Angels and Devils

Let me briefly describe two images that have been developing in my mind, too vivid to be ignored, yet too short to spin into their own separate stories. If there were such a thing as a moving painting, I would express them as such.

The first came to me gradually, upon listening to The Devil's Trill by Vanessa Mae and envisioning a scene in a grand drama of mine, involving the three towers of Art, Story, and Music (which I promise I will elaborate on in a later post). The setting is a glorious concert hall decked in velvet and gold, and the central figure of the piece is a young virtuoso, a blindfolded violinist at the conclusion of his performance of a lifetime - arms outraised, with instrument in one hand and bow in the other. Ah, but I'm sure you've guessed already the title of the song and know that this can't be the entire story. For the violinist, in pursuing his greatest performance, has made a pact with Mephistopheles, you see; when he puts his fingers to the string, a supernatural power takes hold, and as the music builds an entire orchestra of the damned arises behind him as accompaniment, setting the wallpaper and curtains to flame. Orange tongues lick at the edges of the stage. A dark aura hangs overhead. The violinist smiles, a sinister gesture, his head tilted just a little loftily...the transformation complete.

A justifiably forbidding image indeed. Well, the second piece is as sparse as the previous is rich, as lucid as the other dark. It's idea came independently of any plotline, although it may fit well into my fable of Light and Innocent (another story for another day), instead drawing its source from Japanese apocalyptic fiction and the beginning of Gungrave. The view is above an arid, desolate landscape of cracked dirt beneath a brilliantly clear blue sky. Large infrastructure has collapsed, twisted steel from buildings and bridges protruding from the earth. Wreckage of an abandoned civilization. Dwarfed by all of this is our central figure, a girl of seven or eight, clad in a torn, dirt-smudged red dress. She has on her face a determined expression, as she drags with two hands a heavy metal chain, which is latched onto the coffin behind her. I envision her sometimes facing forward, chain slung over her shoulder, other times facing back, pulling with all her might. Whichever the pose, it is the coffin that tells us the true story - for inside it lies the body of a dead angel. Resting on its side, white robes and wings caked with blood, it clasps the broken end of the spear which pierced its chest. This then, is the sole hope of humanity. A child and her burden, navigating the endless slopes of destruction in search of rebirth.

Nerds and Tribes

It is truly fascinating to see the modern school system from an outsider's perspective, stripped down to its absurdities and bereft of its insular modularity, a strange cultural machine that only seems mundane because we know no other. Paul Graham does just that in the introduction to his book, Hackers and Painters, where he de-constructs the social ranking of junior high in all its glory, and subsequently strikes at the heart of the argument Daniel Quinn makes in My Ishmael for a radical tribal revolution of the current education system. He also strikes at the heart of why such a revolution, in this productivity-obsessed day and age, would never find more than marginal support.

And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.

Specialization. There's the word I have been repeating over and over since this dilemma came to light - the dilemma of learning, of polymathism, of the need for a bird's eye view when it comes to taking on the educational bureaucracy. Wherever you find programs directed at "change," you will also find people caught in this mindset that it is essential for progress to be built upon specialization, no one person more than a few steps away from a single discipline, as if they might fall off some precipice (unfocused is the word) if they wandered too far. There can be no question in their minds that the greater good is the deeper, the narrower, the assembly line of intellectual probing. Which, of course, brings us inevitably back to the 4-point scale and the standardized alphabet soup, criteria that are easy to digest in large quantities. Graham ties this up neatly with a quote that shows us things really do not change from the halls of junior high:

"We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be created without any meaningful criteria. We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest."

And what surprise should it be then, that our children congregate in tribes the same way that the system judges them? This ancient social structure has worked for humans the same way that flocks have worked for geese and herds have worked for buffalo, as Quinn points out. It is only in a different context we, modernity, give it another name. But make no mistake, the "freaks" and "nerds" as Graham describes the cliques, clung to their tribal identity as much as the popular students did. For the former, "never studying (or at least never appearing to) was an important tribal value," whereas the latter, though besieged on all sides by the cruelty of their more popular peers, chose intelligence over a place at the feeding trough. Neither is right or wrong. All are merely responding to the human need to belong.

From this, it's apparent what must be done. Take advantage of a centuries old social organization that's worked all along, or continue throwing money at a failing one we created? The choice is no choice at all.

In tribal societies, the three-year-old is free to explore the world around it as far as it likes...There simply are no walls shutting the child in or out at any age, no doors closed against it. There is no age when it 'should' learn a given thing. Nor would anyone ever dream of giving thought to such a thing. Ultimately, all the things grown-ups do are fascinating to a child, and it eventually and inevitably wants to do them itself - not necessarily on the same day as every other child, nor in the same week or the same year. This process isn't cultural, it's genetic.

At the same time, Ishmael sees the criticism in this before it's even spoken.

But, of course, having your children underfoot in the workplace would seriously reduce efficiency and productivity. Even though sending them to educational detention centers is terrible for children, it's unquestionably wonderful for business. The system I've outlined here will never be implemented among the people of your culture as long as you value business over people.

Progress, as defined by the market we so ironically created, is what impedes our children's progress.

In the end, we produce what we value in a capitalist society - shouldn't that productivity then reflect our children's education, if we care about it so much? Who, really, are we making more computers and automobiles and cell phones for but ourselves? It's time to re-define "progress" and "production," straighten out our priorities for the sake of our future generation. We do not need to give up anything to make this tribal educational system succeed. We must only trade that which we have no use for more of, in exchange for what our children essentially need.

What Do You Want to Do with Your Life?

It's a misleading question, really, something you've heard from the moment you sat down to Career Day in elementary school (all the fathers and mothers patiently explaining that mysterious adult world to wide-eyed students - we thought it was fascinating once, before we understood the truth) to the time you step into the "real world," suit and tie buttoned up like a well-dressed monkey at the organ grinder (and I use that last word with all its accompanying connotations). Repeated again and again, interrogated, picked apart, spelled out in Lego pieces of little firemen and police officers tramping off to work. Their place in life. What they do. That unfathomable something from 9 to 5.

Well, that something slowly crystallizes, and the rose-tinted glasses fall from your eyes...and you realize, in fact, the question was never completely true (the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...if only we had lawyers back then), at least, as it was posed so innocently when you first sat down during circle time to share The Rest of Your Life (tm) as you knew it from the sandbox that delineated your entire world back then. Perhaps I might have been inclined to protest if I knew the truth, but looking back, I can't fault the adults for their deception. After all, "What do you want to do with your life?" seemed a perfectly transparent question from their point of view. The view that knew all the caveats which defined "what" and "do" and "want" and "your life," that is.

So perhaps it's time to rephrase the question. Perhaps it's time to let Gorgias take the stand. (You'll forgive me for the poor imitation, but we all have our shortcomings.) "What do you want to do with your life?" becomes, in so many words, "What makes you a worthwhile member of this society?"

...And that's the truth. Simple, right? For those of you already in the work world or otherwise trundling your way happily towards it (as the yellow Lego police man does each day, never shedding his organ grinder suit), it seems second nature. Not even worthy of mention. Of course I am a member of this society, and of course I must do this thing that makes me worthy of belonging. How else could we interpret the question? There are reasons the hand that feeds becomes the Stockholm syndrome that defines the rest of your life, ad nauseum.

But back then, do you think we as children would understand...I mean really, really understand...the ramifications of such a statement? Do you think that we would realize - and accept - the way our future goals were written for us? And even then, when all is said and done, could we ever imagine agreeing to it for...the rest...of our lives? The child who wants to be his hero so stylized cannot comprehend where poetic license ends and humdrum life, mundanity, that accursed repetition begins (for I am convinced Hell is repetition, merely entrapment in a plane one dimension short of what we were meant to live in). And what is this, this "rest" of your life? This "passion" they say you must find and then cling to like a jealous lover bent on squeezing every last drop from your heart's deliverance? (I imagine that domestic abuse awareness month ribbon staring ominously at me from the tabletop could say something to its powers). Even if it were possible to give so much of myself, I would not do it. A love of that sort, no matter how precious, demands something from you that you can never reclaim, and leaves something with you that you can never attain. It is the irony of specialization. Narrow alleyways once visited. Each cog, no matter how finely grained, can never become a perfect circle.

Ah, so then, let us return to the question as it was meant to be asked. As we believed it to be, naive and trusting, back when our worst fears lay in the pages of an R.L. Stine book.

What do you want to do with your life?

I'll tell you now. And if you ask me again, I'll tell you something different. Don't try to find convergence, because the question has no answer, it by its very nature cannot be answered, for who is to say that one of an infinite sphere of possibilities should be chosen out of the universes we cohabit? The very arrogance of that assumption pales my (admittedly deliberate) appropriation of Greek philosophy's mouthpiece. I can only tell you this moment, all the moments that I desire to experience, and ask for no more.

I want to sit beneath a willow tree painting the African cliffs at sunset.

I want to ride the wisps of song through an untouched glade.

I want to step off the edge of Babel with the sun in my eyes.

I want every climax that froze, for just a second, time in its tracks and laid bare the lucidity which led Sisyphus to smile as he descended the mountaintop.

Life is simulated annealing. So says the e-mail signature of a professor of mine. Well, if that is what living was meant to be, then God help me...but all of us deserve more than just an algorithm to abide our existences by.

Socrates gets Tenure

I've been remiss in posting to this journal, despite the flurry of ideas - both new and backlogged from more than a year ago - that have inspired the muse. Work and an increasing cynicism with the university setting have taken their toll on me; not too long ago, I might have brushed this off as just a temporary setback, but it seems nowadays I grow more and more convinced that the ennui is a symptom of an underlying, pervasive, and integrally fatal flaw with the system itself.

So, as is my mind's wont when it finds itself pitted against a dilemma it cannot resolve, a character emerges from the depths of imagination, woven to "act out," if you will, an alternative reality that rebels against the current scheme. A satire with (I hope) all the trappings of Greek irony wrapped up in modern day humor. I'll spare you the pretentious introduction and get to the title of this piece - Socrates gets Tenure.

Yes, take our favorite Greek philosopher and transport him from the halls of Athens to those of any modern-day college (a liberal arts one for added irony), with all the trials and tribulations that face every newly minted professor traversing the bowels of the education system. Let the administration review his application for tenure, let them assign him classes, critique his research, let the true politics of this university that we speak of come to light when the philosopher whose work stands at the center of the School of Athens (having been a mentor to Plato) is only recognized as that curious old man with his outdated, idealistic concepts about teaching and dialogue.

With regards to the actual details of the story, I am unfortunately vague, although several scenes come sequentially to light. The first, a meeting of the administration to review his application - questions about his interests (too broad, they say, and current trends in philosophy steer away from such purist interpretations), his publications (all transcriptions by a single student? Not a journal to be printed in?), his qualifications for the job (certainly questionable, given he never officially received a degree - though it does take a...unique sort of man to face off against the highest politicians in Greece). Ultimately his application would have been unanimously rejected, if not for the university's need for funding of its philosophy department...parading a guest professor, who apparently achieved some fame in his home country, around campus when the solicitations went out would certainly be beneficial (not to mention bolstering their diversity agenda).

Besides which, Socrates never did name a salary figure.

Conditioning his entrance on his political clashes with the rhetoricians and the heads of state, the school quickly regrets its mistake. This old man, stolidly walking the grounds in his old robes and sandals, never once writing down his contemplations, who when asked why his entire PHIL100 class is sitting outside on the mall with bread and wine (Heaven forbid!) rather than studiously pursuing the curriculum, replied simply that they were "helping him with his research." But they are not graduate students! comes the response. If you needed an assistant, we could have easily procured several Ph.D candidates from within the department. And Socrates would proceed to question them on the merits of this ranking, or rather, the merits of teaching based on this ranking via some strange "degree" the university conjured. Isn't the meaning of a good life universal? What about love? If I were to seek the nature of Eros, I should most certainly question those who have experienced it firsthand. But they are not ready, the perplexed bureaucrat replies, it's just not done...though he cannot say why. And in the ensuing Gorgias, clarity shines down on who is truly the one who lies unprepared.

Of course, Socrates himself is not exempt from this clash of ideals. A visit to the Greek societies of today would be eye-opening, and I can see another Plato's Symposium coming of this (he is, after all, said to be able to hold his alcohol quite well). On the other hand, his political views would probably draw unwanted attention...the philosopher king, so imagined, must rub several groups on campus the wrong way. Obtuse assignments, refusal to grade; hah, his Pick-A-Prof profile must be a comedy in itself. But ultimately, I believe the students will warm to him - this creature of the ivory tower, yet apart from it - and find some commonality with Socrates that they could never achieve with the other professors, so intrinsically linked as they are to the intellectual hierarchy of the university.

Two characters come to mind at this point: one, a senior who majored in Undecided and minored in Getting a Job, would be particularly drawn to this unconventional man...and perhaps even become his Plato in the modern world, recording Socrates' exploits. Having spent his entire life doing what others told him would make him successful (but without ever knowing, or daring to voice what he truly cared for), he reaches his final semester and suddenly balks at departing. Not because he cares for the school, you see, but rather because remaining in stasis is the least difficult of the choices - retaking old classes, avoiding the final credits, sitting in a loophole of the bureaucracy so they can never quite force him out. Several semesters go by like this, with the university getting more and more irate, until he meets Socrates...and a profound change begins. I'll leave the details for another time. The other character I'd like to include is the solitary ancient Greek philosophy professor, a bit wearied by the system, discontent, unable quite to level with his colleagues the same way over research anymore, as narrow and abstract as it has become, when philosophy originally was about very much the entire world. He is the only one who recognizes Socrates for who he truly is - suspects, at first, but suspicions confirmed over time and deed. As he tries to mediate between our visitor from Athens and the administration, gradually he recognizes the futility of the entire arrangement.

In the end, as the title suggests, Socrates does indeed get tenure - after being denied again and again, nearly fired several times, it is ultimately an inane and utterly serendipitous, if you could call it that, side effect of his actions at the university that lead to his approval by the review board. (I haven't yet come up with a suitably ironic twist yet, though I've been mulling several possibilities). And what does he do then? Why, reject it, of course! As politely and impertinently as he always has in the dialogues rejected such offerings from above. It turns out another person was submitting that application for him, unaware, to prove a point that only he knew.

But now, he must return to Greece. A true philosopher, Socrates says, is not bound by the walls of a single institution - he, by his very nature, cannot exist in an institution. The knowledge he pursues cannot be discovered by simply wading among the insular books.

And that is why, though he has certainly enjoyed this dance with the paper trail here (tongue firmly in cheek), he must regretfully turn down the offer of a place within these ivory doors.

On Hierarchy

While reading a textbook on computer networking for work, I came across an interesting observation that encapsulates the intersection between science, mathematics and social organization. Specifically, it connects the way Internet data flow is structured with the way human society is itself constructed.

The scaling problem is largely solved by a hierarchical organization of the routing infrastructure...It is interesting to note that this principle has been applied throughout the ages to many other disciplines besides computer networking, including corporate, government, religious, and military organizations.

Source: Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet

What makes this intriguing is that it gives us a model for why hierarchy, and by extension much of the issues of oppression, power dynamics, etc, is fundamental to all large organizations. Social levels are necessary in order for the mind to group individuals, enact government, for otherwise we would have no way to deal with the incredible size of our increasingly global culture today. This is also why communism failed and will continue to fail outside of small societies founded on a common belief/religion - because where there is a large number of social creatures, there will be the scaling problem, the need for directed communication (much in the way autonomous systems are composed on the Internet), and with that a hierarchy which brings out the age old struggles of man.

Furthermore, studies have shown that empathy drops with increasing size of the population afflicted, a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon until you consider how much easier it is to identify with the single lost child (consider all the coverage of these types of stories on CNN) than the abstract numbers of troop deaths in Iraq, or victims of genocide in Darfur. It is a conflict between our "gut" experiential system versus the analytic, coupled with Weber's Law, the logarithmic decrease of sensory perceptions of change in even such simple cases as light and sound.

It is interesting to ponder whether this solution of hierarchy to our problem of scale constitutes an objective necessity, independent of those individuals involved - or whether it is simply the result of the limitations of the human mind.

Multiple Universes and the Divine Chess Game

When I was young, I would lie awake at night with this irrational fear in my mind, that my room was in fact a tiny keyhole and some giant was slowly inserting a key to crush me. It wasn't really the crushing that disturbed me, though. It was the fact that I - my room - was so incomprehensibly small...as if I were falling into some dark pit. In fact, before picking up a single book on astrophysics, I wondered whether the entire world, hell, the entire universe was but a single cell of a vast being. No, not some sort of "God"; divinity beyond reach would have made the disorientation more bearable. Rather, I thought, what if that vast being...was one of many vast beings as sentient and human as myself?

Of course, now that I've come to read a bit about the multiverse theory and the expansion of space, I can put my qualms into something of a scientific context. The thing with theories, though, is that it leaves room open for debate...or, in my case, fantastical meanderings.

Hence, it was with a strange state of mind one day that I envisioned this snippet of an act. Sometimes, the images playing out in my mind precede any sort of reason, plot line, what have you, which the rational side can interpret. That's the fun of literary critics (even better, now that the author is dead). Well, let me lay out what I've seen of the scene so far, and you can tell me what it means.

A close-up of a chess board in what appears to be a long, dusty hall, the kind grandmaster chess players might compete in. It is the middle of a tournament, and the viewer sees an old man - or perhaps not old, but very worn in spirit - sitting at the chessboard, slowly contemplating the pieces as he considers his next move. The game moves ponderously forward, until suddenly, the double doors to the hall bang open to reveal another man, this one young and fierce, with eyes that blaze in frustrated anger. At the beginning I supposed the newcomer to be the old man's brother; that is how the conversation is portrayed. This young man goes up to the chessboard and slams his hands onto the table, obviously furious over something. He begins an argument which the two have had for many an eon - for his is the art of war, as was once his brother's, until happenstance led the latter to retreat from the battlefield into these meaningless games fought over a 8 x 8 chessboard. A brilliant tactician, laid to waste while the rest of the country (or perhaps, world) toils in the middle of war.

Well, the argument moves forward, as the younger man usurps what is believed to be the former competitor (we never see him) and proceeds to finish the game against the older. I have yet to pinpoint the exact flow of their debate, although small bits of dialogue do echo faintly in my mind. Nevertheless, it seems that all eyes are on them until the endgame, and finally, checkmate. One option here is for the older man to win, but passionlessly, as if finishing an eternal duty he has no more use for. Another is for the end to come to a standoff in the older man's eyes, until the argument peaks, and the younger checkmates him in either an unperceived move, or flouts the rules of chess altogether to win his mark. Nevertheless, he gets up in dead silence, says, "You...and the rest of the players!" (finishing on his previous climactic point), hand waving to one side -

And the camera pans out to show that this older man, whom we assumed to be the central grandmaster, is in fact one of an endless line of identical old men, all sitting on one side of the chessboard, the other seat empty.

What I thought to symbolize here (although my initial intention was for it to be two brothers of noble birth, embroiled in a war for their kingdom) upon seeing this is...some sort of cosmic interpretation of God. That is, God is the old man at the chessboard, and the younger one who plays the game against him is perhaps...the Devil? Or even Humanity? We see God, in fact, plays a ponderous chessgame against nobody, retreating from the real conflicts of the world. Or is it looking down upon? The real crux and the mindboggler that links back to my irrational fears in the first place, is the fact that God himself is but one of an infinite series of "divine" players, no more or less significant than they. We worship him only as such as he plays our particular board.

The idea of a single element being more easily related to than a group of elements can be seen in the way humanitarian efforts try to put a "human face" on suffering. That is, as the number of victims rises, paradoxically, we as humans move down in sympathy for the individual. A strange occurrence, eh? Perhaps personalization has an influence...or simply the fact that we do not have the capacity to divide our attentions that far and still retain the same level of empathy for the single element.

A Modern Day Cain

Most of the time, the creation of a narrative for me begins with a single, solid conception of a character or a powerful, climactic scene that plays out like a movie clip in front of my eyes. Certain lines, certain actions stand apart from the rest and evoke a kind of raw emotion alone, sealing their place in whichever fiction they happen to spring from within my head. Only later does the plot, setting, history coalesce - the beginning is always marked by an intense, solitary image.

However, this particular night, inspiration was sparked by something a little different. Checking through my news feeds, I came upon this unusual story about a man who was struck suddenly by amnesia and wandered the streets of Dallas for several days, before happy coincidence led to him being identified by a friend of his near the site where he was having his house built. What is more intriguing is that this was no ordinary amnesia - it is a rare condition called psychogenic fugue, which is a mysterious psychiatric illness that causes victims to abruptly lose all memory of themselves and their pasts. Sufferers are often afflicted with an urge to wander from place to place during the fugue state, lasting upwards of several days; their memory during their travels is, from what I gather, extremely hazy after they recover. Current medical science has little to say on it except that it is a very rare condition.

Now, things might end well and enough here, if it weren't for an unusual connection I made with another ancient narrative - helped along by two movies I remember quite vividly from the past. One is Pi, which stars a tormented mathematical genius who is afflicted with Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias, or cluster headaches, in his quest for the ultimate universal number. The other is Collateral, about a cynical LA hitman who exemplifies the cold and distant life of the post-modern cityscape. I had initially thought Memento was present here as well, but upon reflection, believe that I made the connection from psychogenic fugue to anterograde amnesia separately, and without much thought (though it will affect my storyline theory later, as you'll see). Regardless, the former two share a single setting within a scene that stood out immediately in my mind. Both characters found themselves, at some point, sitting in a desolate subway train in the middle of the night. Max's was wrapped up in a headache-induced hallucination of his, scratched out in harsh black-and-white, while Vincent's reflected a more philosophical bent...or rather...socio-psychological. Early in the movie, he tells a taxi driver (also named Max, and the title protagonist of the movie) an anecdote about a man who passes away quietly on the subways of LA, and isn't discovered dead for nearly six hours. He rode that train around and around, beside fully living people, coming and going from their daily lives, too distant to even notice the corpse beside them. The line is worth quoting.

17 million people. This was a country, it would be the fifth biggest economy in the world. But nobody knows each other. Too impersonal. But that's just me...you know...(pause) I read about this guy. Gets on the MTA, here, and dies. Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices. This corpse doing laps around LA, people on and off, sitting next to him, nobody notices.

Source: IMSDB Collateral script

At the end of Collateral, we see Vincent shot dead in a standoff on that same bleak subway train he described...sitting there alone...as the tracks pass on beneath him.

Where does this lead us, you ask? Well, in an unusual twist of mental connection, I thought how appropriate the image of the aimlessly drifting amnesiac would be for a modern day Cain, banished from Eden to wander for all eternity in the land of Nod. In the traditional Biblical story, God banishes Cain to the Land of Nod after confronting him over the murder of his brother, Abel.

And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. (Genesis 4:16, King James Version)

Various interpretations of this statement exist, one of which was first used by Jonathan Swift in his A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation to associate Nod with sleep - that is, Cain was banished to eternal rest. A perhaps restless purgatory of the mind. Now then, putting all of this together, I ask a simple question:

What if Cain woke up?

And with that, the story's premise seems to coalesce. For if Cain awoke, gained self-awareness, much as the psychogenic fugue patient did after days of wandering, he could very well serve as a symbol of both the victim and the victimizer in present day society. It is as if an epilogue to Collateral, beginning with Cain regaining consciousness in the desolate, skeletal interior of an anonymous city metro. Here begins the character's personal journey through a disaffected, almost post-apocalyptic landscape - his own internal emptiness (for he does not remember the circumstances which led him to sleep) mirroring that of the modern-day spirit. Religious symbology would be crucial in painting a bright picture of the corruption today. One image that pops to mind is a contrast between the cheap, neon glow of a plastic cross in a store window at night, and the face of a televangelist broadcast again and again on all the available video monitors on the street. Both are artificial constructs, but the former perhaps holds a special significance for the family who owns it.

Details of his travels elude me as of yet, although the possibility of murder, even fratricide, being a central turning point would be appropriate. The mark that God placed on him (something I need to give more thought to in a modern context) is also an important recurring image. Cain watches his own sin being committed over and over in the streets of the city; his conscience revolts, but his memory refuses to cave. Similarly, a meeting with "Eve" might draw some clues to his reason for existence...I even ponder the inclusion of Ishmael as an influencing force, with its interpretation of the story of Genesis within a sociological context. Nevertheless, at the end, I see Cain coming full circle, lying on an abandoned playground's merry-go-round (that circular thing with metal bars as handholds shooting from the center) staring at the heavens which forsook him, with the realization of his true identity...and upon coming to terms, closes his eyes for one final, eternal sleep.