A CUP OF TEA IN WONDERLAND

Journalist and English professor Clovis, who won an Outstanding Book Award from the National Association of Black Journalists for an earlier book, returns with a poetic work.

A lot goes on at the Firestone Library at Princeton University, and not in the expected way. For starters, there are the “Virtual Library and Librarians,” who are “aware of your every move,” and “the aroma of an herbal tea at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, a racist and segregated place,” suggests upfront that readers will go down a rabbit hole into a world that is at once surrealistic and contemporary. You must “slow life down enough” to understand what you read in a work that brings together Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chess, and physics. At one point, “you find your body in the quantum field,” or being pulled through a chessboard floor by quantum forces. At another you are in Einstein’s classroom, a “special place” hidden on the Princeton campus. Abrupt surprises are in store as things take ever more surreal turns and readers are reminded that “space and time exist in dual waves and your mind will play tricks on you as you travel.” In addition to that black hole that opens up on a chessboard floor, there’s a reference to the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Readers without a basic grounding in physics and Lewis Carroll may feel lost until the book reveals that there’s a spiritual side to their journey: They must remember that “it is LOVE that allows us to step our way through.” They must also realize that “YOU are an endless blessing in being as ONE with God in synchronicity.”

With fewer than 100 pages, this ambitious work is brief. No sooner has the herbal tea at the Mad Hatter’s party been served than the adventure is just about over. The short length and fierce energy keep everything in sometimes-chaotic motion. All of it relates to “A beacon of light” that “shines through the darkness to comfort YOU called, insight, inspiration, and synchronicity in the flow of energy.” Amid clichés like that “beacon of light,” however, there’s plenty of food for thought in comments such as: “Becoming ONE with the Divine, YOU are transformed by this journey.” Some of the physics terms, like quantum field and quantum space, if essential to the author’s aims, may sail over the heads of nonscientific readers. At best, those terms only nod to science instead of giving a nuanced picture of it, and while the early reference to racism and segregation suggests that the work may be making a statement about them, it isn’t clear what it is. Similarly, the only piece of Einstein’s work that appears in the text (other than an allusion to relativity) is his most obvious equation: e=mc2. Its inclusion adds little to the story and may leave readers feeling that there must be more to be found in poking around Einstein’s classroom. Nevertheless, the book moves with lightning speed, and readers interested in cosmic questions will have a fast-paced opportunity to consider what it means to be “ONE with God in synchronicity.”

A quick if intellectually complex read describes a spiritual journey rooted in Einstein’s Princeton.