the resulting intrigue allows one to readily equate it with the overwhelming vagueness that constitutes most personal system structures : clearing away the mass of confusion, jack goes rogue and takes matters into his own hands, at great risk to his self . theta is the obscurant : because the narrative unfolds in time : so the more dream like associative, the more absent theta, the more effective the constellation of images : however, the narrative cannot be completely abandoned else all connection is lost : so theta is critical, but it is also critical to disarm theta as obscurant : the combinatorial pricing mechanism allows for theta to be quantified and for future decisions to be valued and discounted aggregately to a single present value quantity, so the pricing mechanism returns a value which has disarmed theta the obscurant but retained the narrative : it has collapsed all possible narrative paths into one value, sum of the value of each at the present moment (t = 0) . bettelheim's wound : jack's romantic relationships carry the overtone of bettelheim's wound, the internal wound, the fear that nobody can love him, the same fear of dante and king shahryar : jack's quest and duty interferes with his ability to love and be loved, so his heroic unequivocal nature impedes the healing of the wound until the end when he is ready, even wanting, to die, his final healing is a self attainment, of peace, as with dante and the king . the simplicity and unequivocalness is the satisfaction of confronting the wound, head on : 'le mepris': the overwrought guilt-ridden man mired in paralytic thinking, tries to impose his condition on ulysses, the hero in the film with the film, but the director within the film fritz lang will not abide: 'ulysses is a simple, cunning and courageous man, not a modern neurotic' : ulysses the simple and unequivocal hero, not the modern neurotic imagined by the equivocal frenchman : jack, hero of campbell: 'self-achieved submission … the hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one’s visions, ideas, and inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought. Hence they are eloquent, not of the present, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn …’ : jack : senzo tempo tinto, tinted without time : jack is continually running out of quantified time, a predicament he consistently manages to overcome . jack lives by a code, that is his main attribute, the code supersedes his personal utility, it overrides his well-being, and, although there is a conflict because the code involves protecting others : it is relatively easy for him to sacrifice his own safety or life for others, it is more painful for him to sacrifice the safety or life of others for a greater number of others, it is most painful for him to put in jeopardy those he is directly responsible for, but in all cases the greater good is measured and the action is calculated according to preserving the most number of innocents, this is jack’s code . jack’s code is unequivocal, his greatest appeal is the courage that allows him to exist in defiance of the ‘internal wound’ made infernal by his adherence to the code : the iso signature is the adherence to the code : while jack’s character is necessarily distant and more third person, presumably in order to preserve the stature of his unequivocality, tony is overwrought, first person and shakespearean : lang’s modern neurotic in contrast to jack’s simple, cunning and courageous antiquated nature : campbell’s criterion of ‘self-achieved submission … who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations …’ warriors of western culture, be it neurotic or simple in tone . tony is a cross breed hero and modern neurotic : he battles past his personal and local historical limitations to achieve heroic status through his code : his courage and code give him a disdain, even open disgust, for his neuroticism, but his modern complexity allows for profundity in perception : ‘I only wish I could direct my anger toward those who really deserve it,’ : anger by proximity and safety as opposed to justifiable indignation : that is not courageous, but the admission by a classically proportioned hero is courageous, the heroism of tony . tony’s code is a different tonality but the tonally dissonant codes are overtones of an heroic warrior code, there is the myopia necessary to a warrior’s code : there is the physical and mental courage essential to a warrior code : but tony’s code is a social one, one of the specific team to which he belongs, this is also true of jack, and in these cases the team is formidable, but in the minority, battling in a vacuum or lost cause : a neurotic narrative relies upon flirtation with breaking the code against one's own better judgement : jack is implacable, his code is unbroken : tainted to the point of purity, that is jack . unequivocality frees one up to do things, to be creative : the overwhelming burden of decision making and the shame of incessant evaluation of past decisions paralyzes thought : being tinted without time is being unburdened of the shame of past decisions : only one path along the tree can be taken, those branches left behind can only involve shame . there are many jacks . another jack: burden . now is jack who falls into numbness to ease the suffering, who is flawed, caught in the labyrinth of time, and regretful . his escape into numbness is normally a temporary condition, like a dark wood, and it passes when he comes to himself and has no choice but to proceed downward before he can ascend . the outcast lone rider is not necessarily neurotic, he is different, and committed to his difference, and committed to a higher ideal. compromise with conformity is not possible, or is useless . people help the outcast along the way, or befriend him, he is likable and his singlemindedness appeals to a yearning to be washed of the equivocalness . his outcastedness makes him tough and able . the code is pure, so the unequivocality of his nature causes unswerving adherence to his code . does this exempt him from certain moral standards of cleanliness that non outcasts, upstanding members of the clan, conformists, and naturally abiding citizens must abide? does god forgive the outcast, the artist, this messiness? the artists job is to create beauty, in that sense he is a servant of god’s message and so is afforded a measure of latitude in terms of adherence to the code of the culture in which he is forced to live . perhaps his code is a higher code . perhaps the lenience is recompense for the suffering required . after all this time, i’ve forgotten how to draw flowers, i only draw the petals, falling as tears . i would like to draw the weeping flowers : a simple, cunning, courageous type, this jack . ‘if i were told that i must hang today, i would say, “all right, i’ve seen the show. and fuck you jack!” ’ . ‘it’s the kaliuga, buddy, the iron age, anyone without an ulcer is a goddamn spy.’ : in terms of the ‘three beasts’ from the selva oscura, two of them are cats, are they not?