OOH LA LA

Down the Rabbit Hole

Burrowing life away

I have my own special rabbit hole next to my desk.

It has a small opening, like any rabbit hole, and if I’m not careful a wheel on my office chair will go kerplunk down into it. I’m very mindful of this hole, unlike other parts of my life. This is because of how seductive this quiet tunnel is — such a curious lure. Ooh la la.

People didn’t have their own rabbit holes when I was growing up. They were only for rabbits. You couldn’t get down into one if you tried. These days we all have one — a personal underground burrow for our very own. And they’re filled with glorious rabbits.

Incredibly, our scads of personal rabbit holes are all populated with the same set of rabbits, even though our respective holes are situated around the world. Such is the wonderfully interconnected world of the rabbit underground!

The world of the bunny

The other day I went into this funky little hole next to my desk as I do every day. I squeezed myself into the opening and — swoosh — got sucked down with barely an effort on my part. The rabbit hole is a vacuum of fun — a simple slurp of my body and mind, and suddenly the world gives rise to countless bunnies of interest.

The first thing that happens once I land underground is I fail to notice I’ve arrived. It’s not a dream per se. It’s more of an abrupt edit in the film of my attention. The scene I’m watching goes from This Moment to Rabbit Hole. It would be a big abruption if I was aware of it. Instead, my mind is so well sunk into the underground that a tree root poking my side might as well be an earthquake down there for all I’d know.

There are so many nooks to explore. One of the most intriguing spots is the internet search engine room. There is a collection of renaissance bunnies here, but the one I seek is Google bunny. If you put your face very close to Google bunny’s, you can see the whiskers twitch and shiver around the nose. This draws you in and holds you, and you become suddenly fascinated with such a small fact of the world. Rather than do any other thing on the planet right then, you must learn all you can about these whiskers. Which you do, which is why you spend an impossible amount of time with Google bunny. You leave it only once you become a semi-expert on bunny whiskers, and life is fuller — but you’ll be back.

Endless options

There are even more fabulous nooks to spend time in underground, which I’m sure you well know. A favorite room is the social media room where every bunny and their brother pops in and out like constant Jack-in-the-Boxes. Up, down, up, down. The bunnies here hop around more than in any other room. You think it’s large fleas or furry crickets, but it’s genuine rabbits on speed.

You reach over to give Facebook bunny a nibble of food, which he likes a great deal and asks for more. So, you keep feeding him. Then you turn to Twitter bunny and Insta bunny. These wiggle their noses at you, and you can’t help yourself. How adorable and interesting. You feed them, too. So, it goes like this. Lots of bunnies seducing you to feed them. TikTok, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Reddit, LinkedIn, Discord. Many hungry bunnies, and so intoxicating to look at, listen to, speak with, and write to. You could be there all day! You practically are.

Time is short, though, which you haven’t a clue about, so you move on.

By this time, you have a need to acquire. There is a room for this, and it stocks everything in the whole world you could want. Amazon bunny owns this room, but Ebay bunny and many other extraneous rabbits skitter around like madcaps in circles. You know they’re not madcaps. They’re enterprising.

Should you get bored down in the hole, after shopping and acquiring, feeding the social rabbits, or searching to your heart’s content, there is always another set of bunnies to visit. The news bunnies always have something going on — murder, war, famine, politics, violence, pestilence — all good stuff. The email rabbits follow you around like an itch, popping up someplace on your body you haven’t already scratched. The YouTube bunny is for laughs, or gasps, depending. Wikipedia bunny tells you all kinds of things and then asks for a donation periodically. Finally, the Weather bunny is good for you whether you have weather or not. You always want more of it or less, and it always snuggles up to you for a soft kiss on the nose. These bunnies are our friends. We certainly spend time with them as if they are.

A tailored experience

What’s nifty about the rabbit hole is there is a telepathic connection among the rooms, an information phantasmagoria that makes the rabbit hole experience even more fantastic — if that were possible. All the rabbits are somehow related by tech blood and can sniff each other out swiftly and invisibly. This only helps the journey down into this hole be a comprehensive, tailored experience.

The rabbit hole grows on you. It becomes a mix of amusement and disquiet. There’s something down there for every emotion in you — and this can become a set point if you’d like — a natural inclination, a tendency. Up to you. You simply need to accept this is how it will be in the rabbit hole — ups and downs. Then you let yourself be taken away by its whims.

Or maybe not.

It’s true, when I come back up to my desk chair after having spent considerable time meandering down there, I feel unsettled — as if I don’t recognize my own life anymore. Am I distinct from the rabbits? Are the rabbits real life? If I’m unsettled asking myself these questions, I can easily remedy that with a little time back down in the hole. Familiarity breeds content, even if the familiar is discontent.

However, if I stop for just a moment, climb my way back out of the hole, heave my body back up onto my feet, and start to poke around, I slowly notice the big, wide world again. When I’m in the hole, it’s impossible to notice the most obvious fact of all. The rabbit hole is so tiny compared to everything outside of it. It seems expansive, but the truth is — it’s a small meandering timeless burrow.

I’ve decided I like the idea of being up here more than down there. This is a decision that sometimes needs support — bunnies are so bewitching! The more time I spend up here, the more I remember what it was like before we all had our own rabbit holes. It was lovely, and it was life.

This life:

And more life: