I want to tell you about this other film I saw, one night when you were out sticking twigs in your hair and shoving your hand into the mouths of foxes, you dank, fleshy monster. This film was about a woman who had lost her snakes. She had owned a serpentarium, at least, that’s what it was called in the film. It was a snake house – there were frogs also – that was perched in the edge of a village on an island where the rain lived. This woman had angered the local community by keeping snakes and charging their children money to see and touch them. She charged tourists too, but no one cared about them. So one night, a father opened up all the vivariums, even for the poisonous snakes. None of the snakes were awake, but the music made you think something violent was going to happen. I suppose the violence was in the man, not the snakes. In fact, I’m sure of it.
The rest of the film shows the woman adjusting to her new role as snakeless bystander. There’s a love interest, and a showdown. Some of the snakes are caught, but one bites the father – here’s the violence of before finally coming home – and he dies in a field of cows. Then it got weird. The winter came and the snakes died. And the locals were troubled by their ghosts, and they had the woman perform a cleansing rite. They wouldn’t ask a priest to do it, because on that island, the Catholics are generally disliked. In a desolate anger, she raises the snakes from the dead, and has their half-rotted snake-corpses enter the homes of the locals – Anyway, not to spoil it, but I’m glad I watched this film without you. I’m rich with ideas, drenched in them, like a misty, flooded island in a sluicing sea, like a boa swimming away through a cut in a cold bog. And I think there is no room for you on either side of the film or my telling of it.