The Courage To Be Disliked

 "Have the courage to be disliked" says Fraya Mortensen in a Youtube video that tumbled into my pathway this morning. I'd never heard of her before, but that's synchronicity for you; when you need to be told a thing someone or something will make sure you get the message.

Yeah, there are people who dislike me, most hurtfully members of my own family, but so what? That's their business. Nothing to do with me. And the worst thing I can do is bend to their opinion and put on an act to make myself more likeable. It's better to be disliked than inauthentic. Everything that happens in the world is neutral- just energy playing itself out- and it's I who accord value to it and call it good or bad and feel it as good or bad. This is a hard saying- but something the very wise- especially in the Buddhist tradition- have been saying since forever. 

Never resent, never explain, just be the Truth that is baked into your clay.

You have limitations. Accept them.

Alices

 John Tenniel's illustrations to the Alice books are definitive- and all the artists who have come after him have worked in his shadow. In spite of that there have been a lot of them.

The very first illustrator, preceding Tenniel, was Lewis Carroll himself. His pictures weren't for public consumption but accompanied the MS of what was then entitled Alice's Adventures Underground. They are amateur but spirited. Here's how he chose to picture Alice- as a pre-Raphaelite maiden with long tangly locks....



There are some real oddities in the bunch. Mabel Lucie Atwell, purveyor of chubby, rosy-cheeked children to the Middle classes, had a go. Here's her White Rabbit- cute and unthreatening



And here- at the opposite extreme- is Salvador Dali's White Rabbit- who seems intent on biting your head off. "Mary Ann, Mary Ann, fetch me my gloves this moment". Dali's Alice is not to be parted from her skipping rope. She has it in all his pix. And why not?



The greatest and most influential illustrator post-Tenniel is Arthur Rackham. He updates Alice to his own Edwardian era- and his compositions are mostly crowded and unsettling. Here's the Duchess in her kitchen with the cook lobbing dishes at her. Cool!



Finally back to basics. Here's one of Lewis Carroll's photographs of the girl who inspired the stories,  Alice Pleasance Liddell. I was asked why the Alice in my AI illustrations wasn't blonde- and this is the answer.....