The Diary Under the Bed

[Erik Stewart]

The counselor says I should write down my feelings.

shit. shit shit shit shit fuck.

-a list of clippings presumably cut from a Bible.-

Genesis 3:1-24

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ...

Matthew 10:16

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Acts 28:3-5

When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.”

Luke 10:19

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Micah 7:17

They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth; they shall come trembling out of their strongholds; they shall turn in dread to the Lord our God, and they shall be in fear of you.

-The last one is circled-

Proverbs 23:32

In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.

I can’t tell anyone that I wanna just shove my hand down his throat, I wanna take his guts and I just wanna tear em out. jesus. I know though, why mom and pa don’t call, whenever I think about that.

[Erik Stewart]

The Farmer And The Viper
One winter a Farmer found a Viper frozen and numb with cold, and out of pity picked it up and placed it in his bosom. The Viper was no sooner revived by the warmth than it turned upon its benefactor and inflicted a fatal bite upon him; and as the poor man lay dying, he cried, "I have only got what I deserved, for taking compassion on so villainous a creature."
— Aesop's Fables, "The Farmer and the Viper"

[Erik Stewart]

SERPENT SYMBOLISM

(This appears to be an article torn out of a textbook of some sort; the paper is smooth and has a sheen to it. Before the text begins there appears to be a picture of a carved serpent with its mouth open.)

The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols. The word is derived from Latin serpens, a crawling animal or snake. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind and represent dual expression of good and evil.

Serpents are connected with poison and medicine. The snake's venom is associated with the chemicals of plants and fungi that have the power to either heal, poison or provide expanded consciousness (and even the elixir of life and immortality) through divine intoxication. Because of its herbal knowledge and entheogenic association the snake was often considered one of the wisest animals, being (close to the) divine. Its divine aspect combined with its habitat in the earth between the roots of plants made it an animal with chthonic properties connected to the afterlife and immortality. Asclepius, the God of medicine and healing, carried a staff with one serpent wrapped around it, which has become the symbol of modern medicine.

('divine' is written in the corners of the torn-out article.)

Serpents are connected with vengefulness and vindictiveness. This connection depends in part on the experience that venomous snakes often deliver deadly defensive bites without giving prior notice or warning to their unwitting victims. Although a snake is defending itself from the encroachment of its victim into the snake's immediate vicinity, the unannounced and deadly strike may seem unduly vengeful when measured against the unwitting victim's perceived lack of blameworthiness.

Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story "The Cask of Amontillado" invokes the image of the serpent as a symbol for petty vengefulness. The story is told from the point of view of the vindictive Montresor, who hatches a secret plot to murder his rival Fortunato in order to avenge real or imagined insults. Before carrying out his scheme, Montresor reveals his family's coat-of-arms to the intended victim: "A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." Fortunato, not suspecting that he has offended Montresor, fails to understand the symbolic import of the coat-of-arms, and blunders onward into Montresor's trap.

[Erik Stewart]

Dear Oriel,

I'm sorry I did

sorry I bit you in the

shitty thing to do.

sorry I

I shouldn't have bit you.

I really, really

I fucked up.

*scribbles*

[Erik Stewart]

(A page ripped from a book. It has a shoe print on the corner and simply sits between the pages of the diary.)

Miserable,
Miserable.
All day long
I am miserable.
My heart
it sits on a shelf
I sit on a shelf
dirty shelf!
It is you, it is you!
It is you that I love
and yet I am miserable
and so I smoke.
I am miserable.

-Pamela August Russell

[Erik Stewart]

(a picture of Dead John stuck between the pages)

[Erik Stewart]

(This scrap seems to be cut from printer paper.)

C. evil:
1. the inferior inhabiting the superior, evil inhabiting everything;
2. for Yahweh conquering the 'monster of the deep': v. Chaos;
3. as Satan: fall trom Divine Grace;
4. if the snake in itself is already magically potent, the coupling of two, seen by human eyes, is fatal: v. the myth of Tiresias: it brings blindness with either homosexuality or change of sex: ref. Ovid (Metam. 3, 323ff.);
5. Germanic: a gigantic serpent (with lesser snakes) nibbles at the root of the Tree of Life, Yggdrasill; the WorldSerpent is Loki's child

The Jews considered the serpent primarily as a threatening creature; the Old Testament counts it among the unclean animals; it appears as the idealized image of sin and of Satan and is the seductress of the first couple in Eden; on the other hand, though, it also appears as a symbol of prudence. When God punished the disobedience of the Israelites with a plague of poisonous, winged serpents, He commanded Moses, who asked for help, to make a BRAZEN SERPENT; whoever was bitten by poisonous serpents and looked upon the brazen one, was to remain alive. Thus, a Brazen Serpent of this type was long a ritual object of the Jews and was considered by Christianity to be a symbolic portent of Christ due to its salutary character; the serpent figures on bishops' crooks refer in part to that Brazen Serpent as well as to the serpent as a symbol of prudence.

[Erik Stewart]

lucifer speaks in his own voice

sure as i am
of the seraphim
folding wing
so am i certain of a
graceful bed
and a soft caress
along my long belly
at endtime it was
to be
i who was called son
if only of the morning
saw that some must walk or all will crawl
so slithered into earth
and seized the serpent in
the animals i became
the lord of snake for
adam and for eve
i the only lucifer
light-bringer
created out of fire
illuminate i could
and so
illuminate i did

— Lucille Clifton

[Erik Stewart]

I don't know why I'm still here.

[Erik Stewart]

People like to talk about nature like it knows something we dont. why should we act like life is precious. animals don't value life. At least, snakes don't. They just want to eat

[Erik Stewart]

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

-D.H. Lawrence

[Erik Stewart]

"You did this to yourself. You turned away from God and cast yourself into darkness. Every devil used to be an angel, and now you've fallen from Grace forever. Lucifer was banished from Heaven and was forced to crawl the Earth as a snake."

-Father Mould

[Erik Stewart]