ziggy marley

Today i looked at the snake in the vivarium in the snake store on east chestnut. I do not remember what his patterns said but I remember that his scales were white against the glass. He pushed his nose up (i could only hope not at the sight of me), pulling taut the tender stuff that connects jaw to neck. He was all tender stuff.

I found god in the snake in the same way the boy finds god in his playstation. That is to say that I didnt know in the moment, looking at the taut tender stuff and inhaling sweet sawdust must, that god was in the store that housed the snake that housed my attention. I, a more happy than go lucky individual, was much too busy smiling at the snake and my own free will to look for such a thing. And its not that god snuck up on me, because god doesnt track us down by living in snakes and playstations. Given the quantity of shmucks just ambling about, I find it hard to believe that anyone would choose to live in either container (both being much too warm and much too metallic) for the purpose of finding a singular shmuck on the other side. No, god does not live in things to find us, nor does he look for us at all. Im not yet sure what god does.

But i do know that we, the people, walk down the sidewalk in sweatpants and say hello to the person passing us on the crosswalk and the person does not say hello back. And then we, the people, smell sweet sawdust must and remember being a child buying crickets at the snake store for our bearded dragon, Ziggy Marley. And I know that the people enter the store because it feels right and that they amble, as shmucks do, toward the largest snake in the largest vivarium the wonderful establishment has to offer, and that we, the people smile. Perhaps we smile because we see god behind the tender stuff that connects jaw to scaly neck. But we probably smile because we know that it feels right to and we're only a little curious to find out what that means about anything.