obsessssion

(If snakes make you squeamish, you might want to skip this one…)

Unfinished drawing of a saw-scaled viper I started a few years ago.

My grandmother had a small figurine of the virgin Mary. (She had a beautiful crystal rosary, too. She was tiny and quiet and very Catholic.) Mary was dressed in loose blue and white garments. Under her bare feet lay a green snake. Symbolizing, I guess, victory over Satan. (Poor snakes, so maligned.) I was fascinated by the proximity of the woman to the serpent. Scales and skin, touching.

In grade school, our class took a field trip to Brookfield Zoo. In the reptile house, as the class moved on, I was left standing alone in front of a glass enclosure housing a tangle of snakes. I stood there and stared. For a very long time. Eventually, one of the snakes rose to meet my gaze. In hindsight, I realize that she may have felt threatened. I was directing a lot of energy toward them, when they were accustomed to a bunch of unruly idiots tapping on the glass and leaving quickly. But threatened or not (I hope not) she saw me.

(I eventually swore off zoos. I cannot bear to see animals in captivity. It’s wrong and cruel. I don’t care how you spin it. We wouldn’t want to be held in captivity and neither do they.)

I dream about snakes. I’ve dreamt about them all my life. Most of the dreams are frightening, but some are magical. Once, I dreamt I was in a forest, surrounded by a circle of various wild animals. I was in the center, face to face with a snake, periscoped to my height. She was there to impart wisdom. (I wish I remembered the wisdom. I could use it.)

In Colorado, my husband and I went for a walk in Garden of the Gods. It’s a place full of glowy gold and russet rock formations, steep hills and tall dry grasses. We were near a gravel parking lot, newly set out on a trail. There was a rattle. I knew immediately what it was. It was loud. Constant. We froze and looked around. One of us spotted her in the grass to the right. Coiled, triangular head raised. Not close enough to be a threat (though if she’d have chased us, we’d have bolted). We stood there, transfixed. My heart sputtered. We stayed, and eventually, she relaxed, stopped rattling, and dropped back into the grass. I wondered if we walked a very wide circle around her if we could pass. We took one step forward and she snapped back up, warning us again. We ceded the trail.

I imagine snakes in all kinds of places. On vacation in Sedona, in the casita where we stayed, I could visualize a large snake crossing the shelf over the fireplace. I could hear the soft thud of her muscular body dropping to the hearth below. (There was no snake. But there could have been.)

There are (theoretically) no snakes in Hawaii (occasionally, one is found and it’s big news). Still. When we walk along the paths, I look for them. It’s automatic. It just seems like somewhere they’d be.

In the television series Tales of the Unexpected (circa 1980) there was a venomous snake in bed with a man and he couldn’t move and risk scaring the snake. A krait. (Though I think just his sweatiness and hard breathing would have been enough to annoy the krait.)

I’m impressionable in general, but with snake stories? That times a thousand.

In the show Battlestar Galactica (the remake that began in 2004), there was a prophecy about a dying leader with visions of serpents.

In the book Madeleine’s Ghost by Robert Girardi, there was a child with “unfocused spiritual powers.” At night, multi-colored venomous snakes slept amicably entwined in her hair.

There’s an absolutely bonkers video in which a hatchling iguana is pursued by numerous racer snakes, is caught, and miraculously escapes. The astonishing footage was filmed in the Galapagos, courtesy of the BBC and Planet Earth II. (Here’s the link if you want to watch it. Don’t forget to breathe.)

In Geena Davis’s autobiography, Dying of Politeness, she tells the story of walking away from her group in Africa and encountering a snake who was “kind of…standing up.” She took a few slow steps toward the snake just to prove she was brave enough to do it. The snake did nothing but assess her. When she recounted the story to her guides, they told her the snake she saw was a spitting cobra.

There are more vignettes baked into my consciousness. So many more.

“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

(Dragons! Note the similarity!)

Snakes are symbols of rebirth, transformation, and healing. These are all things I want. Things I need. Maybe I know instinctively that power and peace are on the other side of the door. There’s a snake there, on the threshold. A friend. A scary friend, but a friend nonetheless.