Fear Is The Mind Killer: How a 16-Foot Snake Named Murph Changed My Life
- Alexis
- Aug 4
- 4 min read
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Frank Herbert - Dune
My earliest memory is a nightmare - one I still recall vividly. A creature emerged from a hole in my wall and ate my right hand. Moments later, it came back for my left. Through tears, I begged it to let me keep that one, because how else would I write? I don't know how much meaning to ascribe to the terror of a three-year-old. But I do know that in one way or another, my ability to tell a story has always been sacred to me - even working its way into my developmental subconscious.
Fear has been with me in many forms, throughout life. There's a wonderful quote in Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic about giving fear a seat in the car, but not allowing it to drive. The thing is, I know I've let fear drive the car. More times than I care to admit.
Life has this way of making you cautious and timid and small. Grinding down your ambition, your daring, your sense of wonder. And I've seen that happen in my life before. I have many fears. More than I could ever count. But I don't want to be small. So wherever I can, I try to face the things that scare me. To run at them with full force and compel my world to expand.
And this is how I met Murph.
I'll back up a few weeks, to the Philly Faire at Fort Mifflin. I was raffling off a mini-session and the winner was, as fate would have it, a snake breeder. Cool, I said. I'm terrified of snakes. Pathologically. One of my biggest and most debilitating fears. I would not, I assured him, want anything to do with one. He thought I could handle it. I laughed. Hilarious.
But I went home and couldn't stop thinking about it. I don't want my world to be small. My fears are like a python, wrapping itself around me and cutting off oxygen. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an image I'd considered before. For the first time in my life, I was more curious than afraid. And I couldn't put the thought away.
So I asked Rick if his snakes ever modeled. And over the next nine weeks, I prepared myself mentally, emotionally, even physically. It would end up being the most challenging series of images I have ever taken - self-portraits with a sixteen-foot, ninety-pound python.
We named her Murph. Not for disaster, but for possibility. For Interstellar. For my belief that love surpasses all comprehensible dimension, connects us through time and space, and realizes all realities. "Murphy's Law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. What it means is that whatever can happen will happen. And that sounded just fine with us."
I wanted to tell the story of my fear. Of my earliest memory, maybe my oldest friend. This creature that has encompassed me since I was small, and made me so scared to move. But as I prepared, I practiced holding other snakes. I met Murph and had a chance to hold her with my kids in the room. I visited the woods two hours away, where the photos would take place and planned out the angles and shots I wanted. I lifted weights to get stronger. Rick and I spoke about what scared me, and he helped me understand and better prepare for Murph. He interacted with her every day so she'd be used to handling when I was ready. Two months of preparing. And when it was time, I found something amazing.
The story had changed. It wasn't about fear anymore. It was about love. Love pulling me through paralysis. Love making me stronger and braver. Love opening doors and making my world bigger. Love conquering fear.
Murph was sweet. A word I never would have seen myself using for a snake before. She explored the landscape with gentle curiosity. She tolerated me scooping up great folds of her and hoisting her onto my lap like an oversized puppy. She seemed to enjoy her field trip into the beautiful waterfall oasis that was the backdrop of our exchange.
Despite all of my planning, the images did not turn out the way I'd imagined they would. They were something else altogether. A hazy vision. Something surreal and otherworldly. And that's appropriate, because it's how it all actually felt. I expected to be afraid, but I found myself instead feeling soft and dreamy - safe and almost serene. It was so far from anything I'd allowed myself the possibility of envisioning that I was caught off guard by it. Even now, I'm not sure I can fully explain its impact.
I faced my fear, expecting to do so with braced body and barely contained terror. I expected to get through it, to survive it. I didn't know I would simply bask with Murph in the warm glow of the sun. Each of us resting on the cool, mossy rocks as the waterfall made white noise of everything. She and I shared a moment. She wasn't a thing to be conquered at all. She was simply another living creature, allowing me to sit beside her.
And we did, Murph and I. We sat on a rock together. And we just.... soaked it all in.
No fear at all. Just possibility.
Alexis is an ethereal portrait photographer living in Huntingdon Valley, PA. She loves to tell true stories through a fantastical lens. Photography is her way of exploring, understanding and expressing the rich complexities of the human experience. She serves the Greater Philadelphia, Bucks County & Montgomery County areas. You can see more of her work here.