Why I Stick My Head Down Rabbit Holes

By Paolo Poquiz

Do you remember the last time you fell into a fantasy realm? It happens to everyone, all the time, crawling into a strange corner of the pillow fort or selling your baby brother to the goblin king (shout out Jennifer Connelly). Children find themselves in these faraway lands, befriending monsters and saving kingdoms. Where do we think we learned that grown-up rules like gender and geometry are silly nonsense? That we control these ‘facts’ just like we control anything else we dream up? School? Nah–those lessons were learned by fraternizing with lions that are actually Jesus and androgynous art rock demons (shout out David Bowie). 

But then we grow up, we forget that hard-fought wisdom, and we stop visiting the world of magic. As we develop logical reasoning and daddy issues, do we lose the innocence needed to step foot in the world of the abstract? Can we no longer face darkness incarnate by stabbing it through the eyes or hurting its feelings? Or maybe some kind of false purity is gained as our growing ego thinks itself better than the raw id of nature where the wild things are (shout out Ludo)…

I don’t remember where I went or what I did in the adventures of my youth. Sometimes I get a strong twinge of yearning when I see pictures of a zebra, and I think, what if long ago a zebra was my trusted mentor or a long-lost love? It breaks my heart to think of the discoveries I have lost, so I’m looking for a way back into my dreamworld. But every time I try getting shrooms, people keep selling me shiitakes, and I’m too lazy to read Gloria Anzaldua, so I’m trying to find the entrance I wandered through when I was little. If you see me opening random doors in the library, or wading through the misty woods by the freeway, or convincing my parents to make me a baby brother so I can sell him to the goblin king (again, shout out Jennifer Connelly) don’t be alarmed. I’m just looking for a path back home.