Where did Alice go?

There is a magisterial poem in The Hayflick Limit where Matthew Tierney runs the gamut on the ages of man by following the metamorphoses of a character in body and attire. It is fittingly called "Age of Majority". I like to see such prowess as conditioned by some lines from one of the earlier phobia poems — "Aulophobia" — fear of flutes which cautions us on how we read.

We follow symbolism at our own risk
to the hippocampus,

down rabbit holes, unearthing
dark incidents.

See what the warning achieves in these concluding lines to the initial section to the story of Ray in "Age of Majority":

Life was loosening its middle; memories popped
into pneumatic tubes: TURNING POINTS, ANECDOTES,
REGRETS, etc., hither and thither before the shink
of keys to the convertible sent
a flush right to his prostate.

Hippocampus in overdrive? At what risk?

And so for day 1646
16.06.2011