Issue #97

(Ouro)Boris and I

by Boris Glikman

I have a domesticated ouroboros for a pet. I have named him OuroBoris, which is a pun on his common name, as an indication that he belongs to me and is a part of me, Boris, and because of the many affinities, connections, and similarities that we share.

Ouroboroses have a superficial resemblance to hoop snakes, but there are some obvious differences between them, both in appearance and behaviour. For one thing, a hoop snake eventually lets go of its tail, but OuroBoris always keeps his tail in his mouth. Also, hoop snakes are cold to touch and have a rubbery feel to them, whilst my ouroboros' body is warm and firm. The most salient distinction between them lies in their eyes. Hoop snakes have dead, reptilian eyes with an empty expression in them, but OuroBoris has deep, human-like eyes, containing within them the wisdom of eons, wisdom such that a hoop snake could never possess.

As I mentioned, OuroBoris never lets go of his tail which must mean that his mouth is permanently fused to the other end of his digestive tract. Therefore, he keeps recycling and redigesting the same piece of food, with the food going in a perpetual loop from his mouth to the end of his digestive tract, and then from the end of his digestive tract straight back into his mouth. Consequently, I don't need to feed him at all, and I save a lot of money on pet food.

Obviously, with his tail stuck permanently in his mouth, OuroBoris cannot utter any sounds, even if he was capable of it. Perhaps if his tail were to be somehow removed from his mouth, he would have the capacity of speech, and he would then say the wisest and most beautiful things to me. However, we have no need for words for our communication is on a higher and deeper plane than lame, unwieldy, coarse lumps of words. OuroBoris and I speak oceans just through our eyes alone. I am always learning new cosmological and existential secrets and mysteries from his eyes, even when glancing into them but for an instant. His eyes communicate to me ineffable, transcendent, eternal, infinite truths that could never be conveyed via words. We spend long periods of time holding our heads close to one another, gazing deeply, just like two lovers, into each other's eyes, and forgetting about everything else. If I could, I would look inside his eyes forever, and would be happy to do nothing else with my life, and no one could ever tear me away from those eyes.

My ouroboros and I spend a lot of time together. I often take OuroBoris for walks outside, or rather, I roll him down the pavement like a wheel. He particularly enjoys being pushed down steep hills, gaining enormous speed on his way down. By swallowing more of his body, he can reduce his diameter, and I can then wear him as an exotic ring, bracelet, or necklace. Sometimes, he even lets me twirl him around my waist like a hula-hoop. OuroBoris always wins when we play hide-and-seek, because he is able to swallow himself completely and thus become invisible. Occasionally, he wraps his entire body around me, and I no longer know where I end and he begins.

Well-meaning solicitous people keep telling me (with my welfare in mind, of course) that ouroboroses are not genuine animals, that they are just imaginary mythological creatures, but I don't care at all. In fact, it would suit me just fine, and it would be quite apt and not at all strange if my pet were indeed a mythical creature that doesn't exist in the real world, for I have never felt too real myself. Indeed, sometimes I wonder who is more real and who is writing this story - me or OuroBoris? Judging by how greatly OuroBoris enjoys life and with what ardency he embraces reality, it seems to me as if he is the real being, well-adapted to the world, and I am the imaginary one, incapable of ever fitting in.

In any case, as mentioned above, OuroBoris and me have a lot in common. Ouroboroses have always had an association with constant rebirth, bringing oneself to life, and the union of conscious and unconscious worlds, and those are precisely the ideals that I strive for in my life and in particular with my creativity and writing. For example, many of my stories come from dreams, and by turning those dreams into stories I make the unconscious conscious. Moreover, when I write, I always endeavour to transmute into words those truths that are unspoken and ineffable, that people cannot or refuse to confront and articulate, truths which lie buried deep within the unconscious bedrock. And I experience constant rebirth, always sloughing off the old self and begetting a new one, forever undergoing a transformation of my character, my inner world, my creativity. Nothing is ever stable or constant in my life. Additionally, just as OuroBoris is always swallowing his tail, so I too am always swallowing my feelings, my pride, my pain, my joy, and my sadness, never making them evident to anyone, not even to myself.

I must admit though that, ultimately, OuroBoris eludes all comprehension and control. He might reveal all the mysteries of existence and the Universe to me, but the one mystery that he won't reveal is the mystery of who he really is. I hardly have any control over what behaviour patterns he might exhibit next, and I very rarely can grasp what the motivation, meaning and function of a particular behaviour of his might be. Nor do I ever know what secrets and truths his eyes might convey to me next. Such a situation is frustrating yet also rewarding, for he keeps surprising me and challenging my mind with his actions and his revelations. Trying to have control over OuroBoris and trying to understand him and his behaviour is like trying to have control over and trying to understand your dreams. Sure, there are periods when there is perfect communication and agreement between us, but then those periods vanish in an instant, just like a dream. In a way, the comparison to a dream is quite apt, for an ouroboros is after all (or at least that's what some claim it to be) a mythical being. If OuroBoris is, indeed, a dream being that exists solely within the collective unconsciousness of mankind, then it is only to be expected that his ways and behaviour would be almost beyond my control and comprehension. I just have to be satisfied with what little authority and understanding that I do possess.

Or perhaps, rather than a dream being, OuroBoris is merely a symbol or a metaphorical entity representing something in my inner or outer worlds? Or what if OuroBoris and I are merely fictional characters in an allegorical parable that endeavours to convey some essential deep truths about existence and reality—truths that I myself, am, alas, blind to and can not comprehend. But these are, probably, just futile, irrelevant speculations that are neither here nor there.

I recall hearing somewhere that ouroboroses are eternal creatures that possess an infinite diameter, which only appears to be finite when they are in the folded circular state. If that is indeed the case, then it must be that my OuroBoris is just a tiny segment of a limitless ouroboros, and other parts of him are probably being looked after in other homes by other people, and some parts of him are possibly living out in the wild all over the world. It would also then mean that my OuroBoris must have had many owners prior to me and will have many more owners after me, spending only a tiny portion of his life with me. If so, then I want to be sure that I leave a special mark in his memory, and that he will remember all my kindness and unconditional love for him.

Even if I don't possess an entire ouroboros for the entirety of his lifetime, I would still be enormously grateful for and proud of being the owner of just an infinitesimal part of him for merely an infinitesimal period of his life, for he has taught me so much. The most important lesson that OuroBoris has taught me (as this lesson has had so many crucial consequences for my life) is how to bend my body identically to the way that he bends his body, so that my mouth connects with the other end of my alimentary canal. By contorting my body in such a way, my existence has changed fundamentally and for the better as, just like OuroBoris, I never need to ingest new food again.

***

'What a ridiculous story I have written,' thought the ouroboros to himself in frustration, as he dropped the pen out of his mouth onto the writing desk, folded himself back into his usual circular position, with his tail in his mouth, and filled his hungry stomach with warm recycled mush.

'I must be losing it, I am writing absolute garbage, creating bizarre, nonsensical worlds and creatures. No publisher is going to believe or accept such a high fantasy of some fictitious bipedal animal keeping an ouroboros as a pet, of that I am quite sure. The preposterous idea of us, ouroboroses, the infinite, immortal, all-wise, all-knowing beings, the repositories and founts of all truths and all mysteries, being the playthings of some lowly finite beings who occupy but a speck of space and exist but for an instant of time. How could such primitive creatures have sufficient power and intelligence to keep one of us as their pet? How could such ephemeral beings possess any knowledge and understanding of existence, the world and reality?

'To endow these creatures with cognition, intellect, and existence is beyond the scope of all probability. Such beings could never exist in the real world. Even within the context of a fictional story it is too implausible and far-fetched (bordering indeed on the profane) to bestow reality upon them. For one thing, how likely is it that there could be such freakish animals with unwieldy, awkward appendages attached to and sticking out of their torsos, destroying the smoothness and the streamlined contours of their bodies? Creatures that are incapable of folding themselves into the perfect shape of a circle, and instead spend their whole lives positioned in a crooked and precarious perpendicular stance? Beings who, because of their mortality, would be ceaselessly haunted and confronted by death, and thus would be incapable of devoting themselves fully to life? Beings that baulk at or are incapable of re-eating and re-digesting in perpetuity the same piece of food, and thus would be condemned instead to spending their whole lives looking for and fighting for new sustenance to consume? How can there be a world in which the predominant and paramount preoccupation and activity of every living creature is to struggle for, search for, and ingest new food, each and every day?

'No, I can't write this story. Potentially, this story could even be judged as and condemned for being politically incorrect and derogatory to ouroboroses, particularly because I bring into question the very reality of ouroboroses' existence, even if only within a fictional setting. And then I would be in all sorts of trouble. And, in any case, I can't even think of a good ending for this story. I'm going to scrap it altogether and write a conventional pet story instead.'

Boris and I

I have a simple and finite creature for a pet. I have named it Boris, both because it rhymes with my name, and as an indication that it belongs to me and is a part of me...