Surviving Wonderland
Sarah Seymour
I.
The subdued glow of rising moonlight cast strange, beautiful shadows across the mint green walls of my bedroom—shadows I knew would later dance through my dreams and set fire to my imagination. I kicked off the bed sheets, allowing the warm breeze that fluttered through the curtains to cool my sticky skin and the wafting scent of grass and distant rain to relax my restless energy. The sweltering nights of late summer in the Midwest left me thirsty for sun tea and campfire stories under the stars. My grandmother, with her mess of short, black hair pulled back in a worn bandanna, sat at my bedside and read to me.
She read me all the fairy tales and myths she could find on my bookshelves—tales of wonder, adventure, and horror. My favorites were the Alice stories. Alice’s curious nature leading to her to unsettling places and characters, where all logic broke down and disorientation reigned. I would lie in bed with the nightlight long after my grandmother left the room, rehashing the tales, twisting them into my own. To me, these weren’t stories of fantasy that only lived in the imagination. They were real. They had happened, and they were still happening, all around us.
The moonlight, hitting at just the right angle through the window, shone like a spotlight, a searchlight. I pulled the covers over my head and curled into a ball, shutting out everything around me. As I drifted to that space just before sleep and dream, the stories began to blur together into a surreal landscape that overshadowed everything in my life and softened the always underlying anxiety—the cruelty of school and other children, losing possessions and people, the distance between me and my future. The small plot of woods behind my house became a tantalizing, living creature full of fairies, talking flowers, and magical rabbit holes, but also fraught with confusing riddles, monsters, and darkness. I stood at stalemate on the edge of those woods—lured by the mystery, terrified by the danger.
You see, we never actually see Alice fall asleep before she chased the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, yet in the end, her only escape from the unsettling, chaotic world of Wonderland was to wake up.
She read me all the fairy tales and myths she could find on my bookshelves—tales of wonder, adventure, and horror. My favorites were the Alice stories. Alice’s curious nature leading to her to unsettling places and characters, where all logic broke down and disorientation reigned. I would lie in bed with the nightlight long after my grandmother left the room, rehashing the tales, twisting them into my own. To me, these weren’t stories of fantasy that only lived in the imagination. They were real. They had happened, and they were still happening, all around us.
The moonlight, hitting at just the right angle through the window, shone like a spotlight, a searchlight. I pulled the covers over my head and curled into a ball, shutting out everything around me. As I drifted to that space just before sleep and dream, the stories began to blur together into a surreal landscape that overshadowed everything in my life and softened the always underlying anxiety—the cruelty of school and other children, losing possessions and people, the distance between me and my future. The small plot of woods behind my house became a tantalizing, living creature full of fairies, talking flowers, and magical rabbit holes, but also fraught with confusing riddles, monsters, and darkness. I stood at stalemate on the edge of those woods—lured by the mystery, terrified by the danger.
You see, we never actually see Alice fall asleep before she chased the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, yet in the end, her only escape from the unsettling, chaotic world of Wonderland was to wake up.
* * *
As a child, I did not believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, but I did believe in my own telekinetic power to open a garage door with my mind and wand.
At five years old, I stood in the doorway of our cluttered, grungy garage wearing a blue fairy dress, wand in hand, a star glued to the tip.
“Watch,” I told my mom, “I’m going to open the garage door.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and with all the concentration I could muster I pointed the wand at the door and opened my eyes. A second later the door began to lift.
“I did it!” I screamed, in shock.
My mother clapped enthusiastically.
I don’t remember when she finally admitted it, or if she ever actually did, but at some point, I knew that it was my mom who had, with sleight of hand, reached over and pushed the garage door opener by the door when I was deep in focused concentration. Though if she hadn’t admitted to pressing the button, when did I start believing that she had? And why?
Like most of my memories, this one bled into not quite fantasy, but something else entirely. Truth melted like candle wax, not changed, but transformed, reimagined. My past memories, everything that came before the present, lived in the same place as all my future memories. Not quite real, but impressing themselves on me all the same, like books and dreams and nightmares, like Wonderland.
At five years old, I stood in the doorway of our cluttered, grungy garage wearing a blue fairy dress, wand in hand, a star glued to the tip.
“Watch,” I told my mom, “I’m going to open the garage door.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and with all the concentration I could muster I pointed the wand at the door and opened my eyes. A second later the door began to lift.
“I did it!” I screamed, in shock.
My mother clapped enthusiastically.
I don’t remember when she finally admitted it, or if she ever actually did, but at some point, I knew that it was my mom who had, with sleight of hand, reached over and pushed the garage door opener by the door when I was deep in focused concentration. Though if she hadn’t admitted to pressing the button, when did I start believing that she had? And why?
Like most of my memories, this one bled into not quite fantasy, but something else entirely. Truth melted like candle wax, not changed, but transformed, reimagined. My past memories, everything that came before the present, lived in the same place as all my future memories. Not quite real, but impressing themselves on me all the same, like books and dreams and nightmares, like Wonderland.
* * *
Things I Believed Would Keep Me Safe from the World, When I Was a Kid:
- Lying in the grass under the moonless, dark sky on a clear, autumn night, talking to the stars and constellations.
- Camping in my yard, reading books with a flashlight until I passed out.
- The smell of smokey bonfires and the taste of gooey, roasted marshmallow.
- Thunderstorms and magic wands.
- Indiana Jones.
- Black holes.
- Halley’s Comet.
- School.
- The police.
- People I loved disappearing.
II.
We all huddled together under the moonless, cloudless sky and took turns looking at Andromeda through the telescope, then the Pleiades and Orion’s Nebula. A snowstorm had hit northern New Mexico the night before, which left treacherous roads but sublime conditions for looking into deep space. We sipped our peppermint cocoa and chatted about what brought us all together on those high, desert plains.
In the past several years, I had audited an astronomy lab at a local university in California, toured several major observatories across the country, and joined numerous star parties just like the one there in northern New Mexico. I wasn’t a student nor was I an astronomer. This made people curious as to why I was at these events and toured these places so far from my home.
“I’m a writer,” I always told people. “I’m writing a novel about astronomy.” It wasn’t entirely true, but true enough. I was writing a novel, but it wasn’t about astronomy, not really.
Most people were mildly curious and asked the dreaded question: What’s the story about? But on occasion, there was the outlier, the one person who would ask a few too many questions. Why astronomy? How does it play into the larger themes of the book? Do you understand enough to write from the perspective of an astronomer? I’d cringe and nod uncomfortably.
“Because the stars tell us stories,” I’d say. “They hold myths. They teach us. That’s really what the novel is about.”
I never told the truth, that I believed the stars could save us too, that I was waiting on them to tell me a secret that had never been told. That would have certainly led to more questions. That would have certainly made people suspicious.
I held the warm paper cup to my lips and smiled. In New Mexico, I could be anyone I wanted to be. I could tell these people anything. It was true that the stars held many stories, stories that had been passed down throughout history through mythology, but what I never talked about were the untold stories, the ones I struggled to hear when the world around me got too loud. The truth: I was there because I needed to communicate with the stars. I needed the time and space and silence to hear. The story I needed to tell was out there, so I stood like an antenna among them, waiting to pick it up.
In the past several years, I had audited an astronomy lab at a local university in California, toured several major observatories across the country, and joined numerous star parties just like the one there in northern New Mexico. I wasn’t a student nor was I an astronomer. This made people curious as to why I was at these events and toured these places so far from my home.
“I’m a writer,” I always told people. “I’m writing a novel about astronomy.” It wasn’t entirely true, but true enough. I was writing a novel, but it wasn’t about astronomy, not really.
Most people were mildly curious and asked the dreaded question: What’s the story about? But on occasion, there was the outlier, the one person who would ask a few too many questions. Why astronomy? How does it play into the larger themes of the book? Do you understand enough to write from the perspective of an astronomer? I’d cringe and nod uncomfortably.
“Because the stars tell us stories,” I’d say. “They hold myths. They teach us. That’s really what the novel is about.”
I never told the truth, that I believed the stars could save us too, that I was waiting on them to tell me a secret that had never been told. That would have certainly led to more questions. That would have certainly made people suspicious.
I held the warm paper cup to my lips and smiled. In New Mexico, I could be anyone I wanted to be. I could tell these people anything. It was true that the stars held many stories, stories that had been passed down throughout history through mythology, but what I never talked about were the untold stories, the ones I struggled to hear when the world around me got too loud. The truth: I was there because I needed to communicate with the stars. I needed the time and space and silence to hear. The story I needed to tell was out there, so I stood like an antenna among them, waiting to pick it up.
* * *
How to Survive Wonderland:
- Once all the windows have been nailed shut and covered with thick black bags that let no light in at all, hide outdoors in the gated yard where jasmine vines grow. You can hear the ocean crashing on ultra quiet nights.
- Make note of how a relationship gone sideways never once made it onto your list of things that terrified as a kid or adult. Wonder if it might be a subcategory under black holes—an unseen force, dragging you toward it, slowly pulling you apart.
- When Shelly, a girl of about twenty-one you hardly know, visits and sits next to you and cries, take her hand and squeeze it. Her long, messy blond hair comes down to her waist and she wears a sheer, silky dress with combat boots. She looks like a rag doll with bruises and scars down her arms.
- Point to the twinkling stars. Tell her that the twinkling is an illusion created by the atmosphere between you and there.
- Learn to twinkle like the stars. Become an illusion.
III.
I sat on the edge of the hard couch and rubbed my hands over the rough fabric of my jeans as the therapist asked me again.
“What’s your plan B?”
“Plan B?” I echoed. “I don’t have a plan B.”
When I had told her I had planned to leave California, to travel through India and Asia, and write, she smiled warmly and nodded. And instead of follow-up questions, she asked me about plan B. She asked me more questions about the sideways relationship as though it defined my very existence. I stared out the window at the sunny, tree-lined street, the picturesque cafés and boutiques, at the façade of a nightmare. My hands raw, my mouth dry, I stood and left her office. I walked out onto that sunny street, lined with those trees and those cafés and those boutiques, and into the first bookshop I saw. The smell of old books and burnt coffee enveloped me as though I’d just walked into a storybook. I meandered the aisles, running my fingers along the spines, occasionally pulling a random title and reading a few pages. So many stories, so many lives stretched across time and space. When the overwhelm and dizziness kicked in, I headed home.
The old, faded, nearly dilapidated Victorian house stood tall and menacing on the corner of my street, the turrets like eyes watching in all directions. Hoping I’d not cross paths with any of the other twelve tenants who lived there, I ran inside, up three flights of stairs, and through two locked doors with loose nobs. Back at my desk, I opened the file to the novel I’d started writing several years prior and read every word of it. It was a near forty-thousand-word mess of character sketches and scenes loosely bound, a plotless narrative that went nowhere at all—astronomy students, alien worlds, and mental illness, places and ideas and experiences I had no business writing about, or so I told myself.
I shut my computer and lapsed into an inconsolable crying fit. I didn’t open that file again for another three years. Following my curious nature across the country from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains to California, I had discovered beauty and horror. I had made a series of good and bad decisions that led me further down the rabbit hole, further into a Wonderland of incredible experiences and friendships, but also of confusion, disorientation, and waking nightmares. No one was going to save me from this tangled web, this mess of a life—not anyone or anything from this world anyway. The only way I was going to find my way out was to make up my own rules and write myself out of this nonsensical existence, where nothing felt safe.
Once the crying subsided, I quietly slipped from my room. I unhooked that latch that opened the trap door to the rooftop and climbed out onto the flat roof. I stretched myself out, arms and legs splayed. I stared at the starless, city sky and listened.
“What’s your plan B?”
“Plan B?” I echoed. “I don’t have a plan B.”
When I had told her I had planned to leave California, to travel through India and Asia, and write, she smiled warmly and nodded. And instead of follow-up questions, she asked me about plan B. She asked me more questions about the sideways relationship as though it defined my very existence. I stared out the window at the sunny, tree-lined street, the picturesque cafés and boutiques, at the façade of a nightmare. My hands raw, my mouth dry, I stood and left her office. I walked out onto that sunny street, lined with those trees and those cafés and those boutiques, and into the first bookshop I saw. The smell of old books and burnt coffee enveloped me as though I’d just walked into a storybook. I meandered the aisles, running my fingers along the spines, occasionally pulling a random title and reading a few pages. So many stories, so many lives stretched across time and space. When the overwhelm and dizziness kicked in, I headed home.
The old, faded, nearly dilapidated Victorian house stood tall and menacing on the corner of my street, the turrets like eyes watching in all directions. Hoping I’d not cross paths with any of the other twelve tenants who lived there, I ran inside, up three flights of stairs, and through two locked doors with loose nobs. Back at my desk, I opened the file to the novel I’d started writing several years prior and read every word of it. It was a near forty-thousand-word mess of character sketches and scenes loosely bound, a plotless narrative that went nowhere at all—astronomy students, alien worlds, and mental illness, places and ideas and experiences I had no business writing about, or so I told myself.
I shut my computer and lapsed into an inconsolable crying fit. I didn’t open that file again for another three years. Following my curious nature across the country from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains to California, I had discovered beauty and horror. I had made a series of good and bad decisions that led me further down the rabbit hole, further into a Wonderland of incredible experiences and friendships, but also of confusion, disorientation, and waking nightmares. No one was going to save me from this tangled web, this mess of a life—not anyone or anything from this world anyway. The only way I was going to find my way out was to make up my own rules and write myself out of this nonsensical existence, where nothing felt safe.
Once the crying subsided, I quietly slipped from my room. I unhooked that latch that opened the trap door to the rooftop and climbed out onto the flat roof. I stretched myself out, arms and legs splayed. I stared at the starless, city sky and listened.
* * *
How to Listen to Stars:
- The night before you escape, the night you move into the Victorian house, a portal opens. One of your best friends has an accident, leaving him in possession of a borrowed truck.
- Sadie flips over a series of tarot cards and tells you to read them. Tell her you don’t know how. You’ve never studied the Tarot. She presses her hand into your chest and nods and says: Yes, you do.
- Your friend Angela takes you by the shoulders and looks you in the eyes and tells you that one of your nameless, minor characters is whose story you need to be telling, that you need to give her a name and a voice and allow her to tell her story.
- Angela leans back under the tree filled with fairy lights and takes a long drag from her cigarette. She tells you that you need to give her a voice and tell her story because she is you, in a parallel life.
IV.
The wind picked up, and the snow piled around our feet began to blow upward. I tightened my coat and pulled my beanie down over my ears. Another round of hot cocoa was served. Our eyes turned skyward toward the band of Milky Way arcing overhead, blanketing everything below in a soft glow. To be engulfed in stars out there, in the high desert of northern New Mexico, left me breathless. So breathless that I became untethered to Earth, to my life, to my novel, and all those things that kept me locked in a story. I was floating in an unstructured, undefined existence that gave me more comfort than fear. There were no rules to adhere to in this liminal space where reality and fantasy blurred into something altogether new. A new kind of truth that just might allow me to walk through the world with more ease. Not the real world in all its horror, nor the unsettling strangeness of Wonderland, but somewhere between, where all the rules of reality and fairy tales that bind us no longer exist.
“When you look out into deep space, you’re looking into the distant past,” the guy standing next to the telescope said, shattering the silence of night. his hands on his hips as though he’d just said something profound.
Only if you believe in linear time.
“When you look out into deep space, you’re looking into the distant past,” the guy standing next to the telescope said, shattering the silence of night. his hands on his hips as though he’d just said something profound.
Only if you believe in linear time.
* * *
Waking Up (Or How to Defy Gravity)
- Stop taking advice from everyone around you. When they hold out their Eat Me and Drink Me signs, run. There are exceptions to this rule.
- Drink from starlight, especially the sun.
- When people ask you about writing, tell them you channel information from sunlight.
- Angela sits across from you in the diner booth, her short gray hair spiked, her eyes aflame with excitement. Your mocha steams between you, creating a haze. She tells you she’s signed up for a course on learning telekinesis. Tell her garage doors are a good place to start.
Sarah Seymour is a graduate of San Jose State University’s MFA program in fiction, and currently resides in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her most recent publications include the co-written essay “Solace and Saudade” in Aeon Magazine (July 2023) and her short story “Shooting Stars” in Within and Without Magazine (October 2023). She is actively writing a novel and a collection of short stories. You can also read her blog at: www.chasingfirefliesandmiracles.blogspot.com.