Alice In Wonderland | The Direction of Intention

Follow The Dream [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

As if the world was not topsy-turvy enough, last evening, just as the sun was setting, I opened the back door and was met with a wall of rising heat. The sun was going down and the temperature was going up!

We are in the land of Lewis Carroll. Logic spins like a wheel of fortune. Alice awoke from her Wonderland dream when she stood up to the Queen of Hearts. She awoke when she’d had enough of chaos and challenged the madness. It was a threshold moment, marking the passage into adulthood. Everything we need to know is in the story.

Do you remember Field of Dreams? “If you build it, he will come.” It’s a story of the power of following a dream no matter how irrational. Lately I’ve thought that our democracy is like the baseball field built in the middle of a cornfield. How irrational is it to imagine and then create a single nation, a field, that attracts and is home to people from all over the world! A nation where a wildly diverse populace governs itself. By the people, for the people, of the people. Build it and they will come.

Redemption is one of the themes of the movie. As is true in life, redemption for the characters comes after reconciling with their past. All of it: the good, the bad, the ugly. Redemption is a door that opens when a person or community – or nation – is brave enough to honestly look at and deal with the full scope of their history. There’s a good reason that Honesty is the first step in the twelve steps of addiction recovery. An honest reckoning opens the door to the pathway that leads to a second chance. It clears the vision, clarifies the dream.

Challenge the madness.

Say, “Enough!”

Get honest.

I took some small comfort when I read these words this morning: “…it’s never too late to reconcile with the past and find peace.” Follow the dream “…even when it seems impossible or irrational.”

“Go the distance.”

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read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CORN

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Filed under: KS Friday, Metaphor, Possibility | Tagged: adulthood, Alice In Wonderland, artistry, chaos, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, field of dreams, honesty, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, reconciliation, redemption, second chances, story, studio melange, the melange, you make a difference | 1 Comment »

Speak Truth To Rot [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 8, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The morning is cold and it snowed last night. The world is coated in white. A raucous murder of crows brought me to the kitchen window. I found the black birds cawing on the white snow both beautiful and foreboding. Edgar Allan Poe stepped in the room. Dostoyevsky. I have a dubious history with crows so they are at once fascinating and spine-chilling.

When I heard the crows I was reading about the fall of Rome. I’m not sure how I came to be reading about ancient Rome since I was searching for something else. I got snagged, followed the thread and went down a rabbit hole. I stopped on the phrase “political rot.” A poet’s phrase.

An Alice-in-Wonderland reference is apt for how I feel of the politics of our time: down a rabbit hole. Yesterday Kerri asked if a politician-in-the-news was a democrat or a republican and I answered, “I’m not sure anymore what a republican is…” Not an answer to her question; more a sad statement of our predicament. We will fall, like Rome, not because of the thunder-lies spewed by an angry man who would be emperor, but because of the complicity of those who remain silent so they, too, might stay in power. The very definition of political rot.

400 years separate Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. The first could no longer remain silent to the corruption of the church so he nailed his 95 Theses to the door. The second, Martin Luther King, could no longer remain silent to the horrors perpetuated on black citizens in “the land of the free…” For speaking out, Martin Luther was excommunicated by the church and condemned as an outlaw by the king. Martin Luther King was assassinated for giving voice to our national shame.

It takes courage to speak truth to rot. Rot never takes kindly to the voices of veracity.

Take heart. Rot always falls while truth reveals itself through the smoke and devastation.

Consider these words, spoken by Martin Luther and 400 years later by his namesake:

“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.” ~ Martin Luther

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

So much silence.

In my Roman read, two other phrases caught my eye, the very blossoms of political rot: “Civic pride waned…” and “Roman citizens lost their trust in leadership.” In complicit silence, history has no alternative but to repeat itself.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SILENCE

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Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Pattern, Perspective | Tagged: Alice In Wonderland, artistry, church, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democrat, Dostoyevsky, history, history repeats itself, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Martin Luther, martin luther king, MLK, poe, political rot, politics, republican, Roman Empire, Rome, rot, story, studio melange, The Fall of Rome, the melange, veracity | 1 Comment »

Listen To The Hatter [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 27, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

keep yo mouth shut copy

“I don’t think…”

“Then you shouldn’t talk!” said the Hatter

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The entire world is down the rabbit hole though, we citizens of the U.S.A., have fallen into a deeper darker hole. We’ve found a way-out-wacky cast of characters at the helm that challenge in strangeness the inhabitants of Wonderland. Truth, as it turns out, is much stranger than fiction.

Sometimes out of the mouth of madness comes a whisper of truth. If you do not first think, you should probably not talk. The Hatter’s advice is sage.

For kicks, I asked the mystic Google this question: What did Alice learn in Wonderland? It’s been a few years since I held her hand and went down the rabbit hole.

Alice learned that bullies are really two-dimensional and ultimately vapid. The pandemic is exposing our very own Queen of Hearts, a man who, like the Queen, gets his excitement from belittling others. Diminishing others is really the only card in a bully’s deck. Here we are.

Alice learned that a bully is powerless without the support of minions. So, to garner support, a healthy cadre of minions must also agree to be flat and loud but remain thought-free. As it turns out, minions are powerless without a bully. It’s a loop. Well. Here we are.

The Caterpillar asks Alice, “Who are you?” She has no answer. She finds herself in a wholly strange world. The rules of life as she understands them no longer apply. It is madness everywhere she looks. Yup. Here we are.

Her experiences with the madness expose who she is. That is my favorite of Alice’s lessons. Our madness is also exposing many things about us. It’s revealed the bully. It has called forward the courageous. It has uncovered the minions. It lays bare the deep cracks in our foundation. And, perhaps, to take some advice from the Hatter, since the bully and his crew has undermined science, morality, ethic, facts, jurisprudence, and is taking partisan bites from the constitution, it might be time for us to start thinking.

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.

“I won’t,” said Alice.

read Kerri’s blog post about Mouth Shut