Dear L,
I’ve also been thinking about snakes. Absently, I find myself drawing them—
To loop. To coil.
—picturing their perfect funneling, my imperfect lines.
Somewhere they have my attention. There is something there.
It’s not enough to just apply the ouroboros; neither Tiresias’ strike, his/her blindness, or his/her/his (growing and shrinking) breasts; nor my mother’s acute fear; nor psychoanalysis’ tiresome assertions, for example. No, somewhat traceable here, but beyond and through.
So now I am in the desert. You got me here. Lofty sky.
Thinking heat. Thinking of rocks, of a landscape resembling a snake’s hide; coming to be called for it, in fact.
To be like the serpent.
I am thinking of geology—pressure and time—incubating conditions.
And I think of the baby.
Not the baby’s booties this time, but your nipple cast in bronze. And of the body and skin. And now of patina.
And of how the snake moves
for us.
Love,
k
text by Katrina Niebergal