a handful of Dust

When I heard the T.S. Elliot line "I will show you fear in a handful of dust," in class the other day a couple of things clicked in to place for me. The first has to do with snakes. Adam is created from dust, and to dust he returns. The snake is condemned to go on his belly and eat dust. We know the origin of snakes from greek learning: snakes are produced when a person dies. They are born of spinal cords. The ideas that the snake eats dust, that we are dust, and that snakes emerge from our corpses all made sense together to me for some reason. So here's how I see it. The snake is the harbinger of wisdom; it was he who told us to eat the apple and become as gods. It is because we ate the apple that we are mortal and in pain. Therefor the snake is both the bringer of the mind and death at the same time. Picture how a snake would looks when it is still in a person's back; its tale is at the human tailbone, and its jaws would be wrapped around the base of the neck. It's like we always carry the snake with us at the top of our spinal cord. The snake holds our wisdom until thought ceases, then it eats its way out of the dust and lives on til it becomes dust itself. Also, it makes sense that Adam and Eve would strike such a deal with the snake; the snake, thanks to Gawd, no longer has any legs, only one long spine. Without spines people have a hard time getting around. This way snakes have a reasonable means of transportation, we get to be vertebrates, and there is a snake born in every man.