Saved from experience in Juana Adcock's "The Serpent Dialogues"

The woman in Juana Adcock's "The Serpent Dialogues" talks with a snake, but one day the snake stops coming to visit her, and she begins to keep a diary. On day 27, shortly before the snake finally returns, she writes about "reaching for my phone as a form of / noise or interference, like wanting / to be saved from experiencing this instant / with all its beautiful and devastating aloneness". The potentially beautiful experience of the unique instant is replaced by the noise of the interchangeable experiences offered by the phone – but that replacement of the unique moment is also a form of salvation, in which one escapes from "devastation". (Andrew Shields, #111words, 6 May)