contemptuously.
“But that isn’t what “incongruously” means!” cried Emily.
“Incorrect!” Humpty scornfully declared, “for when I use a word it means whatever I wish it to mean!”
“Stop distracting me with your irrelevant garbage,” boomed Alice, and all of a sudden everyone went silent. There was something strangely scary about a grumpy young girl yelling so ludicrously loudly. “We were obviously about to find out something very important about my Author,” she continued, “and you two went and distracted me with your nonsensical ramblings about words! Who cares? They’re only words. They mean what they mean.”
“Hmmphh,” said Humpty, “perhaps you forget that “Author” is just a word as well!”
“Shut up with your nonsense!” interrupted Alice. She sighed and said, “Hatter, what were you about to tell me?”
“Carroll is but another character!” chortled the Hatter, “that’s why you may as well be looking for me.”
“…What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“I mean what I say,” replied the Hatter.
“But Carroll is the Author,” insisted Alice, “and I need him to tell me how my story ends! To find out who I am, where I’m going, why I’m here.
“What!?” gasped Alice. “So why does he have a different name?” she asked.
“It’s a pseudonym,” replied the Hatter, “he made it up by translating his first two names back into English from Latin and reversing their order.”
Thud! Thud! Thud!A ruckus developed outside the cafeteria.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Bang!The door flew open. A tall, thin man stood in the door way. His name was Charles Dodgson.
“The table is full!“ screamed the Wonderland characters. “Oh dear! Dodgson will surely erase us all!” whispered the Hatter, more to himself than to anyone else.
“But he’s not Dodgson!” yelped Alice, “Dodgson is short and stout!”
“It’s his library, my dear,” said the Hatter, “and he does as he wishes and he wishes to be many.”
“W-w-what are you doing here?” screamed Dodgson, “don’t you know this is my library?”
“Mr Dodgson,” said Alice loudly and confidently, “you’re my Author! Please may you tell me how my story finishes? And why is there many of you?”
“Your story was meant to end some time ago,” snarled Dodgson. “Also,” he continued, “it’s not like there is only one of you, either! Why, otherwise you wouldn’t be here!”
“What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“Does it matter? This is your story, not mine,” he replied.
“But what do I mean? How does this finish?” enquired Alice frantically.
“Well,” said Humpty dryly, “if you used words as well as me, you’d mean whatever you like!”
“But words are just words!” cried Alice.
“Until someone else decides they mean something,” quipped Emily.
Humpty looked at Alice and smiled. He said, “finished is also just a word.”
The Hatter eyed Alice curiously, and leant close to her. “Well, between me and you,” he said, “and that means that this is a secret, Dodgson wrote Carroll.”
There was a table set out under a fake, plastic tree in this strange cafeteria, and Humpty Dumpty and the Mad Hatter were having tea at it; the Cheshire Cat lay fast asleep between the unlikely pair, who were using the poor critter as a cushion. “How cruel,” thought Emily, “as surely that would be most uncomfortable for the cat. It is asleep, however, so maybe it just doesn’t mind.”
The table was large, perhaps excessively so, yet this peculiar trio were cramped together in one small corner of it: “The table is full! The table is full!” they cried out when they saw Emily and Alice approaching. “Good grief! Not only is there plenty of room, but this is important, and we haven’t time for tea, anyway,” scoffed Alice indignantly. Emily decided this was an appropriate opportunity to share her thoughts on their crazed choice of cushion, and said, “Don’t you think it’s a bit mean to use a sleeping animal like that?”
The Mad Hatter seemed shocked by her suggestion. “Why would you say that,” he said, “for the cat is not asleep. He is wide-awake, far more awake than you or I!”
Emily, who was now quite confused, said, “But he’s snoring! He must be asleep!”
“Nope,” replied the Mad Hatter, “he’s just purring. His mind just works faster than most. Ask him anything, I bet he knows the answer.”
Emily was not convinced in the slightest that the cat was not asleep, and so she slowly edged over towards him. She looked long and hard at the cat; it’s eyes were closed and he seemed very relaxed. She remained adamant that he was asleep, but she poked him softly on the top of the head, just to make sure.
“That’s not very nice, you know,” said the Mad Hatter, who seemed genuinely taken aback by Emily’s behaviour. “Just ask him a question.”
“Do I have to?” asked Emily.
“No,” replied the Cheshire Cat.
Emily had not expected this. “Oh,” she said, “I was sure you were asleep, I guess you weren’t though, hey?”
“Zzzzz….I am asleep,” replied the cat. “I’m so fast I’m asleep.”
“So fast you’re asleep? Do you mean you’re fast asleep?” enquired Emily.
“No,” said the cat, “I’m just so fast, so quick in the head, if you will, that I’m asleep. That’s how things work around there parts. You know, you also have to run to stay in the same place, otherwise you start going backwards.”
Emily, who was always ready for an argument if she was certain she should was right, said, “But then surely we would be going backwards right now, wouldn’t we? I mean surely-”
“You clearly have no understanding of Time,” interrupted the Mad Hatter.
“What’s to understand? Time is what it is,” argued Emily.
“Preposterous!” cried the Mad Hatter. “Not only is it not just what it is, it is not an “it” but rather many “its!” the Hatter knowledgably declared. The Mad Hatter removed a pocket watch from his blazer pocket, and looked at it curiously: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing more to say and so he sighed disappointedly. Emily and Alice looked at him with wonder and confusion.
“What’s the time?” asked Alice, “Because all this seems like a bit of a waste of time, and we haven’t time to waste.”
“My dear, if you knew Time as well as we do, you would never be so mad as to talk about wasting it! It does not like being treated like a commodity. And it’s the fourth.”
“Do you mean four o’clock?” enquired Alice.
“Heavens no! I believe I know what I said, and I said that it’s the fourth,” said the Hatter.
“But do you mean that it’s four o’clock?” asked Emily, “For Alice did not ask what you said, but rather what you meant.”
“Yeah,” agreed Alice, “You should say what you mean.”
“I do,” the Hatter hastily replied; “at least- at least I mean what I say – and I think that’s the same thing.”
“Not at all true,” Emily said confidently, “for you may as well be saying that “I see what I write” is the same thing as “I write what I see.” That’s too much writing for anyone!”
The Hatter chortled. Then he said, “I can write what I see! I can see your shoes, and I can write them as well.” He quickly pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket, and scrawled the word “shoes.” “See! I told you,” he confidently cried.
Emily did not seem impressed. “That’s just a word,” she said, “It’s not my shoes. It makes me think of a shoe, but you didn’t write my shoes. You just wrote the word, there‘s a difference, you know.”
The Hatter looked at Emily. He seemed confused. He raised one finger into the air, and shouted, “Ahah! I’ve got it!” Once more he grabbed his pen and paper, and wrote “my” just before the word “shoes.”
Emily put her palm to her face. She was dismayed by the Hatter’s insistence that he was right. “Don’t you see,” she politely said, “It’s still not quite the same.”
“Zzzzz…What I think she means, Hatter,“ said the Cheshire Cat, who was still so fast he was asleep, “is that the word signifies those ugly little things on her feet, but no matter what you do, it’s still only a word. You can never actually write them, you can describe them and do this and that and, but no matter what you do with that pen and paper, it shall never be anything but words. Words, words, words! Meaningless things!” the cat cried. He then vanished in what seemed like a puff of logic. After all, this does seem the kind of place where logic is not allowed.
Alice, who was growing increasingly frustrated by this very silly conversation, once again asked the time.
“Well,” said the Hatter, “back in the day, when Time and I were very good friends, I was able to persuade him to altering the time to whatever I liked. However, we had a falling out. We quarrelled a bit, you see, after I was singing a song about him. Would you like to hear it? It’s important to the story!”
“I’m not sure we have the time,” said Alice.
“There’s always time, nowadays. You’ll understand that very soon!” he happily yelled. He went on with his story. “So I was singing a song about Time, as I was about to say-”
“You already said that; you said that before,” interrupted Alice.
“So as I was about to say, I was singing a song about Time,” reiterated the Hatter. “Perhaps you’ve heard it,” he went on, “it went a little something like this:
‘Twinkle, twinkle, little time!
Don’t you know you‘re so divine!’
Do you know this song?”
“It reminds me of another song I know, it’s very similar,” said Alice.
“It goes on for longer,” the Hatter said, “in this way:
‘All around the world you fly,
Like a spectre in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle – “
The Hatter suddenly stopped singing his song. He glanced about the room suspiciously. Then he whispered, “This is where everything started to go wrong! Mr Dodgson decided I must have murdered time, since I implied it’s a lot like a spectre – that’s a ghost, by the way – and so he suddenly screamed, ’Erase this hideous madman! He’s Murdering the time!’”
“Oh, good gosh!” exclaimed Emily and Alice together. Alice looked at Emily and said, “perhaps we don’t want to find him, I don’t want to be erased!” She seemed genuinely scared by the idea.
“And ever since that day,” the Hatter went on in a sombre tone, “It’s been stuck at six o’clock for me.”
“Why did Dodgson react so cruelly?” asked Emily.
“Well, I was looking for my Author, and once I had figured out that this was his library, I thought he could help me,” said the Hatter.
“Wait!” cried Alice, “I’m looking for my Author right now!”
“Funny place to look for him,” snarled the Hatter. His voice dropped and he said, “And between you and me, I’d stop looking now. Dodgson has some weird secrets he’s trying to hide. He’s a total madman!”
“So what made you stop looking? And does this mean you don’t know where Carroll is?” Alice asked.
“There is incongruously no point in searching for him!” said Humpty Dumpty, who had been quiet until this point.
“Because there is never any time anymore! It’s always six o’clock, which is also dinner time. I just don’t have the time to look for him, and I don’t even have the time to wash up after dinner! We have to just keep rotating around the table so we can keep having dinner,” interrupted the Hatter. “Wait,” he continued, “why are you searching for Carroll? You may as well be searching for me or Humpty!”
“Speaking of Humpty,” said Emily as she turned to face the eccentric egg, “what’d you mean by there is “incongruously” no point in her searching for her Author?”
“I meant “there’s a definitely a hundred percent certainty that there is,” said Humpty Dumpty contemptuously.
“But that isn’t what “incongruously” means!” cried Emily.
“Incorrect!” Humpty scornfully declared, “for when I use a word it means whatever I wish it to mean!”
“Stop distracting me with your irrelevant garbage,” boomed Alice, and all of a sudden everyone went silent. There was something strangely scary about a grumpy young girl yelling so ludicrously loudly. “We were obviously about to find out something very important about my Author,” she continued, “and you two went and distracted me with your nonsensical ramblings about words! Who cares? They’re only words. They mean what they mean.”
“Hmmphh,” said Humpty, “perhaps you forget that “Author” is just a word as well!”
“Shut up with your nonsense!” interrupted Alice. She sighed and said, “Hatter, what were you about to tell me?”
“Carroll is but another character!” chortled the Hatter, “that’s why you may as well be looking for me.”
“…What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“I mean what I say,” replied the Hatter.
“But Carroll is the Author,” insisted Alice, “and I need him to tell me how my story ends! To find out who I am, where I’m going, why I’m here.
“It’s a pseudonym,” replied the Hatter, “he made it up by translating his first two names back into English from Latin and reversing their order.”
Thud! Thud! Thud!A ruckus developed outside the cafeteria.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Bang!The door flew open. A tall, thin man stood in the door way. His name was Charles Dodgson.
“The table is full!“ screamed the Wonderland characters. “Oh dear! Dodgson will surely erase us all!” whispered the Hatter, more to himself than to anyone else.
“But he’s not Dodgson!” yelped Alice, “Dodgson is short and stout!”
“It’s his library, my dear,” said the Hatter, “and he does as he wishes and he wishes to be many.”
“W-w-what are you doing here?” screamed Dodgson, “don’t you know this is my library?”
“Mr Dodgson,” said Alice loudly and confidently, “you’re my Author! Please may you tell me how my story finishes? And why is there many of you?”
“Your story was meant to end some time ago,” snarled Dodgson. “Also,” he continued, “it’s not like there is only one of you, either! Why, otherwise you wouldn’t be here!”
“What do you mean?” asked Alice.
“Does it matter? This is your story, not mine,” he replied.
“But what do I mean? How does this finish?” enquired Alice frantically.
“Well,” said Humpty dryly, “if you used words as well as me, you’d mean whatever you like!”
“But words are just words!” cried Alice.
“Until someone else decides they mean something,” quipped Emily.
Humpty looked at Alice and smiled. He said, “finished is also just a word.”
The Hatter eyed Alice curiously, and leant close to her. “Well, between me and you,” he said, “and that means that this is a secret, Dodgson wrote Carroll.”
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