Beware the Jabberwocky
You created him. Now he wants to destroy you.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Lewis Carroll’s story of Alice in Wonderland has always held a special place in my heart. An unbridled adventure through the delight and the darkness of a child’s imagination.
I didn’t actually read the book until University. Like a true 80s kid, my experience of the story comes from a VHS tape of the 1985, star-studded tv special on CBS. It was Alice 2.0, and included many of Carroll’s other works and characters in the storytelling. We didn’t have a VCR, but I had this one friend whose parents taped it. Everytime I went over there I begged her to put it on so we could act it out. I was always Alice, except for the scene where Carol Channing played the white Queen, then I was her instead.
I totally got Alice. How her imagination would run away from her and create chaos, despite her best efforts to tame herself. Everytime she got led down the rabbit hole, and let herself succumb to her childish joy, something terrifying would happen, and she would have to run.
For the past few months, I have been grappling with what my therapist calls an emotional…
