The Rabbit Hole

 

This is my homage to Alice in Wonderland, and the perennial problem of not being able to keep our attention on the important things.  As you may remember, the book begins with Alice yawning at how boring her studies are, when she sees a white rabbit with a pocket watch.  She follows him down a rabbit hole and the story gets weirder from there. 

Paying attention seems to be getting more difficult for us all, and has only gotten worse with all our devices and gizmos, our media and social media, to distract us.  I’m sure many of us are getting to the point, where we just want to throw up our hands, and allow ourselves to slide down the rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole is also a commonly used expression, for the way in which computer algorithms on social media and elsewhere take us to places we had absolutely no intention of going to.  A great series of podcasts on this phenomenon is  the NYT Times series Rabbit Hole. 

The feeling of being drugged or hypnotized, as ones attention is fed morsel after morsel of tantalizing content, is familiar to many of us.  And we find ourselves compelled to follow the breadcrumbs, where ever they may lead us…

Don’t know the answer to this problem, but it is certainly hard to deny that it is, indeed, a problem.  Enjoy!

 

I put the pieces on the chest.

I put them in a row.

I mean to solve this puzzle—

Down the rabbit hole I go.

 

I sort by colors, recognize

An image, here, or there.

But soon, if I don’t watch myself,

I’m hunting for a hare.

 

I raise a book to scan the words,

To study, learn and grow.

My mind has swiftly gone a-miss,

And down the hole I go.

 

Oh, what will help me concentrate?

What potion, cake, or air?

No matter what I mean to do,

I’m hunting for a hare.

 

Copyright 2020 Andrea LeDew

 

For another poem on Social Media, read Like.