There is, in any case, a way for the snake to exist atop the plateau. A final tree, or even an original one, which is essentially a forked stick, still grows, or stands, there by the pool which is essentially a spring rising though the plateau like the vertical of T rises to reach its capital termination and with a lone canal as P, whose water falls over the edge of the plateau at some distance removed. It could be that the tree in some unknown capacity is a sort of typical attractor, and if we imagine it a fork, it may also be a tuning fork whose sense is emanation. But let's imagine the fork as something closer to an antenna, something whose nature is thus potentially dual, one of emanation and reception. There is, in any case, no way to be sure, but we can imagine that the tree is, in some sense a home for both the snake, and for its prey, or mate, which may of course be an insect, or another letter. Why is it, that the snake's tongue is forked? K. Schwenk has this to say:
"Theory, anatomy, neural circuitry, function, and behavior now support a hypothesis of the forked tongue as a chemosensory edge-detector used to follow pheromone trails of prey and conspecifics [especially the opposite sex]. The ability to sample simultaneously two points along a chemical gradient provides the basis for the instantaneous assessment of trail location." This does indeed clarify matters a bit, but is clarification what we seek? Can we not accept another vision from the pond, or is what we ourselves seek a trail of sorts; a trail which has emanated from the text like a tail and which receives our attention through 'terms'. In the classic Greek depiction of the Gorgon, the face is often depicted as a kind of bloated circle, where large eyes, fangs and a hanging tongue figure most prominently. There are also often marks upon the forehead which resemble those used by practitioners of the Hindu religion to connote the bindu, or the primordial silence into which all noise must inevitably lead. Let us stop then and consider the origin of our snake. Our snake is derived or perhaps severed is a better term from head of the Gorgon, or in a more modern sense Medusa; a single snake from a head of snakes, which were themselves derived perhaps from the unruly locks drawn and copied and drawn again according to the styles and inclination of those long ago artists. Let's find our Medusa in stop: S is a sign, and in the emoticon register a sine wave of sorts, and also a snake, or for that matter a crooked trail or spring. We can also say it is a 'double turning'. We are not interested in S as a unit of phonology in this study, except in so far as we can find the s sound in both snake and medusa. We are in fact 'stopping' that canal of reference and channeling our attention to the image of the letter sign. T or t is a sign or sword or scimitar used by Perseus to sever the head of Medusa. O is the face of the Gorgoneion itself or the shield which Perseus wielded so as not to be turned to stone by the emanation of her gaze, her remainder, which is itself a reception, a perception. It might also be that her face is on the shield, or that the circle might be the bindi which sits on her forehead as the symbol of the silence she brings in the stone of her gaze. P, in the emoticon register, is the tongue which hangs out taunting, a warning, a talisman of her intent to silence. That tongue is not used to speak, but connotes an end to speaking, a uselessness of resistance to the stony silences unleashed by her gaze.
From S to P, from the Snakes to the Tongue is an expanse of faciality
which enacts a transformation from the active calculation of living to the halting literalness of a mineral effigy, from a supple sampling of edge detection of chemical gradients to the rigid rule-based grammar of constructed speach, or conversely from the narrow-banded filter of sex and prey to the open-ended configureability of languaged being. Now aside from all this we can surmise that perhaps Medusa has some use for the snakes on her head. Perhaps she uses them as an array as each has the ability to sample simultaneously two points along a chemical gradient providing the basis for an instantaneous assessment of trail location, whether that trail is up, down, behind or in front. The Medusa image is in fact a model for biohybridized sensory perception, directly piping in olfactory signals from the forked tongues of an array of embedded snakes. Stop and think about that. How many sense channels could we assimilate were our wiring amenable to such a modification. How would we write if we could encode pheromonic molecules into our printing. What if we could create a pheromonic art work or poem. What if each letter carried a pheromonic subtext. Scratch and Sniff Poetry? A scratch and sniff painting? What if each letter was a broadcast apparatus, A kind of wifi microchip array beaming a quality of edges. Stop. It's just getting silly. Maybe the snake at the top of the plateau, is a kind of Narcissus, the narcissus of knowledge, the narcissus of text-based knowledge acquisition staring down into the pool which is both a spring and a stream becoming waterfall. Maybe knowledge itself is a kind of 'double turning' both toward intelligence and toward other forms of stupidity. Maybe knowledge, like stupidity is a sort of filter for the broad bandwith of potential which exists within the pleroma of information.. Information as 'in formation' cedes structure, but how is structure anything other than a local instantiation of a singularity within the universal potential. Maybe the Narcissusnake is crucified on that T of the sword which cuts to the root of meaning as the maker of structure in the universal field of potential we all share shorn of our head-snakes whose keen sense of chemical gradients once attuned our senses to a world outside of words whose stony gaze we receive from within as if our birth was indeed the swallowing of a stone of literal determination. Stop! Our society stands through definition. We cannot simply evade the process which has spawned our most precious wishes. These stupid omens of snakes in trees staring into streams made waterfalls by the altitude of Medusa's commands are moot. Each tuning fork has an arbitrary tone when held up to the material spectrum within which there might exist infinite configureability as expressed by the process of imagination. Is it a mistake that both Meaning and Matrioshka both begin with M, or is it my imagination that madness is a state of mind which turns strange the attractors of the world, shifting their sense from a socially derived one to private one whose attached intensity spawns a reaction among other beings who sample the same information? What isn't calculation, from the rising of the sun to the stealing of the crown, there is ought but the hum of potential and the roar of speechless molecules across our grids of determination which are themselves calculations and mirrors and streams and trees, our determination is always already a worlding, and everything we say and do in the world is implicated in the structure of the world as a calculation of worlding. Self worlding world of self that self Stops Stopping itself, an equation running until it halts. "We live until we die," said the snake, "and even then we live as something else.." But does anything ever really halt?
