Yeah, so how 'bout that Lost last night? Was that a complete mind-frack or what?
I have that out-0f-sorts, invasion-of-the-body-snatchers feeling today that I get whenever I have experienced a major change in my life. It's like I don't feel like myself because some known entity in my life that I have gotten used to and have taken for granted has suddenly gone away or changed. I have my favorite TV show to thank for this disorientation today.
At the first commercial I turned to Jason and said, "I think this is future Jack, not past Jack." So it wasn't a huge surprise when Kate showed up. But it was weird. It's like it became a different show last night.
And soooo many questions. Is Naomi's boat for good or evil? Will it be their rescue, or were they taken off the island later and under different circumstances than what we saw? Who went home, and who stayed? Can the island ever be found again? Who was in the coffin? What about the bodies Naomi claimed to have discovered? How is Kate not still a fugitive?
I still stand by my theories posted earlier about the island and immortality and the true nature of Jacob and the natives. I've yet to really think about how our vision of future Jack fits into my analysis. But I still hold that Jacob and the natives needed help from Locke (and maybe Jack, too, since he feels like his life has no purpose post-island) to leave the confines of immortality and go into the light. I felt last night that Ben sees his ultimate role as protector of the magic of the island, and he knows if anyone leaves and tells what they saw then the island and its powers can be exploited. He also realized last night that without his followers, he is nothing. In our world, Ben would be a misfit and loner. Most of the decisions he's made and the lies he's told have been to keep himself and his followers on the island to maintain his status as a leader and to protect the gifts of the island.
Maybe Jack went against the island's (and Jacob's) wishes by leaving before Jacob and his people were released from the immortality granted them by the island (Mikhail's Michael-Meyers-like refusal to die last night led credibility to this theory.) Maybe Jack was destined to help Locke take out Jacob, and since Locke is no leader despite his spirituality and deep connection with the island, it was to have been Jack who takes over the protection of the island and a new order of inhabitants. Perhaps his sad life is a karmic retribution for his not fulfilling his intended destiny.
Or maybe Cuse and Lindelhof just want to make our heads spin.
I have a lot to mull over between now and February 2008. Until then, Losties.
Showing posts with label Lost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lost. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Here's What I'm Thinking About Lost...
Okay, so check it out. I've been thinking about writing up my thoughts and theories on Lost for a couple of weeks now, but it makes me have little wiggles in my tummy. It's one thing to spill my guts about things that have actually happened in my life, but another to go out on a tropical, fictional limb and try to explain my thoughts on everyone's favorite cult TV show. There really isn't anything earth-shattering here, and there certainly are some things I still can't explain. But here goes.
The island is a healing island (this we already know.) Like Claire's and Rose's psychic said, there are some places on our earth that have magical, healing powers. It could be because of the special electromagnetic properties of the island, or it could be that those properties are a result of something larger that also causes the healing. But it doesn't matter. Anyone who comes to the island becomes healed to the point of being immortal.
I don't think there are any true "native" inhabitants of the island. I think over the centuries, the magnetic pull has brought ships off course, crashed planes, etc. and brought people there. I think the "natives" we've seen, led by Richard, crashed there centuries ago (probably on the Black Rock slave ship.) They've been there so long they have become "native" in their own minds. Here's where I go a little out there: I believe Richard and his people are no longer able to die of natural causes. The only way they can die is to be killed. Though the island brand of mortality does have one catch. More on that later.
But I don't think they were the first to crash there. See, I think the island's healing properties are not nearly as strong now as they were centuries or even millenia ago. It's wearing out, so to speak, and we haven't seen the full healing powers the way they used to be. I think Jacob is the island's oldest inhabitant, and like anyone else who has been there for a very long time, he is indestructible by any disease or old age. In fact, I think Jacob has been there so long and form a point when the island was so powerful that he has evolved into something not entirely corporeal. He is of both the natural world and the spirit world. That's why only someone like him, someone who believes in the spirit world and also has one foot in it, can hear or see him. Locke did. Ben never has. He's been faking it and taking advantage of Richard's group's relative naivetee.
I think Richard's group has only a limited grasp of the island's powers. Maybe they believe they've landed in a sort of purgatory, a spiritual halfway house they must endure as punishment for their sins. They've never understood what Jacob and the other island spirits (I think Smokey is another manifestation of someone else who has been there so long he/she is no longer completely bound by the physical world) are, but have been worshipping those presences in a cult-like hope for redemption and escape from what they see as prison. I don't think Richard has really seen Jacob, either, but I think his group have witnessed Jacob's and Smokey's powers and respect and worship them in a fearful, old-testament way.
Enter the Dharma Initiative. Somehow (and I'm not really sure how, yet) they learned of the island's properties. Maybe not the healing, but they somehow figured out something not quite within the bounds of nature was going on there. So they began inhabiting and experimenting there, hoping not so much for a Utopia as for something very 2001: A Space Odyssey-ish. Remeber the monoliths in that movie? Those alien stepping stones on the evolutionary path that made the apes develop reason and made Dave a super-human spiritual being? That's what I think the Dharma people wanted to find. Something that would further the human race by making them...well, not so human. They were pretty close to figuring it out. I think maybe they were the ones to build that 4-toed statue; I've heard the pinky toe is something we will lose in our own evolutionary journey. It's symbolic of the Dharma Initiative searching for something that would take humanity onward. All the zoological experiments, the psychological and metaphysical experiments--it was all to see what the island could do. The Swan hatch and the numbers were meant to keep what they felt was the island's power source contained; maybe they knew the power was starting to fade and needed to be conserved. I see now that the Swan is a symbol of transition--ugly duckling into a beautiful, graceful creature. Harnessing the electromagnetc energy, they thought, would cause the ugly duckling of self-destructive, selfish humanity to turn into a swan of evolutionary brilliance. (I think the electromagnetic energy is a result of the island's power and not a cause, but I digress.)
They were getting so close to seeing the island's true power (immortality through healing, and transcendence through immortality) that Jacob got scared. He didn't want the power used and abused by a selfish world that wouldn't understand the burden of immortality. Enter Ben, himself smart and manipulative. So Ben helped the "natives" off Dharma and built himself up as a prophet of Jacob. And thinks went OK for a while.
But absolute power corrupted Ben absolutely, and Jacob didn't like it. The catch of the island's mortality I mentioned earlier, the inability of anyone on the island to procreate, caused the death of the one person who mattered to Ben, Annie. I think this is the island's way of keeping balance: if everyone was fruitful and multiplied, but was essentially immortal, the island would be overrun. So it keeps order by allowing only women who were carrying before their arrival to have healthy children. Ben became obsessed with this, and Richard's group, so desperate for a path to follow, followed him and began to help him search for a solution to this problem, thinking it might somehow explaing their existence and save them. Ben grew bitter, and overly powerful. This was not what the island wanted. It did not go with the natural order. The island allowed Ben to have a tumor. Or perhaps Jacob willed the island in its weakening state,to fail to heal Ben. Jacob is tired, the island is tired. Many want out. They want to be killed so they can move on toward the light or salvation and eternal rest. (Yeah, I know the island isn't purgatory, and that comment makes it sound like it is; I just think it has become purgatory-like for its oldest inhabitants. It's a metaphor; get over it.)
I also think the island is now allowing people to age (which is why Ben and the newer folks aged on the island, but Richard and group never have.) And a big part of my theory is that not everyone wants to be immortal. (I've read a lot of Anne Rice, and I always sympathized with her vampires who hated their immortality.) Mrs. Klugh wanted to be shot. Mikhail said, "Thank you," when pushed into the fence. But some of these "elders" like Mikhail are having a hard time being killed even by violence. Which is why he came back.
And that's why Jacob said, "Help me." Ben never really saw him, but Locke can. John walks the line between the spiritual and the physical because he has a special commune with the power in the island. The island and its spirits like him. Jacob is tired of immortality, but he knows he will be hard to "kill." But someone like John can send him to his eternal rest. He is the special one so many of them have been looking for. The leader into the "enlightenment" of salvation. (Thus the name, John Locke.) But Ben tried to keep that from everyone to preserve his own power.
I think our flight 815-ers will leave the island, but only after Ben is taken out and only after the island's most powerful inhabitants get what they want: release from immortality. It will be hard to make them see that this is what they've been waiting for. I think the island's powers will be used up and gone by that time, and it will no longer have the pull it used to. It will be yet another island among thousands in the Pacific (or is it the Indian?) and it will be forgotten. But there may be other places like it...the psychic hinted at that. And its powers may only lie dormant, waiting to start its evolutionary influence again...
OK, I know that's all weird. But it's what I've got. For now.
The island is a healing island (this we already know.) Like Claire's and Rose's psychic said, there are some places on our earth that have magical, healing powers. It could be because of the special electromagnetic properties of the island, or it could be that those properties are a result of something larger that also causes the healing. But it doesn't matter. Anyone who comes to the island becomes healed to the point of being immortal.
I don't think there are any true "native" inhabitants of the island. I think over the centuries, the magnetic pull has brought ships off course, crashed planes, etc. and brought people there. I think the "natives" we've seen, led by Richard, crashed there centuries ago (probably on the Black Rock slave ship.) They've been there so long they have become "native" in their own minds. Here's where I go a little out there: I believe Richard and his people are no longer able to die of natural causes. The only way they can die is to be killed. Though the island brand of mortality does have one catch. More on that later.
But I don't think they were the first to crash there. See, I think the island's healing properties are not nearly as strong now as they were centuries or even millenia ago. It's wearing out, so to speak, and we haven't seen the full healing powers the way they used to be. I think Jacob is the island's oldest inhabitant, and like anyone else who has been there for a very long time, he is indestructible by any disease or old age. In fact, I think Jacob has been there so long and form a point when the island was so powerful that he has evolved into something not entirely corporeal. He is of both the natural world and the spirit world. That's why only someone like him, someone who believes in the spirit world and also has one foot in it, can hear or see him. Locke did. Ben never has. He's been faking it and taking advantage of Richard's group's relative naivetee.
I think Richard's group has only a limited grasp of the island's powers. Maybe they believe they've landed in a sort of purgatory, a spiritual halfway house they must endure as punishment for their sins. They've never understood what Jacob and the other island spirits (I think Smokey is another manifestation of someone else who has been there so long he/she is no longer completely bound by the physical world) are, but have been worshipping those presences in a cult-like hope for redemption and escape from what they see as prison. I don't think Richard has really seen Jacob, either, but I think his group have witnessed Jacob's and Smokey's powers and respect and worship them in a fearful, old-testament way.
Enter the Dharma Initiative. Somehow (and I'm not really sure how, yet) they learned of the island's properties. Maybe not the healing, but they somehow figured out something not quite within the bounds of nature was going on there. So they began inhabiting and experimenting there, hoping not so much for a Utopia as for something very 2001: A Space Odyssey-ish. Remeber the monoliths in that movie? Those alien stepping stones on the evolutionary path that made the apes develop reason and made Dave a super-human spiritual being? That's what I think the Dharma people wanted to find. Something that would further the human race by making them...well, not so human. They were pretty close to figuring it out. I think maybe they were the ones to build that 4-toed statue; I've heard the pinky toe is something we will lose in our own evolutionary journey. It's symbolic of the Dharma Initiative searching for something that would take humanity onward. All the zoological experiments, the psychological and metaphysical experiments--it was all to see what the island could do. The Swan hatch and the numbers were meant to keep what they felt was the island's power source contained; maybe they knew the power was starting to fade and needed to be conserved. I see now that the Swan is a symbol of transition--ugly duckling into a beautiful, graceful creature. Harnessing the electromagnetc energy, they thought, would cause the ugly duckling of self-destructive, selfish humanity to turn into a swan of evolutionary brilliance. (I think the electromagnetic energy is a result of the island's power and not a cause, but I digress.)
They were getting so close to seeing the island's true power (immortality through healing, and transcendence through immortality) that Jacob got scared. He didn't want the power used and abused by a selfish world that wouldn't understand the burden of immortality. Enter Ben, himself smart and manipulative. So Ben helped the "natives" off Dharma and built himself up as a prophet of Jacob. And thinks went OK for a while.
But absolute power corrupted Ben absolutely, and Jacob didn't like it. The catch of the island's mortality I mentioned earlier, the inability of anyone on the island to procreate, caused the death of the one person who mattered to Ben, Annie. I think this is the island's way of keeping balance: if everyone was fruitful and multiplied, but was essentially immortal, the island would be overrun. So it keeps order by allowing only women who were carrying before their arrival to have healthy children. Ben became obsessed with this, and Richard's group, so desperate for a path to follow, followed him and began to help him search for a solution to this problem, thinking it might somehow explaing their existence and save them. Ben grew bitter, and overly powerful. This was not what the island wanted. It did not go with the natural order. The island allowed Ben to have a tumor. Or perhaps Jacob willed the island in its weakening state,to fail to heal Ben. Jacob is tired, the island is tired. Many want out. They want to be killed so they can move on toward the light or salvation and eternal rest. (Yeah, I know the island isn't purgatory, and that comment makes it sound like it is; I just think it has become purgatory-like for its oldest inhabitants. It's a metaphor; get over it.)
I also think the island is now allowing people to age (which is why Ben and the newer folks aged on the island, but Richard and group never have.) And a big part of my theory is that not everyone wants to be immortal. (I've read a lot of Anne Rice, and I always sympathized with her vampires who hated their immortality.) Mrs. Klugh wanted to be shot. Mikhail said, "Thank you," when pushed into the fence. But some of these "elders" like Mikhail are having a hard time being killed even by violence. Which is why he came back.
And that's why Jacob said, "Help me." Ben never really saw him, but Locke can. John walks the line between the spiritual and the physical because he has a special commune with the power in the island. The island and its spirits like him. Jacob is tired of immortality, but he knows he will be hard to "kill." But someone like John can send him to his eternal rest. He is the special one so many of them have been looking for. The leader into the "enlightenment" of salvation. (Thus the name, John Locke.) But Ben tried to keep that from everyone to preserve his own power.
I think our flight 815-ers will leave the island, but only after Ben is taken out and only after the island's most powerful inhabitants get what they want: release from immortality. It will be hard to make them see that this is what they've been waiting for. I think the island's powers will be used up and gone by that time, and it will no longer have the pull it used to. It will be yet another island among thousands in the Pacific (or is it the Indian?) and it will be forgotten. But there may be other places like it...the psychic hinted at that. And its powers may only lie dormant, waiting to start its evolutionary influence again...
OK, I know that's all weird. But it's what I've got. For now.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Greatest Hits
It has just been a horrible day around here. The kids don't want to be here, the teachers don't want to be here, and everybody is flat-out getting on everyone else's nerves. I feel like I'm in a pressure cooker, and some steam better start coming out soon or the whole mess is gonna explode.
Just a few minutes ago, I had a run-in with one of our resident crazies and after that, I need to find my happy place. In honor of last week's Lost, in which Charlie wrote out his life's greatest hits in preparation for what looked like his impending death, I thought I would take a stab at talking about my own greatest hits, those moments of my life I come back to again and again when I need a reminder that life is worth living.
Disclaimer: I am not going to go with the two most obvious moments, my wedding day or the birth of my child. Yes, those were amazing, life-changing events. But they were so huge that I wouldn't want to go back and live those days over again; they're too momentous. So let's look at the smaller moments of my life that brought me utter joy and that I would live all over again, Lost-flashback-style, if I could.
In no particular order:
1. The day Jason gave me my first Valentine's Day card. More so even than our first kiss or our first "I Love You", that moment (before we even started dating) represents the beginning of it all.
2. Crossing the finish line at my first 5 K last year.
3. When my favorite Centre professor called me during one of the final days of my college career and asked to see me in his office, and when I got there, the entire English faculty was in attendance to present me with the senior writing prize.
4. The Russian pin thing. When I was in the usher corps for the Norton Center at Centre, one of my first shows was the Russian Army Chorus. A guy came through my door after the performance had started and started taking pictures, a big no-no for that performance in particular since there were dancers on stage. When I went up to him to ask him to stop, he told me, "I no speak English" in a heavy Russian accent. I got the head usher who somehow explained to him that he couldn't take photos. The man was apparently a family member of one of the performers. After intermission, he came back in and reached for my hand. He took a lapel pin with Russian writing on it from his pocket and folded it up in my hand, saying something in his native language as he did so. That moment was one of just a few bright spots of my freshman year, living away from home and feeling very out of place myself.
5. The curtain calls at the end of every play or musical I did in high school or college. The final bow for Godspell, in particular.
6. Any morning spent snuggling in bed with Ainsley.
7. Walking the opening survivor lap at our Relay for Life.
8. My 80s-themed birthday party.
9. OK, one specific moment from my wedding: when all the Centre folk gathered around in a circle to sing "Friends in Low Places."
10. Sharing "The Circle of Life" (during the Lion King musical) with Ainsley.
Alright, those are my top ten greatest hits. What are yours?
Just a few minutes ago, I had a run-in with one of our resident crazies and after that, I need to find my happy place. In honor of last week's Lost, in which Charlie wrote out his life's greatest hits in preparation for what looked like his impending death, I thought I would take a stab at talking about my own greatest hits, those moments of my life I come back to again and again when I need a reminder that life is worth living.
Disclaimer: I am not going to go with the two most obvious moments, my wedding day or the birth of my child. Yes, those were amazing, life-changing events. But they were so huge that I wouldn't want to go back and live those days over again; they're too momentous. So let's look at the smaller moments of my life that brought me utter joy and that I would live all over again, Lost-flashback-style, if I could.
In no particular order:
1. The day Jason gave me my first Valentine's Day card. More so even than our first kiss or our first "I Love You", that moment (before we even started dating) represents the beginning of it all.
2. Crossing the finish line at my first 5 K last year.
3. When my favorite Centre professor called me during one of the final days of my college career and asked to see me in his office, and when I got there, the entire English faculty was in attendance to present me with the senior writing prize.
4. The Russian pin thing. When I was in the usher corps for the Norton Center at Centre, one of my first shows was the Russian Army Chorus. A guy came through my door after the performance had started and started taking pictures, a big no-no for that performance in particular since there were dancers on stage. When I went up to him to ask him to stop, he told me, "I no speak English" in a heavy Russian accent. I got the head usher who somehow explained to him that he couldn't take photos. The man was apparently a family member of one of the performers. After intermission, he came back in and reached for my hand. He took a lapel pin with Russian writing on it from his pocket and folded it up in my hand, saying something in his native language as he did so. That moment was one of just a few bright spots of my freshman year, living away from home and feeling very out of place myself.
5. The curtain calls at the end of every play or musical I did in high school or college. The final bow for Godspell, in particular.
6. Any morning spent snuggling in bed with Ainsley.
7. Walking the opening survivor lap at our Relay for Life.
8. My 80s-themed birthday party.
9. OK, one specific moment from my wedding: when all the Centre folk gathered around in a circle to sing "Friends in Low Places."
10. Sharing "The Circle of Life" (during the Lion King musical) with Ainsley.
Alright, those are my top ten greatest hits. What are yours?
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