Dream of Serpents and My Father

Yesterday was North American Father's Day, and although he Does Not Blog, I told my father I'd write something about him. But I'm a little busy, so I'm using yet another old dream of mine. This is my favourite dream about my father... And some lovely random coral snakes from google images...

Dream of Serpents
I am back in the first house I ever knew, our house in Sudan. The concrete block walls perspire and steam from the heat of the sun. I am standing with a great crowd of strangers and my father. When I look up, I see that the ceiling is all strung with snakes, writhing garlands of serpents. They wear the vivid colors that herald venom: scarlet, emerald, and onyx; they are banded and solid, bright-eyed and flicker-tongued. I am frozen with fear. One of the snakes detaches itself from the others and darts across the ceiling to the door, flashing over our heads like lightning. It is followed by another, then another. Somehow I find my voice. The snakes! I cry to my father in great fear. He looks up and begins to recite their names: identifying each poisonous species as it passes over us, like Adam. He knows what I only fear. He does not even acknowledge my fear in all his intense and joyful naming of serpents. And then he and all those unknown people are gone. The house is on the edge of the Sahel—there are small villages scattered between the dunes. It is cool and quiet. The snakes are gone. Instead, two friends are present. We are, each of us, seated with our backs to a different wall. The room is vast and cavernous; we are very far apart. One friend hums, the other is organizing her life in the pages of a book. I am sick with longing to be able to remain here, on the margins of the world, in a cinderblock clinic where the women bring their babies for the precious vaccines. Yet I know that it is a dream and that soon all of us will wake; I know that we have so little time.
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I love this dream with my father like Adam. He is a namer, a collector of knowledge, and I am like him in that respect. And I do wonder about this dream--would knowledge of the serpents remove the venom of its fangs? Was my father safe because he knew each snake by name or had he just replaced fear with joy? If I knew all the world, if I understood it, would it lose its power to wound and stun and destroy?