roche. snake. ramble.

April 15 2011

La Roche.  Basque word implying the loss of senses, a sort of derangement of the senses rimbaud and later the surrealists strove towards.  Early coastal heat begins the assault of the senses, a mile-marked delirium, intervals of mindsmoke.

observations on a friday morning trail run at carolina beach:

1. a field of dragonflies blurred my vision and obscured my feet as I ran across a rooty passage of trail; must've been 50+ dragonflies.  Dali may have appreciated the image-morphosis of feet becoming dragonflies.  what freudian symbolism would be attributed to dragonflies? (ants = anxiety.  Melting clocks = mortality and flesh-decay.  Giraffes = ?)

2. a lethargic snake baked on the trail by a sandy bend.  Sand and pine needles and the leaves of dwarfed oaks had pushed up against the roots of a tall pine; and he folded into the bed of debris.  he was an optical curiosity, a pattern in a patternless array.  startled by his presence and my near-miss of his body, I assumed his dangerous nature and determined him to be a water moccasin.  But that wasn't the case; he was a garter snake: harmless, common, basking. An unfortunate ignorance on my part, a (fortunate) total immersion in the moment.  fear-defined moment.