Cobra Venom

Posted on June 22, 2005 in Creatures Routine Uncertainty

Lifelessness does not describe nor stand as a metaphor for it. Nor does depressed. I am full of life, but not that kind of life which causes one’s feet to dance or walk all over the place; nor that kind which makes one sing or delight others with one’s mere presence in a crowd. Boring might be the word that people on the outside append to me. I am not bored though I am not productive nor witty. Lazy could fit. A better one is lassitude.

Lassitude is what the venom of the cobra wreaks on you. If I were to be poisoned, it should be by a cobra bite. Survivors describe the experience as warmly pleasant, a yellow dream that you drift through. No wonder that the snake was associated with gods and kings or that white men paused as they saw Indian magicians charm them in the streets of Bombay. The poison of the rattlesnake, I understand, beats the interior of the body far more brutally and I won’t ask about the sea snake.

Yes, it’s been a week where snakes have entered my dazes and I wondered why I hadn’t written anything of consequence for months.