So my wife received this journal in the mail today as part of an Alice In Wonderland themed knitting kit packaged from Woolgirl. Since I'm always looking for notebooks to write in, she gave it to me, as she did earlier with the Cowardly Lion journal she received.
Alice In Wonderland is one of those stories filled with incidental yet highly memorable characters. I was surprised that some kind of online quiz asking "Which Alice Character Are You?"did not find it's way to me before the release of the Tim Burton movie. It seems like the kind of story made for those kinds of how-I-see-myself, how-I-think-others-see-me, how-others-actually-see-me types of personality tests.
Had one come my way, I would not have been caught off guard to see the results as follows: The Cheshire Cat has long been my favourite character, since I love the ambiguity and doubt that seems to trail after him wherever he goes. Philosophically these are the kinds of things that interest me: the limits of certainty and measurements, the boundaries of what can be known and what is necessarily unknowable.
My professional work often leaves me in the role of kind of guide, so I would hope that people would see me in the role of the White Rabbit. However, my fear is that too often my appreciation of doubt and ambiguity, along with my willingness to push conceptual boundaries, leaves people viewing me as the Mad Hatter.
In fact, no sooner had I explained this to my wife, than my daughter came bouncing into the room to discover that the Mad Hatter journal was mine. "Of course," she laughed, "because Daddy's madder than a hatter!"
Is it really that obvious?
