The Snake (from the back side of Gaboon Viper) Memoirs about feelings and sensations, that I had in the rain forest
Hambacher Forest, Germany, 05,04,2017

We were in a restaurant and I was very tired from the days work, the travel and still from the preparations before. I was a bit drunk and everybody spoke in french, so I napped a bit in my chair. Most of the time I was just in between wake and sleep. The feelings rushed in strong waves through my body. The sensations were very physical, yet it was feelings of the mind, positive feelings such as happiness and satisfaction, feelings that I connect to the rainforest and that were caused by it. I was feeling good about myself and the people, that I was with. I enjoyed the warm air on my skin and at least for the moment the chair was as comfortable, as soft moss and being spread out on the forest floor. Later, when we returned to our beach house I enjoyed the fresh breeze, that came through the open window of the car and the music, that I listened with one ear phone shared by William. I thought about my work: a piece of paper, exactly my size, that was stuck to a tree. A few days ago I pierced little holes into the trees’s bark and the tree oozed a blood-red exhaust into the thin paper. It became a print of the trees inside, that I intent to use in order to represent blood-brotherhood between the tree and me.

Gaboon Viper, 2017
Back side with the memoir “The Snake” (2017)

Somehow I started to feel the desire to cut my body open. Whilst I understood, that this was likely to be a temporary state of mind, the desire grew and I enjoyed the intense imagination of deep cuts in my arms and chest, that would allow me to discover, what is underneath. I got used to this sensations or hallucinative states, I experienced them since I arrived and I assume that this is the psychedelic effect, caused by the rainforest. A few days ago, we sat at the terrace in front of the ocean and drank rum, after a long day in the forest. I had developed a buzz, when we started to talk about the Gaboon Viper. M. explained me, that its venom is deadly if not treated with anti venom immediately. His further explanations caused me to drift of and to develop a strong desire to die by a bite of the viper right now. I imagined death being beautiful, sensing how it would be, to be here and gone already. For the time being, I lost all fear and imagined the bite and watched the snake disappear.