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| San Francisco garter snake, an endangered species |
March 27, 2016
‘The
inanimate becomes animate.’
– Alia Volz, Snakebit
Mutability and
chaos. Change. Shedding of a skin, the slithering sinuous amidst the
still and hiding plants. The danger of the unknown.
Snakes and reptiles
contain the unknown, display it to us. They are mobile, alive. They
share with us the ranging search of the eye, the gnawing need of the
gut. They are very much like us.
At once they are
utterly strange. The clawed feet of the lizard, his alien pupils and
shambling gate. To say nothing of the slither of the snake, writhing,
out of our mind’s reach. We may watch one part but not take in the
whole. Their vestigial limbs long since withdrawn inside themselves.
Their eyes, while we share similar features, hold a darkness like a
cave that spreads, past what their small heads ought to contain,
opening onto the cavernous interior of the earth.
