SNAKE CIRCLE
                           A Recursive Meditation
                                      
                              C. Scott Ananian
                                      
                               June 16, 1998
                                      
   
   
          
   F:
          Did you read my new play?
   M:
          A new one? Did you give me a copy?
   F:
          No. I just thought you might have seen it.
   M:
          I might have. It might have been talked over -- what's it
          about?
   F:
          It's complicated.
   M:
          How many characters?
   F:
          Two, usually. Same old, same old. A boy and a girl.
   M:
          Am I in it?
   F:
          Why does everyone ask me that?
   M:
          Can I have a copy?
   F:
          Which version would you like?
   M:
          The first.
   F:
          Not the latest?
   M:
          The first. Principle of antecedence.
   F:
          What?
   M:
          The three rules of decision-making: sinistrality, antecedence,
          and precedence.
   F:
          I'm not sure I follow.
   M:
          Just pick the rule that applies, and your decision is made.
          Sinistrality: pick the choice on the left. Antecedence: pick
          the one that is earliest in time. Precedence: pick the first in
          alphabetical order.
   F:
          And only one rule will apply.
   M:
          Usually. In cases of dire emergency -- or whenever you feel
          like it - you can apply the contradiction principle and pick
          the opposite.
   F:
          Makes sense.
   M:
          That's how I manage to avoid taking the bus everywhere. I
          prefer to travel by train.
   F:
          Can I write that into the play?
   M:
          It's already in there.
   F:
          So it is. Okay. Here's version one. Shall we read parts?
   M:
          I'll read the men.
   F:
          And I'll read the women's parts. Go ahead. You've got the first
          line.
   M:
          [Reading.] I've been working on a new screenplay.
   F:
          I should explain.
   M:
          That's not your line.
   F:
          The play's about...
   M:
          Just let me read it. You can explain later.
   F:
          Okay. From the top?
   M:
          [Reading.] I've been working on a screenplay.
   F:
          [Reading.] What's it about?
   M:
          [Reading.] Oh, a trifle. A girl wants to tell a guy something,
          but she can't.
   F:
          [Reading.] So what does she do?
   M:
          She writes a novel and gives it to him as a gift.
   F:
          And the novel's about the thing she wants to say?
   M:
          In a way. It's about trying to say it.
   F:
          The book reflects the reality.
   M:
          Poorly. Details change.
   F:
          Like what?
   M:
          The genders of all the characters are reversed, for starters.
   F:
          But otherwise they're the same people?
   M:
          Almost. In the novel he's a dancer.
   F:
          And instead of writing a novel to her, he dances?
   M:
          More or less. The dance is about the same sorts of things.
   F:
          The attempt to communicate?
   M:
          Changed a bit. It features a pair of star-crossed lovers who
          can only communicate by mail.
   F:
          What do they write about?
   M:
          I told you. The snake eats its tail.
   F:
          What do snakes have to do with it?
   M:
          Just read this. I explain it there.
   F:
          I read the female part?
   M:
          Right. Ready?
   F:
          You have the first line.
   M:
          Skip to... there. The long shot of the two protagonists in a
          field of wild flowers, at sunset.
   F:
          A bit cliché.
   M:
          Shall I continue?
   F:
          Go on.
   M:
          [Reading.] ``The snake eats its tail?''
   F:
          [Reading.] ``Imagine a long line of snakes, sun-bathing on a
          flat rock. Snake-eating snakes.'' The dialog seems rather
          wooden.
   M:
          The novel that she writes is more eloquent.
   F:
          They're in a field discussing this?
   M:
          Well, actually I was hoping for a rather surreal snake sequence
          to fade in over the dialogue. All the snakes start to slither
          forward to eat the snake in front of them.
   F:
          The first snake starves?
   M:
          The line of snakes curves slightly, and as the camera dollies
          out we see that the snakes form a huge circle...
   F:
          So the first snake's eating the last.
   M:
          Of course the snakes are really a metaphor.
   F:
          The futility of it all, right?
   M:
          The futility of communication.
   F:
          Or attempts to communicate.
   M:
          Her novel doesn't really treat this in depth, though. It gets
          rather lost in descriptions of the protagonist's dances.
   F:
          The dance about the emailing lovers?
   M:
          They're emailing each other portions of Hamlet, more or less.
   F:
          The inability to act?
   M:
          A close parallel to the inability to speak.
   F:
          Wait a second. Are all the snakes identical?
   M:
          In the snake circle sequence?
   F:
          Yes.
   M:
          No.
   F:
          I suspected as much. They change slightly from one to the next.
   M:
          And the dancer's emailers aren't really writing Hamlet. Not
          yet. That happens several stories down.
   F:
          I'm beginning to see.
   M:
          And even then, it's still not exactly Hamlet.
   F:
          It's not?
   M:
          Polonius is named Ralph.
   F:
          Why?
   M:
          It's more probable that way.
   F:
          More probable that Shakespeare named Ophelia's father Ralph?
   M:
          No. More probable to appear in this play that way.
   F:
          I'm confused.
   M:
          You've heard of the infinite monkeys?
   F:
          ``If a million monkeys banged a million typewriters endlessly,
          eventually one of them would type out Hamlet''?
   M:
          Well, it turns out that the monkeys will finish a lot faster if
          we allow them to make a few mistakes.
   F:
          Ralph is a mistake.
   M:
          Of course we can't specify exactly which mistake the monkeys
          may make, or the whole scenario is just as improbable.
   F:
          But Ralph? For Polonius? Isn't that rather unlikely?
   M:
          All the mistakes are unlikely. That's the point. Taken
          together...
   F:
          No, I mean Ralph-Polonius in particular. Polo. Ralph Lauren.
          Don't you think the fashion designer substitution is a
          far-fetched coincidence?
   M:
          They all are.
   F:
          But there's an infinite number of them.
   M:
          So they're all in the end likely to come up.
          
          The dancer's emailers actually construct a puppet play.
   F:
          But what's it all about? I mean, taken together, all the plots
          and sub-plots? Or does everything just diverge into
          meaninglessness?
   M:
          Even if they did, it would be a statement of some kind, don't
          you think?
          
          [Stops reading.] That's it? That's the end of the play?
   F:
          That's where the lines end, at least. The sequence doesn't end
          there, of course.
   M:
          You mean the snake chain?
   F:
          The snake circle. A circle has no ends. Even you and I fit into
          the ring at a certain point as the story races around and
          around.
   M:
          But why change it at every telling? Why not just say what you
          mean?
   F:
          It's easier to write in the abstract. Easier to write if you
          don't have reality as a yardstick.
   M:
          But your point gets blurred with all the repetition.
   F:
          Broadened, maybe. But it's all the same story.
          
          My story. My opportunity lost. My desire not to leave the
          unsaid unspoken.
   M:
          You're still not coming clean with me.
   F:
          I wonder if I'd prefer a different version of this story. One a
          level up. Or down. What if I wrote about the story two levels
          removed from this? Or three? What if I added permutations?
          Middle-men. Intermediaries. A third-party. A rival. A lavender
          hippopotamus to munch on leaves and belch.
   M:
          A surrealist who interjects random nonsense. An omniscient
          author.
   F:
          A reality all this corresponds to.
   M:
          I think you'll find it already written.
   F:
          In one of the variations?
   M:
          Perhaps.
          
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    cananian@alumni.princeton.edu