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InkTober 2017: Day 5 – Long

Snakes scare the crap out of me. Even looking at photos of them makes the hairs on my skin stand on end. So I question why my mind conjured up an image of a snake to illustrate the word ‘long’, which is today’s InkTober prompt. I’m not sure why they scare me so much, considering most snakes are harmless. Maybe it’s because as far back as I can remember, in movies, even in documentaries and television series, it’s usually the most deadly snakes shown. Typically, there are scenes wherein after being bitten by a snake (rattlesnake, cobra, black mamba, copperhead, or water moccasin) there’s always alarm and frenzied activity to search for an anti-venom to save a person’s life. So why wouldn’t I have this irrational fear?

In my lifetime, I’ve only seen snakes up close a few times – not counting those in zoo enclosures. The two incidents that stand out most in my mind were thankfully uneventful, but I still remember my over the top reactions. The first time was years ago, while vacationing in Miami and spending time in South Beach, which was not someplace I would have expected to run into a snake. We were walking along the main street and came upon a street performer whose entire act was having an albino python wrap itself around his neck, shoulders and upper body. When I first saw it I didn’t think it was real because the colour looked unnatural as it was almost a pale neon green-yellow.

The snake’s handler and I assume owner, talked to people as they walked along the sidewalk trying to convince them to take the snake from him and allow it to slither across their shoulders. There was a fee for that, which to me seemed insane to pay to have something cold and scaly move across one’s skin. He also charged a fee if passersby wanted to take a picture with him and that huge neon snake. When I finally realized it was real, I wanted to run to the other side of the street to get as far away from it as possible. I don’t remember anyone I was with taking a photo with or touching the snake but the image of its long scaly body hanging from its owner’s shoulders is burned vividly on my brain.

My next encounter with a snake was in a parking lot. I was out running errands one day and when I got out of my car and walked toward the building where I’d gone to pick up something, I saw a small group of people transfixed by an object on the paved ground. As I got closer, the long thin object moved and a few of the people became hysterical. When I saw it was a snake I stopped walking and froze on the spot where I stood. I could not move as I watched it slither around. I’m not sure how long I stood there contemplating what to do: should I get back in my car and drive away or should I wait for the snake to slither away so I could finish what I had come to do?

It turned out that I didn’t have to decide. A security guard had called animal control or some other organization – apparently the snake had been there for quite some time before I arrived –, and they showed up not long after my body and brain failed me. The animal control person pulled out a hooked pole and guided the snake into some sort of bag or net. He claimed whatever breed of snake it was it was harmless and based on its size was a baby, and not an abnormally long grass snake as someone in the crowd had speculated. Whichever it was, I was happy to see it scooped up and taken away so I could get on with my day.

So poisonous or not, long or short snakes scare me to the point of making me want to run away or become instantly paralyzed by fear. But it seems that drawing them doesn’t have much of an effect on me.

 

InkTober 2017: Day 4 – Underwater

I’m not the strongest swimmer. But I love swimming in open waters, preferably saltwater. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to swim in saltwater in an idyllic tropical setting. My Pain Specialists gave me the all-clear to travel with the hope that a different environment without the stresses and reminders of my daily life might be therapeutic. My family and friends hoped for the same, but also wanted me to have fun and get back to enjoying life the way I used to.

Unfortunately, contrary to the hopes of my doctors, family, and friends whom, I believe, all hoped that any time spent in tropical climes could have magical effects on my health; I didn’t have many improvements. In fact, the repeated force of large slapping waves pounding against my body as I walked out into the surf made my skin, lower abdomen, and lower limbs hurt. To avoid this I had to wade far enough out until the water covered my body up to my chin and I could tread water. But, being me, that wasn’t enough to satisfy the longing I’d had to play in open water.

My eagerness to plunge my body below the surface to escape the waves and lose myself in underwater play was not well thought out. As I cut through the water with my arms then arched my back and kicked my legs to propel my body forward and deeper below the surface my back and legs gave me a sharp warning. Swimming, even in the buoyancy of saltwater, can cause me more pain. Moreover, the hard kicking I had to do to bring myself back to the water’s surface and closer to the sandy shore forced me to use more energy within seconds than I used to get to the beach.

After learning this lesson, the time I spent in the water was more laidback. I floated on top of the water allowing the energy of the waves to move my body. When I used my own kinetic energy, I did slow backstrokes or treaded water so my head could bob above water. Then I spent hours sitting on the warm sand laughing and talking to my friend F with whom I had traveled. Although I would have liked to do more underwater exploring, I don’t have a single regret about that trip. If I did, it would be that it wasn’t longer.

 

InkTober 2017: Day 3 – Poison

The word ‘poison’ conjured up so many images – most of them literary. There was, of course, Juliet. According to Shakespeare, she pretended to end her life with poison because she couldn’t see any other way to be with Romeo whom she fell in love and married after knowing him for only a few days. Then she really had to end her life after, unbeknownst to him, her grieving new husband found her temporarily lifeless body and ended his own life because he couldn’t live without her. Definitely a tragic tale and probably Shakespeare’s best known. However, I prefer a more ancient tale of doomed young love that involves a slightly more complicated love story that ends in a similar fashion found within the pages of ‘Tristan and Iseult’. A medieval tale that became popular in the 12th century.

My mind then jumped to modern fairy tales where beautiful young girls tend to get poisoned just because they are young and beautiful. I immediately thought of the two immortalized by Walt Disney and idolized by little girls everywhere: ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Snow White became an orphan. However, instead of loving her, her stepmother envied her for her beauty, goodness, and youth. That envy grew into hatred, which… you know where this story goes. Then in Sleeping Beauty’s case, she was poisoned because her parents made a faux pas and left a rather important (and powerful) person off the guest list for her christening. Rather than letting it go, that slighted guest allowed her anger to consume her, so she cast a spell that of course involved poison and voilà: the beautiful, very much-loved, young girl was put in a coma.

I apologize for my glibness.

These stories are all beautiful and at the same time sad, but they tell us something about the human psyche too. As long ago as medieval times – and probably before humans had written languages – we’ve been obsessed with love, violence, and death. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Tristan and Iseult’ are passionate love stories where violent incidents bring the main characters together and then end with their tragic deaths – albeit by their own hands.

Similarly, violence is inherent to fairy tales where we see children, men, and women repeatedly threatened by all manner of actions that can, and often do, result in their deaths. Even more interesting is that fairy tales are styled the way they are because they were written originally for adults, which makes sense when thinking about what kind of story would keep adults entertained.

I had no idea this is where my thoughts would take me when I started thinking about this post. Nonetheless, writing about this makes me wonder, whether telling these stories to children and young adults – I was introduced to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in ninth grade – doesn’t somehow poison their thinking and normalize violence with very little effort.

This is probably the kind of thing I should think about while savouring a good glass of wine…