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.