Cheila Rodrigues

"The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookha out of its mouth, and adressed her in a languid, sleepy voice'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I-I hardly know, sir, just as present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.''What do you mean by that?' Said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!''I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.'"
Lewis Carrol in Alice in Wonderland

My name is not Alice, at least I'm sure of that.

In a hot morning of July I was born in Leiria, at an old hospital that still rests by the Lis river. My home town is full of oak trees, and pines, and an everlasting castle that posesseses all the city, all the places... Those are the things I still carry inside of me, the peace of the low waters, the pollen's mark everywhere. My childhood was the most suitable world, a dream that only existed because of my innocence, magic and fantasy, breathing, hidden, even from me. I grew up near by my beloved grandmother, who took me into gardens, stories, and the far most important thing in my life, poetry. It was her as well that taught me to paint. I will always feel this debt towards her, and I will always embrace that memory of happiness for itself, and truth at its most elevated state.

The years kept passing by as the waters of the Lis. soon, not only the mirror told me how I was different from myself, but everything, inside or outside, for good and for bad, I was different. Much more different than the others, those who danced in circles, around my life, ghosts - still dancing by my grave.

and "Oh, the guilt", those years, those scars I drew around my days, madness and sadness, revolt inside my head. Those arrows that I was so eager to throw at something, as I wanted to throw the guilt at someone else. Someone who deserved it, who reclaimed it and back then couldn't afford to keep it. All those crossroads within my brain took me to places and journeys that have drawn, with the pencil of my childhood, the admirable net between the great decadence of any human, the imagination stuck inside, the need for shelter. And my shelter would be Unconsciousness. Travelling inside, I could again breathe freely, and run sincerely, without the need to impress or to avoid any contact. My golden silence echoed night after night in my head. I could hear it, and feel myself growing, blooming.

For everyone comes a lifetime experience that most of the people don't quite notice. It is the Enigma of Life. My enigma turned out to be the same one as Alice's. There was a wise Caterpillar smoking something new near to my mushroom. I was watching the clouds in their mutant parade, when the smell of smoke came to me. I looked into the caterpillar's eyes, and from its smooth voice I heard the words 'who are you?'. The question still haunts me. it still remains untouched. Who am I?

I share the same confusing feeling with Alice. All my short and distorted life I have been running after The White Rabit of Time, of Illusion. I have been drowned in my own pool of tears, and i fought my own batles against the Cheshire Cat inside of me, always finding a new way to lose myself. I have been the bad weed between the shining flowers. I have been the curiosity that burns forever in my eyes. Oh, and how hard I tried many times to explain myself to the caterpillar, even if it was just to answer myself in the end. I've been everything, like air and water, that common feeling of pagan peace. I've been blind with faith like a nun. But most of all I've been the other Alice, the one that didn't wake up at the end of the story. The one that never came out of the garden.

The leaves of my early youth are falling in my head.

Who am I still?
Who am I again?



Cheila S Collaço Rodrigues