Today I saw my first rattlesnake of the season. Usually I see them outside my house or on a hike (pictures of yesterday's hike and Sabine), but today the snake was slithering through a residential yard. The home owners had let their grass go wild and meadowlike, and I guess the snake was happy to find something familiar amongst all the manicured lawns nearby. It rattled at my dog and I and then quickly disappeared into the tall grass. I caught just the end of the rattle and its deep diamond coloring, like a desert from an airplane. All the varied shades of brown and gray laid out in overlapping checks.
Unlike a lot of people around here, I'm not afraid of snakes. Cautious, yes, afterall, the first snakes of the season contain the most venom. But, I view seeing them as a call to summer. To heat and desire. They come out only after everything on the surface has warmed up sufficiently. As if spring itself was foreplay. I was wandering around the Boulder Bookstore today and noticed how every book seemed to be about this sense of arousal. Books on the bargain shelf had titles like: Hunger, Desire, Jumping Across the Table, Purple Passion, etc. It got me thinking about intention and creativity. Do we, as artists, create, unconsciously even, what is most needed in the universe? Are we, if we allow ourselves to open enough, conduits to something that is lacking? My full collection is all about desire. As I roamed the shelves I couldn't help but observe the fact that this issue seems to be on everyone's minds at the moment. Maybe it always was and I'm just now aware of it. Like the snake. Waiting in the grass, till I walked by and it rattled at me. "Hello, I'm here, notice."
