When the dance ball was over, boys and girls sat together around the fireplace. The piano girl, Linda, had already left, so the great hall was covered by vague voices. That was the first time I saw Alice. She was there yet wasn’t there, listening, to the indistinguishable silence between flickering voices.

Yet there were some times that all of a sudden I realized that I’d seen Alice somewhere else. At least once, when I was in a cell biology class. It is said that one single influx of around 6000 sodium ions, a millionth of the total amount around, into a neural cell could be enough to initiate a neural impulse, which could lead to anything, literally, anything. Maybe some never carried-out intentions, or, a frozen kiss, or merely, a piece of melancholy. And I was one of the sodium ions. There were infinite possible moves that I could take before all of a sudden a channel opened, irreversibly propelling all nearby sodium ions into the cell, where a chain of reactions kept piling upon my knees. That was how I saw Alice again. In the billionth of the milliseconds that I was in the channel, I saw Alice. She was a girl, yet a woman, yet an old lady, and yet, an angel.


In homage to Lewis Carroll and Woody Allen.