Lost fan fiction (with spoilers)

I really like the writing style of Across the Sea. I was inspired to write my own script, which covers the events of that episode and goes on to explain other mysteries of the show.

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Act II, Scene I:

Adam: What's down there?

Mother: Light. The warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt.

Adam: It's beautiful.

Mother: Yes it is. It's the most beautiful light you've ever sensed. It's twice as yellow as any color you've ever known, and it buzzes louder than any light you've ever heard.

Jacob: Smells kinda like marshmallows!

Mother: It's the most marshmallowy light you've ever tasted. And that's why they want it.

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Jacob: What's down there?

Mother: Life. Death. Rebirth. Infinity. Abstract concepts. Riddles, and double-speak. A one-sided slice of ham. A piece of buttered toast, strapped to the back of a cat.

… Also, some treasure.

… There's a bit of that light in all midi-chlorians. Men want it because it's super useful and junk. Just a bucket-full of this light, maybe attached to something like i don't know, a big wooden wheel or something… that could power a hundred clock-radios for over a week. And it's super warm! But the men would use it for very bad, very dangerous things. All sorts of crazy stuff.

Jacob: What do people want to do with it?

Mother: Very powerful and very dangerous, but very very vague and very unspecified things.

Things like what?

- Things that are not meant to be controlled by men.

Wow! Like what?!

- Things that are very mysterious, and totally, totally weird.

Things like what? Can you give me some straightforward answers?

- No… It's not time yet. There are still 2 more episodes.

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Mother: You're special. Some people who are special can bend their thumb back and touch their arm with it. Others who are special are good at math or playing the violin or stacking cups really quickly. Your brother's special. He doesn't know how to lie or to tie his shoes. And in other ways, you're also special. Like how you turn into smoke and pick up people and smash them against rocks and stuff.

Adam: I'm special? Is that why I can possess dead people and get blowed up without being hurt and junk?

Mother: Yes. That's because you're special.

Adam: But how did we get here? Where did you come from?

Mother: I came from people who came before me.

Adam: But why can people travel through time?

Mother: Because that's the way that it had to be.

Adam: But why does the island move?

- Because why not.

Then why…

- Because it became like that.

But why did...

- Because of the rules.

But…

- Because it just is.

But you're not even...

- Because I said so?

But it just doesn't make sense! Nothing makes sense! Why is there so much weird stuff always going on?

- Because I made it so it was that way, and also that's how the island wants it, and also that's how it's supposed to be.

Adam: [After a long pause] Well I think we can all be adequately satisfied by those reasonable explanations, thanks.

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His name is… Jacob.

Look! There's another one!

It's another boy.

Hmmm, I think… I will call him…

Monster.

Smoke Monster.

We call it... the, uh... ... The place to be! Yes! It's the place to be.

Here's a list of favorite magical places I can remember from my life so far, in reverse chronological order from last weekend back to childhood.

• The North Country Fair grounds under a midnight twilight sky, mist from the river covering the whole valley, high bright clouds in the dark blue sky, distant camp fires and sounds of drumming everywhere.
• That stretch of La Rive Gauche from the view of the Notre Dame, glowing in a soft misty aura of hazy lights, to the circles where they come to dance Tango d'Argentine et al. Everywhere are groups of young Parisians with picnics and wine, singing and playing instruments, dancing with fire.
• The hostel at Gimmelwald; looking up past prayer flags to watch the moon playing in and out from behind the surrounding mountains; the view from the hot tub interrupted only when putting another log in the stove.
• The hostel at Freiburg, its massive and welcoming common room permeated with signs of musical and artistic creative energy. At the back door is a stream with a water generator in it; beyond that is a hill covered with the Black Forest.
• The hostel in Budapest, with its thousand pictures and thousands of stories. Lounging in a hammock in the covered sanctuary in the back yard, anticipating and smelling the goulash slowly cooking over a fire a few feet away. The place had a magical energy that you could feel, and see in the faces of everyone there.
• The mountains near Darjeeling. Food cooked over open fires in the kitchen, by families with simple lives. Climbing the hill in the early morning to see the distant Mount Everest before the clouds came in.
• Lisa's old house, with turntables in the basement turning all night, keyboards and recording studio upstairs, and hot tub and barbecue on the roof.
• Prague old town square, its Church of Our Lady looking straight out of a fairy tale. Cesky Krumlov too... its castle enchanted under the moonlight; its bars serving up absinthe and the nicest drunk feeling I've ever had; its hostel with the luxurious bathtub; its ambiance perfect for falling in love.
• Fairmont hot springs, under the waterfall with a girl in a pink bikini. Of course I didn't talk to her, but then... I was only a child.
• Dancing with family at Saint Georges club in Bermuda. The tropical scenery, the decadent surroundings, the pina coladas... feeling like a poor family, but tonight: like we were made. I was just a kid and could not dance, and maybe this was the first time I tried, but that didn't matter.
• The deck of the family home, staying up late on a warm summer night with family friends and a spectacular northern lights display.

Building this list reminds me to go traveling. There are a lot of recurring themes here... it seems the perfect place would have these elements: Mountains, warm water, camp fire, prayer flags, and live music.

Dude... He just... exploded. In front of us.

A shark swims by, seen from under water. Did I just see that? I rewind. There's a DHARMA logo on the shark. WTF.

Jin is here to deliver a message from Mr. Paik. I have a feeling I'm about to be 'splained the reason for his bloody clothes, left as a mystery for awhile now. But no... there is Hurley, for some reason on TV in Korea. For every mystery explained, a new one is presented.

If you're thinking "I've missed too many episodes; it's too late to bother watching them all now," then I suggest you call your satellite provider, ask them to kindly cancel all your programming immediately, and then get them, all of them, and watch every episode for as long as it takes to go through them.

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Satellite's kind of like a job. You think it will be hard to live without it, but really... you don't miss it when it's gone.

This line is thinner than a hair, and has some knots in it here and there

Recently I've got back into playing Planarity, a game where you "untie knots" in a graph to make it planar (that is, you rearrange vertices so that none of the graph's edges cross). I've never heard of anyone beating my high score (The letters M.P.D. still stand on the machine. I remember that night. The perfect combination of Mountain Dew and mozzarella... just the right amount of grease on the joy stick). So here are some pics of the action...

Level 40. The start...

You can't even see the dots cuz they're all overlapping.

Part way there...

My body tends to tense up over time while I play this game. I sat back and took a deep breath, and surveyed the mess I was in.

Why do I play this game?

Possibly finished?

I can't be sure, because the program hung while trying to check.

This epic battle was done on a decently fast machine at work, over a few hours one afternoon in 2007.

The strategy I used was to move all of the dots out of one corner of the board, then build in that corner. I'd find a dot with only two edges, and assume that that dot lies on the outside edge of the graph, and put it right in the corner. Then I'd just build a wall, a moving front of dots, going up and down the incomplete side of the graph, keeping it free from tangles and packing and repacking the dots as tight as possible.

Nowadays I have neither the patience nor CPU power to try anything harder, so I usually play random smaller levels, like 12 or 24. Now I prefer a strategy involving finding an outer edge to the graph, building it all around the screen, and then working inwards. I do this without moving all the dots out of the way, so it can be a struggle to pick out the edges and dots I want from the mess of overlapping shit. This is very repetitive and very specific problem solving work. It probably overuses some small part of the brain, and can actually make it hurt. I think that to attempt much higher levels with the same fixed, small screen space, one would simply need to let the dots overlap. This might be a simple mental leap, perhaps in a "compression" phase on a part of the graph you know is complete. Or perhaps it would tax the brain enough to commit craniacide via spontaneous combustion.

So why would anyone play the higher levels when it's a frustrating, repetitive mental tax? I probably do it just to keep my brain busy. It seems to like that. I'd recommend spending some time practicing this game while you're at work, so that you don't have to learn it from scratch when you get fired.

Bibliophilia

Without planning it, I have taken up collecting used books. It is the one impulse buy I seem to be regularly allowing myself. The price is right, at least.

Now I've got to get myself around to reading some of them! In all likelihood, you've been following this blog now for some time, and equally likely you had guessed that I was on page 3 of Down and Out in Paris and London. Well, I'm still there!

There is only one book that my "collection" feels incomplete without, and that is No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July. I read the first short story in an overpriced chain bookstore and I am in love. Miranda turns the most common or familiarly melancholic thought on its head, into something peculiar and interesting, and then goes on to make it endearing. I can't help feeling acceptance of my own similarly screwed up thoughts, when she can make hers so touching, funny, and beautiful:

"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone."

I'm a half ta get me a libary card (mostly for movies, I imagine, since I've canceled my satellite subscription). But that is one book I'm a half ta buy. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.