1749: the myth of Alice
From The Little Book of Foibles
Alice found herself falling once again, but this time it was not down a rabbit hole but into something far more peculiar: the inside of an ancient trunk. It was a long descent, filled not with darkness but with shelves—endless shelves stretching into a corridor that seemed to undulate like a river of books. Along the way, she glimpsed fleeting images: a skater skating on a lake made of ink, a clock-ticking tree whose hands pointed nowhere, and a fox reading a letter from a chimney sweep.
At the end of this seemingly infinite corridor sat a small wooden chest, no larger than a breadbox, nestled quietly on a shelf that looked as old as time itself. Curiosity, as ever, propelling her, Alice opened the chest—and was met with a small door. Without hesitation, she turned the tiny brass knob and stepped through.
On the other side, a garden bloomed under a sun that shone with a gentle wisdom. The garden was lush with flowers that whispered secrets and trees that hummed low songs. And there, gathered in merry disorder, was a group of people laughing with such joy and abandon that their sound seemed to ripple through the air like a chiming bell.
“They’re laughing at us,” one of the figures said, eyes twinkling with mirth, “those ancestors of ours who believed in the myths of domination and cosmic exceptionalism.”
“Absurd,” chimed another, and with this, the laughter grew louder, echoing over the garden as if brushing away dust from old stories left forgotten.
Alice, half in wonder and half in delight, realised that she had stumbled upon a place where the old legends unraveled and where new stories—lighter, freer, and far more hopeful—were crowned instead.
In that garden beyond the trunk’s door, the old order was not mocked out of spite but shed for the simple recognition that perhaps the cosmos is less about hierarchy and more about the joyous dance of being, connected wholly by laughter and shared understanding.
And just like that, Alice felt herself begin to rise back, gently ascending through the corridor of shelves, the chest, the trunk, and the hope that comes from laughter heard at the heart of all things.
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