Margaret Atwood Interview: On the Planet of Speculative Fiction

Margaret Atwood water thrill just landed from Canada which is perhaps not better but bigger than most countries it's very very big it's really big there's a song about that yes it's called Canada's really big maybe we can sing it later on yeah you can find it on YouTube okay and then that's what we'll do yes I have been living in a different country from any country I know and yet I know it because I've been reading all three books that have ended up with maddaddam and that is one crazy world but in three books and you should definitely read them all maybe you already have at least the two of them so this is maddaddam from 2013 and you've been touring with this but the whole project started a long time ago the whole project started a long time ago do the little voice yes the whole project started a long time ago dear once upon a time I know yes yes so I was looking back at a book called cat's eye that I published in 1988 but it contains reportage from the mid 1950s in fact there is a male parent in it who is a biologist and who is saying in chapter 40 practically the whole plot of the backstory of maddaddam so species extinction global warming methane burping cows well the whole scenario was known as back then and nobody did anything so here we are now and again in 1972 the Club of Rome published a report about the state of the planet making predictions as to what would happen if we kept on the path that we were on then and again nobody did anything so so now we have mad Adam and he started pulling anything yes yes at least is a book but there are two kinds of roughly considered science fiction and you can call them science fiction one and science fiction too or you could call them science fiction and speculative fiction but they are different in in nature by which I mean science fiction one takes place in a galaxy far far away and in a different time and you're never going to go there and if you want to crossbreed that with fantasy you can have dragons as well you don't do drugs and attacks unfortunately I'm not good at it and the person who is good at it has already done the best dragon so forget it forget the dragons and that would be Ursula K Le Guin best dragons first prize dragons did you do yeah it's kind of princesses though there are a few princesses in maddaddam I mean kind of adorable women oh that's different yes when I think princess I do think unfortunately the pink sparkles and the little crown so there aren't any of those so science fiction - or speculative fiction takes place on this planet and it's well within possibility so that would be 1984 Brave New World and that's the only kind I can write although I read the other kind I'm not good at it so I try not to do it except in very small bursts but Matt Adam we can do it all and since I published the first book Oryx and Crake we have done some of the things that were only proposed in it but have now come true so then you don't do prophecies you just write noble prophecy is not really possible simply because there is not one predetermined future there are an infinite number of possibilities and there are a lot of unexpected turn of events turns of event that may happen but that we haven't even thought about for instance we almost annihilated the human race during the Vietnam War did you know that no no nobody did including me I just found out about it it wasn't nuclear bombs it was Agent Orange which the West was transporting across the Pacific Ocean in huge vats if any of those bats had come open if there had been an accident and they had opened up and that extremely potent plant killer had gotten into the ocean and killed the marine algae we would have stopped effectively breathing because it is that marine algae that still produces 60 to 80 percent of the oxygen that we breathe we always think Amazon rainforest but the the big producer is still the marine algae so who knew that not me now we know yes well it didn't happen then no but that's why we have to be very aware of the ocean which of course you are because you live in Denmark it's old around us fall around us it's wonderful and it's getting bigger like Canada just to get just to get the notion of maddaddam and the way people are at least some of them I would like you to read a small piece if you would be so kind I would be very kind but I would first require Myron spectacles yeah I know I put mine on because I'm not so vain first time in my sabbatical steer then you make the spectacle well what kind of spectacles are yours anyway are they trifocals they can they can do you know reading and I see you clearly mine are just plain old raiding glasses yeah okay so I'm denying I see your vanity and I raise you 1,000 yes so this is one of the narrator's who is called Toby and shias finds herself post a bow Lamar Marburg human race Eradicator plague airborne she finds herself after that event in the world with a a group of genetically modified human beings which who have been designed to avoid all of the things in our nature that get us into so much trouble so they're not aggressive not only are they vegetarian but they can eat leaves like rabbits there are some side effects to that but we won't go in to them the rabbit thing yeah yes anybody who is camped rabbits will know what those things are but they have to do it you can ask during Question Period what that is so and they also have built-in sunblock and insect repellent which I think would be good things and therefore they will never get skin cancer wouldn't that be nice and they best of all we'll never have romantic agony or or jealousy or feel rejected because like other mammals but unlike human beings they mate seasonally and they give clear visible signals as to when that event will take place can you just save what ellezi is are parts of them turn blue huge with some of the primates yes pleasingly large parts of them there and blue how they're gonna do that in the TV series I don't know but that will be a problem that they will have to solve both the balloonists nevermind so they also because they're designer didn't have a lot of patience with small children they they get older faster than than ours do yes he put a lot of features in that he would have liked to have himself they're all very good-looking and uh plus the blue thing I mean people would kill for that too the excerpt you want me to read to where from that that's quite a lot all right there she wakes to find a small cracker boy in the room with her he's lifted the edge of the damp sheet that and twists her and is gently stroking her leg he smells of oranges and of something else citrus air freshener they all smell like this but the young ones more what are you doing she asks as calmly as she can my toenails are so dirty she thinks dirty and jagged nail scissors put them on the gleaning list her skin is coarse beside the pristine skin on the hand of this child is he glowing from within or is a skin so fine-grained it reflects the light Oh Toby you have legs underneath says the boy like us these people don't wear clothes because think of all the commerce and aggression involved in clothing you have legs underneath that's a boy like us yes she says I do do you have breasts Oh Toby yes I have those as well she says smiling are there two two breasts yes she says resisting toward the urge to add so far is he expecting one breast or three or maybe four or six like a dog has he ever seen a dog up close will a baby come out from between your legs Oh Toby after you turn blue what is he asking whether non Kreger people like her can have babies or whether she herself might have one if I were younger then a baby might come out she says but not now though her age isn't the deciding factor if her whole life had been different if she hadn't needed the money if she lived in another universe Oh Toby says the cracker boy what sickness do you have are you hurt he puts up his beautiful arms to hug her are those tears in his strange green eyes it's all right she says I'm not hurt anymore she'd sold some of her eggs to pay the rent back in her plea bland days before the gods Gardiner's her take had taken her in there'd been infection all her future children precluded surely she'd buried that particular sadness many years ago if not she ought to bury it in view of the total situation the situation of what used to be thought of as the human race such emotions ought to be dismissed as meaningless she's about to add I have scars inside me but she stops herself what is a scar Oh Toby that would be the next question then she'd have to explain what a scar is a scar is like writing on your body it tells about something that once happened to you such as a cut on your skin where blood came out what is writing Oh Toby writing is when you make marks on a piece of paper on a stone on a flat surface like the sand on the beach and each of the marks means a sound and the sounds join together mean a word and the words join together mean how do you make this writing Oh Toby you make it with a keyboard oh no no no once you made it with a pen or a pencil a pencil is or you make it with a stick Oh Toby I do not understand you make a mark with a stick on your skin you cut your skin open and then it is a scar and that scar turns into a voice it speaks it tells us things Oh Toby can we hear what the scar says show us how to make the scars that talk no she should stay away from the whole scar business otherwise she might inspire the crackers to start carving themselves up to see if they can let out the voices what's your name she says to the little boy my name is Blackbeard says the child gravely [Applause] I chose this part because in part it's very funny and in part because you get to know the Quakers who are indeed a new human race very much from scratch Oh Margaret Edward it's also because it's about writing and Blackbeard is eventually one of the storytellers no spoilers no spoilers okay if that's a spoiler nobody heard what I just said just you and me but when you have to make a completely new human race as a writer and you think about the smart trick with the Sun repellent and the you know the insect repellent and the sunblock and then you make up people who don't know anything well they don't know the things we know they know other things as it turns out but our kinds of things such as when we first meet them in Oryx and Crake they're designer Craig has tried to make them he tried it first to make them devoid of symbolic thinking because he felt it led to kings and Wars and you know flags and all the things he felt were bad religions but he was unable to make them without symbolic thinking as it turns out so we find them discovering what is a picture things like that there is a wonderful image in the parker library at Cambridge University in England England which is the first flat image that we know of in Europe on a piece of paper and it is a picture of an eagle and done underneath it it doesn't say eagle it says image of an eagle so that you wouldn't think that this really was an eagle smart pointing out this is that by the way this isn't really an eagle it's an image of an eagle so that idea that something can be a picture of something else but it's not the real thing that all had to be explained but by the end of that book the Oryx and Crake the first book they're they're making them a statue oh they can't help it they are human in some sense well you can't apparently do away with symbolic thinking and have something that would still be a recognizable human being but this also is a scene like a scene between a mother and a child you have to explain everything everything well you have to explain yes you do in fact beginning when they start talking because then they can ask questions it's not that they didn't have questions before they couldn't express the questions before so around if you've ever been around small children a lot you know that around 2 and 1/2 they're going to be saying what's that mm quite a bit yeah and also why and also know in in this mad Adam there are so many or the whole try ology there are so many words and things made up by you that may be why do you look so I had there are actually it's it's like it's kind of like an alphabet even with the names of things you mean like brand names yes okay I'll tell you why I have to make up brand names you have to make up brand names so that you're not referring to an actual brand that really exists because if you do the proprietors of that brand could get very could get very crabby for instance in Oryx and Crake there's an online television live streamed a show called nighty-night calm and nighty-night calm is a stage assisted-suicide show in which you get to plan your own suicide and stage it with singing and dancing 's and you know stage sets and of how you want to go well you know a nice production and it's called nighty-night calm but when I looked up nighty-night calm because I had to research all of these it turned out to be a children's sleepwear company so today they would have been quite cross if I'd spelled it the way that they do so I had to change the spelling hmm there's a spa where Toby hides out during the plague I think a spa would be a very good place to do that this is quite a nice spot it's got pink towels and the organic lettuce that's grown in the little kitchen garden and it's called a new you so but there are things but spare clothes tonight I had to change the spelling because there are several places called Anu you as you might imagine it and the other one its own it's a high-end of sex club called scales and tails have a good dental plan and in the future all of this is and of course controlled by corporations so new and so anyway so and it turns out there are several places called scales and tails they happen to be pet shops but they exist but I'm trying to also talk a little about this the process process of writing because there are two very important men in in this story Adam one and zip which and between them are so many differences that it's like an alphabet from A to Z that I was thinking if that was on purpose from well their male parent did that on purpose that one beginning with a one beginning with Zed so here's the male parent of both of them although they have different mothers so they are half-brothers and they both come from the same background but they went quite different ways although they remained joined at the hip so Adam one became the leader of a very green cult called the gods gardeners and we made them extensively in the second book where they are growing vegetables on rooftops in slums and they have developed their own theology and their own set of saints including for instance Saint Robert Burns Of Mice because of the communication with animals of Saint Al Gore you can tell that he will be a saint in the future if we if we live that long and I tried to get Saints from all around the world in different areas so they have those Saints and they also have special days in which they pay homage to different groups of species on planet Earth because they're dedicated to to the idea of species survival so he's head of that cult and ZEB on the other hand is much more street smart and he he teaches something called urban bloodshed limitation which means that you should limit urban bloodshed by making sure it isn't yours instead somebody else's acceptance except is he's the hero I think it's the hero of maddaddam yeah because finally the pacifism of the gods gardeners in face of the kinds of things that the giant corporations are doing in the future because in the future I hate to break this to you governments are relatively ineffectual unlike today and giant corporations have much more power unlike today and a great deal more money unlike today and they also have their own private army police force unlike today just which is called the corpse Corps so in face of that zebb does not feel that he can maintain the pacifist approach and he breaks often starts a group called mad atom or builds out a group called mad atom that dedicates itself to biological resistance because we are in the age in the future unlike today of genetic engineering unlike today of strange coins unlike today so they develop such things as for instance microbes that can eat asphalt highways and mice that have a strange attraction to the wiring in your car unlike today I mean there's a lot to work with already with those mice you just have to tweak them a bit you don't know dragons but you do pig UNS I do Higgins and you know reconquer Higgins already pretty much exists they were working on them in 2001 when I started the series and now they have in fact solved the problem of the knockout gene and they can grow kidneys for human transplant in pigs they have hand on heart said they are not going to grow human cortex tissue in them do you believe that and such a set temptation if you needed a little bit of a brain transplant wouldn't you like to be able to grow a bit of your own brain and then have it put in would you like that of course I'm getting scared here for you we would all like it that's the problem guess what they've just done if I'd known about this I would have put it in and they just did it they've just discovered that if you take an old mouse and put young mouse blood into it this is bad news for babies it rejuvenates the old mouse look out world yeah isn't that interesting it's very interesting and I think I mean reading this tri ology I think it's a bit like opening Pandora's box or jar but you still have access to a lot of information because you told me earlier on that you have more than 500 thousand followers on Twitter yes and some of them are scientists that they tell me ever they tell you all kind of weird things but there was no Twitter in 2001 no no it hadn't happened yet so many things hadn't happened yet and that was just 14 years ago so the the growth of this kind of or these kinds of technologies on all fronts is now exponential but while I mean while you are writing books like year of the flood Oryx and Crake and and maddaddam I suppose that you are as much immersed in the in the creative process of writing as you are in the scientific world or looking up and saying oh my god this already happened I thought I was thinking it up what what is it like to be writing this kind of story I think it's a little bit like running very fast because you're just a little you're just about that you're a split-second ahead of of reality and reality may not in fact take the turn that you might have thought that it would or it may already have taken that turn and you just didn't know about it or as William Gibson the author of Neuromancer has said the future is already here but it's unevenly distributed so it's lumpy but as you said it's not it's not science fiction it's what you call speculative fiction but it's also it's not science fiction one on another planet and off track but it's also something very I mean it's also a love story because Sep the hero Seb who gets tired of the pacifist way of solving things is also the the secret aim for the love of Toby who we just heard about before she's in love with him and eventually no spoilers I don't know how much can I say I'm grateful yes eventually it has an a temporarily happy ending anyway yeah and and them has a good name and and the funny little happy endings are temporary come on I know I mean you've I'm sure a lot of your readers have started with your folks many many years ago and and though you're not a feminist writer because you were sort of grabbed by the feminist well you were right by feminists we mean women are human beings hands up I'm all for it I'll take hands up but then we have to examine what that means and it does not mean that all women are angels those doesn't mean that it doesn't know and and not only are they not all angels but I mean Toby in her love for Sep goes through all kinds of emotions jealousy and vanity and success share despair absolute despair and I was thinking so this is the kind of a future and nothing really happened men and women are all the same you enacted something else maybe I'll by croak that on the other hand on the other hand the crackers who mate seasonally in turn blue also made in groups so they don't have any jealousy you could do that yeah well so we try it as in hippie communes that usually doesn't work out tiffany talk well but some people seem to manage it however jealousy is a very very no built-in biological thing if any social animal ever have dogs yeah long time two dogs nope no well if you have two you know they're jealous have one at them if one of them gets something the other one wants it too if one if you're patting one of them the other will shove in cats will compete for who gets to control the stairs to the second floor you know that I know that yeah so it's not it sort of specifically human thing it's it's a it's a biological thing that that craig tried to do away with big fell didn't cause too much trouble but as you say that if not all women are angels and not all women in the books are angels far from it when some of them are rather tough cookies yes toby is one that's a good thing it's a good thing in in such a future and it would help to be a good shot yeah and she and she is a good shot but she's also a bit too influenced by the should I call it quasi religious upbringing with the gardener's the atom one influence is is hard on her when she has to act sometimes oh you're thinking of the moment when she thinks should I eat part of this dead pig for instance for instance well paint bowlers that she those kinds of things yes yes should I kill someone yeah even though they even though they very much deserve it yeah she's not very good at that not at first not at first what she is good at is she's good at surviving and several of the the women are good at surviving although they are really object to horrible violence in in your book well you know all you really have to do is read the newspapers for those kinds of stories because those kinds of stories are happening in the world around us all over the place right now and sadly there are a lot of stories about people who don't who don't make it through but but this isn't something new either if you if you go back in in human history as far back as we know there have been awful events you know Wars specifically but wars famines and and plagues are usually the big killers and those have been going on for a very very long time now and thanks to the toughness of some of our very very distant ancestors we're here today there was a moment when the ice ages were quite advanced when the human race was apparently it went through a bottleneck of small population to diminishment to a small population at the bottom of Africa where it made it through so we have societies and our species in particular we've done this before mmm this is also a very small society that's left in there and as far as it knows of course once the communication devices go down just think if I take away your phone a whole month don't let you watch any television read any newspapers how will you know what's going on on another continent you won't so we know about this small group of people and this was this is what the world was like for a very very very very long time it was small groups of people who are aware just of themselves which is why and in many tribal languages their word for themselves means people and anybody coming in from outside is by definition not a person true this this sounds a bit like the world that you perhaps grew up in I mean you know no we had that's quite like that yes we always spent the winter in cities phones exist still I can I can yes nobody took them away but somebody probably will no but I mean I was wondering if part of the inspiration fell yeah sure yeah okay we spent a spring summer and fall up in the north of Canada without such communications devices so no phone no television on the radio we could get Russia on the shortwave wasn't much is um no theater no school no not a lot of other people this wasn't a village it was actually out in the woods so yes I'm familiar with that and the kinds of things that we rely on to get news from one place to another I'm also old enough so that my mother can remember the first radio broadcast that she ever heard and I said what was it and she said it was an advertisement for a Sox that's significant already they're advertising and she can remember of course when the telephone when people got telephones and my other grandparents didn't have electricity until the early 60s so I saw essentially a Victorian farm in operation before there were electric lights telephones any of those things so you are a survivor you're some no I just I'm just I'm just old I didn't know that boy yeah I didn't have to go through anything to do that it's just the world change around me I had no hand and having it do that but I was able to observe these changes as they came about and anybody my age who grew up in a rural community anywhere will be quite familiar with those changes as they watching them come in so what what there was was there were books up yeah up in the woods there were books yeah and that was it you know that way that was the art form so there were books so of course I was an early reader and it being the 40s we had the funny papers the funny papers were very big in that decade so funny papers and books nobody ever told me not to read a given book they probably should have yes you you read a lot of different kinds of books I read everything I just read never mind won't tell you what it is but one of the books that you've read many times is the Bible yes and the Bible is a big influence in a way because this is Adam and Eve's and it well if you were going to have a new religion based in North America it's pretty much going to be biblically based even if its own there is in fact a green branch of Christianity right right now and they have something called the Green Bible it's what the green parts printed in green it's on tastefully virtuous paper and has an introduction by Archbishop Tutu how much more virtuous can you get not much and I found it's got green hints at the back for what you can do to be a better green Christian and I know a group of these people now I didn't when I was writing it but I now know them as you might expect and they're called a Rasha you can look them up they are God's gardeners pretty much in practice they already exist yeah but they didn't sue you no no they love me they know that I understand them I've been to visit them I did a fundraiser for them this this kind of thing needs all the help it can get so I'm all in favor of them and of course the Buddhists and the Hindus never severed their links with their connections with with nature and even the quran has got some pretty nature friendly things in it the Christian world went mechanistic in the 18th century they started doing ghost in the machine you know only we have souls nothing else does animals are just machines etc Darwin was against that view by the way and people are now coming around to a much more holistic view of nature so it's it shouldn't be too surprising that Christianity is now connecting with its roots if you go into any medieval cathedral what do you see you see trees essentially the pillars you see all the vines and flowers around the top and on all the impute you see little carvings of animals and plants and around the around the walls you will probably get the creation the whole story up to the Last Judgement you get the heaven up the top with the stars and things so essentially it's a universe those medieval churches were visual representations of a universe which included nature big time but the church that we hear about in maddaddam is not a church that includes animal is petroleum well the badge then one that zhabin atom grow and grow up in there's a number of different religions in this world and one of them is the petro Baptists which pretty much exists today in taxes ask anyone and and the one that has that their father is a somewhat corrupt preacher in is called the Church of petroleum and it is biblically based because what does Peter mean it means Rock and Jesus famously said on this rock well I found this well I found my church and and what does what does petroleum mean it means oil coming out of a rock makes sense and what is holy in the Bible well it's oil that's what you use is to anoint people with it's a sign of holiness so the Church of Petter Oleum worships oil why not well the thing that is most important to you in this life is what you worship so a lot of people worship oil already yeah don't notice how they just don't know we haven't formalized but they will I've done it for them all they have to do you know I never feel free his name isn't trade no it's out of your church they haven't popped up like the gods God knows the petroleum well well they're there in all but name the thing is there are people who actually believe that it's God's will that you should burn as much carbon as possible because that's hastening the end of the world a desirable thing in their view because they will be raptured up to heaven and you will fry yeah another thing I there that's a suit that's a possible solution but I think there are so many things in this one you're taking your car with a good set of conscience yes no I prayed there there are so many things that that where you are all almost on the verge of you know what is reality and what is and there is a game in mad Adam extinct extinct Earth on this is what what Jimmy the hero of Oryx and Crake endo and Craig the creator of the crackers it's a game that they play yeah they also play another game called blood and roses in which you have to trade human accomplishments of genius against human atrocities yeah so what is Beethoven's ninth worth in terms of massacres quite a lot as I recall but but but then afterwards after you published the book this has actually become a game that says I didn't I think I've extinct a phone or is it it has it it's become it exists as a platform or somebody did a game-ending involving germs yeah yes and which you you get to try to eliminate the germs before they toast one of your organs yeah yes you have to be quite rapid with the germs I can't do it I only get to level three and then if you fail a sign comes on saying you have died that's that's very pressing it's well it's very encouraging because you get to have as many other goes as you wish you can come alive again as many times as you want don't you think that's nice even without the blood even without the young blood infusion you even without the blood yes they haven't tried this on human beings yet but it's it's worrying enough that they're doing it with mice it's a matter of time Oh Margaret white through the creak of people / why did they burn all right so my brother who is a biologist he's an older brother and when I published my first book of poetry he wrote me an older brother letter which went congratulations on publishing your first book of poetry I used to do that kind of thing myself when I was younger so with oryx and Craig he said I thought you did a pretty good job with the sax but I'm not so sure about the purring this is from a biological point of view a poor 11 science has now vindicated my view and if you look up on the Internet migraine headaches purring you will see that it is now recommended that if you have a migraine headache you should put a purring cat on your head no are kidding this toilet kidding absolutely swear don't try this at home you know look it up I'm telling you the truth it doesn't tell you how to keep the cat on your head but a little ingenuity can supply that want I have invested your kind of large net that you tie under your chin nantan called The Cat in the Hat [Laughter] yes because the people wondered for a long time why cats purred then you it wasn't just because they were happy because if you've if you've ever had cats which I have and you know that when you take them to the vet and they're afraid or when they're in pain they also purr so and you also know that if you're ill your cat will frequently get up on top of you and purr over the afflicted part have you noticed that no maybe you have a particularly ornery cat do that and you will also know that when somebody comes into your house who is afraid of cats your cat will immediately go over to that person because they're very selfless and they're going over to that person because they want to help by purring on them that's a lie absorb that they are very curious and it's probably because they the fears of a person who's afraid smells differently and that's true to a cat which is another ability of the crackers they can smell their own good sense of smell yeah they really do so compared to something like a dog we are we're deaf mute when it comes to smell and we say we smell only about that much of the visible of this malleable spectrum of the world so they have an infinitely larger vocabulary of smell than we do just as for instance um a raptor such as the Neagle or a hawk has a fantastically better eyesight than we so these are things you know that other animals have that we don't but the crackers indeed have very good sense of smell it would be useful there's something amazing about the way that you know everything I don't know everything no no well almost everything no I don't know and how things come into the books and then things come out from the books and become real things like this one for instance ha ha ha yes the secret burgers dessert she has it so secret burgers are a chain of a burger chain in the series and they're called secret burgers because nobody really knows what's in them unlike today and and their slogan is secret burgers because everybody loves it's on the back the thing is that when you then put this t-shirt on you have the best of conscience because it's climate neutral and it's earth it's an earth positive t-shirt isn't that good it's beautiful so you also like to travel around when you when you have to do this thing you've come by plane yes I cannae against your will but we double carbon offset yeah so so it's I mean it's it's difficult to do the right thing always but well here's one thing I do know I don't know everything but I know that's the cheapest and fastest way to take carbon out of the atmosphere is to regrow tropical rainforests and I know that because I know somebody who's involved in doing that so that is that is true isn't that good it's great that's that's what we'll also do but what we have we have to round up unfortunately round up is really not a good word how could i I'm so sorry but to end on a literary note because it's difficult not to get to talk about all the other things could you read us a poem yes because you have a large large also selection of poetry that you should also read apart from the novels and here here's one reason why now which one would we like to read today well I suggested the ethnic poem - okay but I don't know what you brought eventually but whatever you told me to bring because I'm very very a beautiful person but where are these things that I was so sure that I brought well I had to bring the book but the poem was on you at home is on me okay so the first thing is the glasses we'll find them first now we will find pieces of paper because you're fond of snakes that's not it no um well I grew up with the snakes because oh here we are my brother was very very fond of of snakes as a boy and this is northern north of Canada where there are no venomous snakes so they weren't dangerous and as a little boy he is to catch the snake snakes and take them into bed with him and then they would get out during the night and they would go into the warm ashes of the wood stove because they like warmth so my mother when she would come to light the fire in the morning would have this ashes covered snake coming out so she had to have a chat and the chat was snakes are happier outside because it is their home so I did grow up around snakes quite a lot and I'm not afraid of them or not of those kinds so I'll read snake woman how about that that's great and this is when I was at summer camp teaching at summer camp teaching in nature program at summer camp teaching in nature program at a summer camp attended exclusively by urban children and fellow counselors who were afraid of snakes snake woman I was once the snake woman the only person it seems in the whole place who wasn't terrified of them I used to hunt with two sticks among milkweed and under porches and logs for this vein of cool green metal which would run through my fingers like mercury or turn to a raw bracelet gripping my wrist I could follow them by their odor a sick smell acid and glandular parts gunk part inside of a torn stomach the smell of their fear once caught I'd carry them limp and terrorized into the dining room something even men were afraid of what fun I had put that thing in my bed and I'll kill you no I don't know now I'd consider the snake are there questions

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 103,938

Rating: 4.492228 out of 5

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Margaret Atwood (Author), Canadian Literature, Speculative Fiction (Literary Genre), Science Fiction (TV Genre)

Id: aOWYdX50qQc

Length: 55min 20sec (3320 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2015