Sphinxes
It was always in mirrors that we contrived to see another world, because what we really wanted to see was a world that reflected our own. How shocking and disturbing then, when it was discovered one day that it was not through mirrors but through chalkboards that another world was to be found.
In we went, in hordes and droves, to see what Alice saw. We went to find our Cheshire Cats and learn our lessons. We went to return home safely and tell the story. We went for the reasons we went to the moon – because it was certain, and because it meant progress.
But the world of the chalkboards was entirely green, and in blackboards entirely black. This was most discouraging, to find a world that was only color and space, where there was no Moral and no Cat. It must have been especially dispiriting to those who went into blackboards––a sort of existential trip into the void––but I myself entered an ordinary green chalkboard, and had at least the imaginary comfort of thick vegetation. Or maybe it was more the comfort of color implying solidity and dimensionality where blackness suggested empty space.
The news was chock-full of chalkboard stories. Politicians debated whether it would be ethical or not to put all the criminals into a chalkboard and lock it away. Common folks argued whether this new world was worth settling themselves. No bills, no groceries, no government, no worries.
There was some concern when chalkboards began flooding into the United States from the poorer countries manufacturing them, whether any of the chalkboards might be full of illegal immigrants.
Somewhere far away, a group of Buddhist Monks who had renounced the world came back into the cities and begged until they could pay for a chalkboard to share. Then away they went again, completely away.
Sooner or later people got the idea of drawing on the chalkboards before going in. The news interviewed the man who supposedly thought of this first. “Well, I guess I was smart just to draw a little house with no people,” he said. “And I drew a garden with some pretty flowers.” The flowers didn't smell, it turned out, but it was a safe step forward.
A little boy in Maryland drew a lion and pushed in his brother, who had taken his toy. Then when the lion ate his brother, he cried. The local fire department came, drew a cage around the lion, and went in after the boy. They opened up the lion and brought the boy back safely.
New York City tried to do something for its homeless by putting up large chalkboards for them to sleep in at night. However, they took them down after only a few nights after problems with people drawing bars and other disturbances around the sleeping homeless. One chalkboard depicted giant clowns sitting on the homeless as they slept. A police officer, trying to free them by erasing the clowns, accidentally erased a homeless man's arm. He tried to draw it back on again, but it didn't stick when the man came out.
Not knowing what to make of it all, I drew a stick-man on my chalkboard and stepped in to ask him for his advice. I suppose it was since I drew him, that he spoke my language and thought like me. Quite a stimulating conversation we had, he and I. The world there was shapeless and empty, but we could suit ourselves by drawing it up however we liked, provided our skill with a piece of chalk. In the end, the world there was smaller, not bigger, than ours.
Sooner or later, most people arrived at the same conclusion. When public stunts and public issues settled down, people turned to their chalkboards for more personal concerns. But the hammocks didn't swing, the piña coladas didn't taste, and the sand didn't warm up, or sift through the toes. So it was mazes or obstacle courses we drew instead; or sphinxes we imagined, with riddles and wisdoms we could picture them saying. This was our Wonderland. Finally, we had our looking-glass.
I was talking with my stick-man one day, whom I never had the heart to erase. “In the end,” he was saying to me, “your Cheshire Cats and Sphinxes are all the same. They're just cats with your heads or your brains.” “But what else are we to draw?” I asked. “What else are we to learn from?” “Nothing, perhaps,” he said, “But it does seem worth knowing that the myth, the wonder, the adventure, and all the lessons and morals you imagine are already out there, already knowable.” “Even this story?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied, “Even this story.”
