…as opposed to a shark, as has been speculated in the past.
Being a snake as a lot of perks. Life is as simple as we want it to be. We’re patient. We can wait and wait for the right moment to act, and as long as our few actions aren’t defied, life is good. Yes, we’re vain. But it’s a vanity that comes from long periods with nothing to do but self-reflect, so we’re more keenly aware of our flaws than others perhaps, as well. Also, we have this whole paradox in which we are both overlooked, and yet paid keen attention to when noticed. I don’t know what that’s about.
Our gift is destruction, for the most part. We’ve no hands of our own to create with, but we’ve got mouths with which to bite, eat, and criticize. There’s a lot of creativity that can be done with your words, but deep down, the drive to crush and tear is always there. Some of our greatest creative works are bound to be elaborate criticisms.
Lately though, being a snake hasn’t seemed so good. Snakes are creatures of obsession and habit more than anything else. We find something that works, and we stick with it until it doesn’t work anymore. Simple as that. Once we get our first bite of something, we don’t stop until it’s completely swallowed and digested. Tenacious to a fault, for better or for worse. The scary thing is that the obsession and the introspection cross paths. Most snakes won’t admit to this, but secretly, our deepest, darkest obession is always the same- our tails.
With nothing else to think about, nothing to worry about, nothing to explore or destroy, a snake’s tail might start to look mighty fascinating to him. Sooner or later, if we contemplate our tails long enough, it ends up in our mouth. That’s just how it is. And that is the real problem.
Ouroboros. Eating your own tail is just a self-perpetual cycle of destruction, and once you start, it’s famously difficult to stop. If you aren’t careful, someday all that’s left of you is a pair of gnashing jaws with no purpose or direction. Ouroboros can be resisted and fought off, but it’s always a risk- after all, a snake will always carry it’s tail along behind it.
It’s tough. These days, with all that’s happened, sometimes I feel like I’m on the verge of ouroboros. Othertimes, I wonder if I might just be ready to shed my skin, and become something else entirely. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.
I wonder if anyone else will pull any sense from this.
Interesting analysis Ucci, I believe every trait (tenacity, kindness, vanity, patience) is both useful AND detrimental. The difficult part is deciding when to turn a trait off.
Because it worked before, it’s understandable that most people think they need to increase the trait – rather than decrease it – and, ironically, end up increasing speed before the crash.
This line reminded me of a series of pics I saw. It shows that a snake can “bite off more than he can chew†– quite literally. If you see yourself as a snake, then you may be able to take on more than you thought?
andreas.id.au/mirrors/snakeroo/
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Yeah, poor snake. That’s not unique to us, though- I mean, who HASN’T been in that position? Sometimes you eat the whole 'roo, sometimes you lay there for hours (my longest was 5 years) refusing to accept that it’s just not going to happen.
As far as traits being good and bad, I think I’ve come to terms with a lot of what people would consider my bad traits, and if I haven’t exactly turned them into a positive, I think I at least know how to play to my strengths.
Hello F(r)iends,
Great analysis Uccisore. I would also add that snakes are not social beings and are cold-blooded and that The snake has a lonely road and can be trampled on… It is no surprise that it strikes back. You can be anti-social and you can be cold-blooded at times. So, you are a snake and yet there is more to you.
You are not as one dimensional as you make yourself out to be or perhaps you are only choosing to show yourself as the one dimensional being. You have a fascinating side to you–you are like a two-headed snake in that you are constantly being pulled in two different directions or perhaps you are the Medusa in that you are afraid to look in the mirror and see all that is there.
I find it interesting that you relate more to the snake (a creature that is demonized in the bible). Perhaps your choice is in tune with your reality in terms of your Christianity?
My advice is that if you are the snake, be careful of charmers. These charmers will dance with you, they will play music with you, you will think they love you, that you are their equal… but alas, ultimately they are distracting you and having their way with you and they end up keeping you in a basket while the rest of the world passes you by… Yes, be careful of charmers.
-Thirst
I like the metaphor.
as long as they aren’t on a plane…
-Imp
Consider sharks on a plane. Wait.
I got it. Sharks in a submarine being transported by a giant cargo aircraft that had snakes in it.
Somebody get me an agent, and quick.
Uccisore,
I’m sorry if I’m being dim, I loved reading this post, and I thought it drew a well thought out metaphor…
However…what exactly what are you reffering to with the tail?
THIRST
Yeah, that’s all true, unfortunately. When I try to break that mold and be truly social, it comes off forced or ham-fisted. It’s odd, because I know that I function best on my own and all that, for the reasons you say above, but knowing it doesn’t mean I always like it.
It’s funny, the comparison there is so obvious, that it’s hard to believe I started thinking of myself in quite a while before I made that connection. I don’t really know how that plays in to things. I know I do like being in the position of the hollow, enigmatic voice, that says things that keep people focused purely on the words without pausing to consider the nature/motivations of the speaker. That, really, is where the Serpent in the Garden would have come undone, if only Eve would have considered the source and not the message so much. Beyond that, I don’t know how the two work together…I don’t see myself as evil, I’ve always seen myself as filling an unpleasent niche within the definition of ‘good’, like an undertaker, soldier, or sewer worker.
Wow. Someday, if we ever get to know each other much better than we do now, I'll tell you the hideous circumstances that lead me to be checking this forum at 2:18 AM on a Thursday morning, then I'll remind of what you said above, and we'll both laugh. I really do want to talk about it, but...Uccisore has a certain image to maintain.
Suffice it to say it’s more than apropos, in ways that have nothing to do with that dirtbag from my past.
KEBOP:
Thank you much for asking, Kebop. The tail is my private obsession. It doesn't matter what it is, only that it's personal, all snakes have one, and that we reflect on it too much. Fill in any particulars you like. What matters is, I carry it around with me wherever I go.
Eating my tail is really a double-metaphor. The first way to see it is that when I've turned back on my own tail, all I can see is myself- my world becomes tiny, I cut myself off from everything outside my obsession, until my life is a tiny little cycle of living to live. You may think of the heroin addict that only leaves the house to make enough money to score and get wasted- he eliminates himself from the world, eliminates the chance of anything new happening for him.
The second way to see it is as a cycle of destruction. Eating the tail in this case means turning my powers of scrutiny and criticism on myself, seeing myself through the lens of my obsession. Since a snake is ultimately destructive, I rip myself apart, finding more and more flaws. I try to reason my way out of my flaws, but since my reason is destructive, I always either find new ones or magnify the old ones.
In truth, these two sorts of Ouroboros coincide- I obsess, criticize myself for the obsession, feel down, withdraw from the world into myself, to obsess and criticize all over again.
The tail is tied to self-reflection. Perhaps self-reflection IS the obession for some. If you want to really strain your brain, suppose hypothetically that thinking of myself in terms of being a snake is itself the obsession. In that case, This very thread is an excersize in Ouroboros- reducing myself into small, negative facets, seeing myself living up to that redaction, reducing further.
The overall result is this: When there’s nobody, no system, no creative work left around to criticize or chew through, a snake will sooner or later turn on itself and destroy itself, just to feel the satisfaction that comes from the act of chewing.