LA X – Lost 6.01 and 6.02
So, I’m sure you non-Lost fans are aware that the one of the best shows ever created has returned. For the fans, how about that opening?
Confession time. I have watched the premier three times already so I can look for anything at all that will make the alternate reality make sense. Of course I paid close attention to every line that had a hint of meaning; the two obvious ones being Smokey-Locke’s* “I want to go home” and alt-Jack’s** “Nothing is irreversible.” But in watching the opening plane recreation scene over and over I picked up on something else. Something that slipped by. After the turbulence stops (and the plane doesn’t crash) Rose says to Jack, in a very specific tone, “You can let go now.” Maybe it’s just me, but this seems like an important line that doesn’t necessarily apply to his kung-fu grip on the arm rests.
Jack carries the weight of his failed marriage, the failed engagement to Kate, the loss of Juliet to Sawyer then to his insistence on setting off Jughead, not to mention his actions on and off the island. Jack doesn’t let go of things; he broods. In my opinion alt-Jack is original Jack. Somehow he escaped from the normal timeline and has made it into the alternate reality. If this is the case, Jack can “let go” of those burdens because none of them happened (except the failed marriage and daddy issues, but when have daddy issues not been a key player?).
Next, I paid close attention to any and every continuity issue between the two plane scenes (What I have and will refer to as the “Not a very strong reaction” scene). In the original scene it is very clear that Jack is in row 23 along with Rose. However, alt-Jack was in row 24. Hurley, originally, was in in row 20*** (seats G and H). However, alt-Hurley was in row 33. I noticed that the camera made it a point to give us just enough time to notice the numbers being wrong. But I don’t think they are wrong, but backwards. Alt-Jack is in row 24 (42 reversed) and alt-Hurley is sitting behind row 32 (23 reversed). Maybe this is a little overkill, but it is something to consider.
So, did the bomb work? To be honest, I don’t think it matters if it did or not. I know that the purgatory theory has been repeatedly debunked but it still holds water to this day. The idea of being released from this place of punishment into the ultimate fate still works. The alt-reality may be the destination for the losties who have fulfilled their punishment or rolls in the regular timeline. Juliet telling Miles (post death) that “it worked” is her telling him from the new timeline. Thus, Miles doesn’t talk to the dead, but those released from “purgatory.”
Coming back to some things that have been set aside through time; life on the island, or, how life comes to be on the island. We are all pretty aware of the fact that conception and full term pregnancies are not exactly successful. However, external conceptions obviously lead to successful on-island births and on-island conceptions lead to successful off-island births. Those that live on the island have the potential to either live forever or a really long time unless killed. Meaning, if their is no outside influence on their lives they could live forever. Thus, the island doesn’t need births but does need people to come there and be willing to stay. I’m still working out some of the finer details of this idea, so come back in a week or so.
Things I have no theories for (yet):
The island being underwater. Best guess? Without it’s keepers (Smokey, Jacob, Alpert, and the others) the island serves no purpose and is either relinquished to the sea or seismic activity sinks it much like Atlantis.
Why some character futures seem to be different from others. Boone’s trip to get Shannon didn’t result in her coming back. Locke went on the walkabout (supposedly). Hurley is lucky. While others trips were as they happened such as Kate being caught.
Inevitably we will get most of the answers throughout the progression of the season, but I know minor things will get left behind.
Come back next week after I have, undoubtedly, watched the next episode 3 times.
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*I will refer to the three Lockes as either Locke (dead body), Smokey-Locke, or alt-Locke** in order to make things make sense.
**In my discussions of the two time lines I will identify the differentiated characters like this. Normal Jack will be “Jack” and alternate reality Jack will be “alt-Jack.” The same will apply to other characters as is applicable.
*** I am basing my argument off of the non-canonical seating chart for Oceanic Flight 815 that was, at one time, available at oceanic-air.com and is now available here.
The Clean Out
As I am packing up my stuff for the move I am going through plastic bins and boxes left dormant and forgotten in the attic and closet and finding all kinds of things. Things I had forgotten about, things I had hidden away, and things that are reminders of me. I glance over many of these sort of fascinating of my past: 6 inch thick folders of old high school work, poorly made darkroom prints, notes, letters, cards, and the like. It’s like uncovering someone else; a person long dead and forgotten, without a name or face and these are the things left behind after a disaster. Being a person weighed heavily by memories, just touching these objects takes me back; good or bad. But I have begun to contemplate the arbitrary value of these things.
In and of themselves the papers, drawings, and pictures are meaningless. Out of context the picture of the boy sitting behind the girl in the drama classroom has no more significance than a prop photo on TV. Piles of of these “memories” accumulated on my desk and I sat there starring at the towering mass. Then, as simply as I had stored those things, I threw them all away. Holding on to them for the sake of remembering every few years is pointless, and maintaining an attachment to things not worth remembering is probably not healthy in the long run. I figure letting those objects go of my own free will makes parting with them easier than if they were snatched away like many things have been.
You learn a lot about yourself in this process. Most of all you learn that there are things you can keep, and things that you must let go. Letting go of your own accord preserves the integrity of the memories and objects.
Conclusion
It seems highly unlikely that I will write anything else on the old blog this year. So I wanted to go ahead and take the time to sign off for the year. I have noted previously that it wasn’t a particularly good year, and for the purpose of saving you and I the unnecessarily painful rehashing, I will avoid it. That said, there wont be a “year in review” like I have done in the past. No, I will look at the year ahead.
If all goes as planned I will graduate in the spring of 2010. An event long overdue. For the purposes of personal branding the blog will be discontinued here at Blogomattic to make the underutilized name a portfolio of my work and, eventually, a profession self promotion/brand website. The fate of the personal blog is still undetermined, but seeing as how no one reads it because I am not writing and that I have removed large portions of the past 6 years of its existence, it may be time to throw in the towel on this project. My micro blogging habits negate the necessity for this. Besides, pretending that anyone really cares about my personal life is a lie I am tired of telling myself.
On the job front I have planned out a three pronged approach to support myself. I will look for web programming/design jobs, do free lance design, and work on building a stock photography catalogue. With those in play I should be able to easily support myself. On the side the book I have been working on for some time will be focused on a lot more. The book has been a work in progress for far too long (about 10 years) and its time to let it go.
I have, however, also set out a very probable contingency. I have been mulling over the decision to join the airforce or army for the past 6 years (much to the surprise of my family). I have more to offer as a mindless drone in a war machine than I do in general society. I’ll have a fixed purpose and job that I can easily adapt to (not that being in the military is easy). But I am single (and will remain so) and indecisive about long term goals. So it seems to just work out.
With all of that out of my system, I sign off. I’ll see you (in some form) in 2010.
infinite second
and in that infinite second the world stood still, snow falling in the motionless midnight tumbling towards its destined place among it's fallen comrades on the hood of the car. Street light poured through the quickly obscuring windshield pilling on the resting wipers. His goals met, he started the car and headed north for the longest leg of his journey.
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I really want to take this somewhere. I can see the scene in my head so clear. I know the time, place, atmosphere, what the car looks like, the color of the street light.
Damn, I just need time to write.
Pattern
It's funny how patterns emerge in our lives. With yesterday marking a nine month time span since things changed, numerous things began happening as predicted. For now, I wont go into detail until we work a few things out over the coming weeks.
General Update:
So I haven't really said much, here, on what has been going on. Some months back my mother was let go from her job and was out of work for 2 months. Things got bad. Really bad. My sister continued her severance from her immediate family and now I haven't spoken to her in almost 3 months. The same health issues I went in for back in February returned about 2 months back and I dont have insurance so I cant go to the doctor. My follow up cancer screening was canceled back in July because of the same reason.
I think that covers more than I cared to, but some of you didn't know about any of this.
Happy Fall
Metaphor
I have been really debating over my return to this place. With all that has happened the past year, this blog feels more like a burned down sanctuary than any place I can manage to call home. It feels wrong, hollow, even foreign. I have tried doing controlled burns and taking an all out ‘scorched earth’ approach with reshaping this blog’s past. However, I still own this ground and must take responsibility for what has been done.
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It hasn’t been easy for any of us involved concerning the total loss of everything we held dear just a year ago. So much is gone, so much is still slipping away and we are still holding on to anything, anything at all, that will float as we watch our ship slip beneath the waves. Its amazing how much hope remains with some, while others see the situation for what it is.
I’m lost. Adrift. Awash in the choppy sea. This is all far from over and I have become willing go under just to have the nightmare end.
Returning Home
Shutting down the blog taught me a few things, and it would be a shame to the integrity of the project I started 6 years ago not to revive one of my outlets. That said, my sabbatical is over and I am returning. While in abstentia, I realized that there are some things that need to be said and some stories that need to be told. I cannot find a proper outlet to tell these tales other than here. I discovered that its a lot harder to walk away from something that you have been working on for so long and that trying to ignore it will never work. Last, I am verbose. Excessively so, and this is the place to justify my need to speak. So I am starting again.
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As is my yearly tradition, I set aside my political position and reflect on the events that occurred in 2001. This year, however, I am less focused on the global event (the sociology, if you will) and look at the individual stories. What happens is a peculiar event that becomes like The Mosaic Collective from FlashForward, a highly anticipated tv series and book, which people collect and aggregate memories from the future. However, I have been collecting people’s memories from the past and fitting them together within the confines of the what we believe about that day. The odd thing is what it is people remember. On that morning I rode to school with a good friend named Hollye. The Christian radio station played a particularly good playlist consisting of “King of the Hill” – Eli, “Jesus Freak” – dc talk, and “Breakfast” – Newsboys. At this time we had no clue as to what was going to happen in our world.
As usual, we arrived early and sat in the parking lot of the high school for a few minutes before heading to our first classes. I was in 10th grade and my first class was drivers ed. However, my group was not driving that day so we went to our respective study hall classes (which was merely sitting in another class and keeping quiet). I was drawing, in fact I still have that drawing, when there was a knock on the classroom door. The ancient teacher stepped out for a second, then stepped back into the classroom and informed us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. His tone and minimal information indicated is was nothing bigger than a private plane. The door opened the very next second and another teacher stepped in and said that it was bigger than we thought. The old man history teacher told us that we were going to watch what was happening and that we needed to gather out things. The entire class went down the hall to an empty classroom with a TV on in the corner. The very second I walked into the room I saw the second plane hit the remaining tower.
We scrambled to get close to the TV. As if compelled by some common thought we began moving all of the desks into a stacked wall to the side of the room in order to all be as close to the screen as possible. Another class filed in and sat behind us. The noise of people crying, talking, and praying was loud but somehow faded into a perceived silence as the moments ticked on. Without warning the first tower collapse happened. I stopped thinking, breathing, and speaking at that moment and I uncontrollably cried. It was as if I could feel lives ending when that tower fell. I was too overcome with sadness to do anything but sit there in morose silence.
Then there is a blackout. I don’t recall anything but minor flashes after that moment. I know I told one of my good friends between classes. My biology class went on as planned because the school administration told the teachers not to discuss the events or turn on the TVs. I have no memory of my third class even happening. During my fourth class, creative writing 2 with Mr. Birmingham, I was with Hollye and two other good friends (one of which I still keep in touch with regularly). Walking into that class room I saw four TV carts at the front of the room defiantly tuned to 4 different news stations. Mr. B. (as we called him) told us that no school administration was going to stop us from seeing what was happening in the world and that he didn’t care about the repercussions of having the TVs on. We all sat in stunned silence as the news stations replayed the plane impacts and tower collapses (the second collapse, I had missed). I don't remember class ending, getting on the bus, or the ride home. I do remember turning on the little TV in my bed room and being glued to it.
From that point the moments I remember going forward are sparse. Holding the hand of my first girlfriend as we watched a service broadcast to our church, hearing Jump5’s “God Bless the USA” on the Christian radio station a few days later. Gradually my memories of the after-time blend into the dull gray world I lived in.
I have never recounted this story in quite this manner for fear of letting these moments bubble back to the surface. In discussing the events I found that Hollye doesn’t remember me riding with her to class that morning, or even our 4th period class. She remembers going home and watching the news. This alternate remembrance got me intrigued with the total sum of memories. This morning, Twitter fed my need to explore the collective memory. Friends posted where they were when the news finally hit them. Some were in class or at work, a few were traveling via car or subway, one was in the area when the first plane hit. Our collective memories are the only true memories of that morning. No one single tale will ever be accurate. I often wonder about the people in that class room who were around me and what they saw. I can’t honestly say I remember a single face from that classroom, and I assume no one else could either.
Our collective memories need to be what our history is based on, not on formal documents produced by the government, historians, or even news broadcasts. Our memories, while significantly fallible, are the true account of how we experienced it.
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What is your story for the collective memory?
A Note on a Fall Day
The chilly air nipped the tips of my exposed ears. The dusk colors painted across the evening sky seem somehow magnified by the peculiarly cool atmosphere. It’s August in the south. Normally this dictates one hundred degree days until early September. I stand on the porch absorbing the hint of autumn I have been afforded. Fall has always been my favorite time of year. It’s usually a time of personal clarity and, honestly, I have always viewed it to be particularly romantic. This year will be so far different from those I have experienced during the past several years. But it’s something that I need to see my way through. Certain things that I have, in a way, seen in the past are starting to fall into place exactly as I kind of always knew they would… which ultimately leads to one end. That aside I look forward to celebrating this fall as much as I can while I can.
The Bookshelf
Until recently I was not an avid reader. There was the rare occasion that I would find a book that captured me, but it was one book a year at most. While I am sad for all of the good books I didn’t read sooner, I am glad that I encountered so many in the past 3 months. But as I have purchased more and more books, both physical and audible audio books, I have seriously considered getting an Amazon Kindle II to save space and make instant book purchases easier. But in the weeks I have spent mulling the decision over in my mind, and reading in the process, I have realized that switching will not be like moving from CD to MP3 downloads. I was very hesitant to make that switch not because of quality or experience issues, but because I had instant back-ups for my music collection via the disk. I’ll admit to missing cracking open a new CD and thumbing through the book while listening to the tracks in order, but it’s not a big loss. However, loosing the physicality of the book would ruin part of the reading experience, not to mention the trip to the bookstore, and placing the finished book proudly on a shelf.
I adore the sharply trimmed edges of a brand new paperback, the smell of the paper, and the tightly bound spine. Plus, to hold something in my hand that I can physically mark my progress in is such a rarity in today’s world that loosing it would almost be like surrendering fully to computers. Then there is the ultimate loss of going digital; the bookshelf. Sure, I can display my collection with the handy little Goodreads gadget at the side, but something is lost. My bookshelf, however limited it may currently be, is a reflection of me. There is a shelf for books not yet read and books I have completed. My books tell my story. The methodic layout of the books on the shelf reflect where I have been and where I am. In a way, they are everything a photograph cannot be; a true representation of me.
Something else will be lost in the switch to Kindle, the bookstore. No, I don’t particularly care for the drive in to the bookstores (I live 30 minutes from civilization), or the hassle of finding parking at either of my preferred Books a Millions or Barnes & Nobles, and I really don’t much care for the Twilight and anime fan’s setting up camp in the isles, but being surrounded by like people and all the possibilities of good stories, makes the experience fulfilling. With the Kindle you buy from the device. Sure, it saves gas, time, and effort but it would lack the experience.
At some point we each need to draw the line as to how far into the digital age we want to wander. I have abandoned film for digital, CDs for MP3s, and paper for drawing, but I do not see myself ever fully committing to eBook. That’s not to say I will not get a Kindle anyways, but some changes just should not be fully embraced.
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