fAUNA / through the looking glass

‘This must be the wood, she said thoughtfully to herself, ‘where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of my name when I go in?

Photo by Pablo Koury @whynalog

She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: ‘for I certainly won’t go back,’ she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square. 

‘This must be the wood, she said thoughtfully to herself, ‘where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of my name when I go in? I shouldn’t like to lose it at all— because they’d have to give me another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be, trying to find the creature that had got my old name! 

‘Then it really has happened, after all! And how, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!’ 

‘I should see the garden far better,’ said Alice to herself 

I’m not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again— back into the old room—and there’d be an end of all my adventures!’ 

This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle. 

‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, ‘I wish you could talk!’ 

‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: ‘when there’s anybody worth talking to.’ 

‘And can all the flowers talk?’ 

‘As well as you can,’ said the Tiger-lily. ‘And a great deal louder.’ 

There’s one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,’ said the Rose. ‘I wonder how you do it— ’

‘Is she like me?’ Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, ‘There’s another little girl in the garden, somewhere!’ 

‘Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,’ the Rose said, ‘but she’s redder— and her petals are shorter, I think.’ 

‘Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,’ the Tiger-lily interrupted: ‘not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.’ 

‘But that’s not your fault,’ the Rose added kindly: ‘you’re beginning to fade, you know— and then one can’t help one’s petals getting a little untidy.’ 

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” And when they wake up in the summer, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about— when- ever the wind blows.

You know very well you’re not real.’ 

‘I am real!’ said Alice and began to cry. 

‘You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying,’ ‘there’s nothing to cry about.’ 

‘If I wasn’t real,’ Alice said—half-laughing though her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous— ‘I shouldn’t be able to cry.’ 

‘Are you animal— vegetable— or mineral?’ 

‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,’ she said to herself, ‘unless— unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream,’ 

– let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. 


Analog photography by Pablo Koury @whynalog.

Texts from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

Interpretation by Małgorzata Suś.

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