First weekly book update

Almost a month ago I posted about the status of my book, something that had been on the back burner of my life for ten years now.  Work on it has taken various forms, there had been progress made only for that to be tossed aside... well, it's been a mess, not to put TOO fine a point on it.

Things are very, very different now and have been for much of this past year.  A few months ago I had a breakthrough moment and was able to crank out the first few chapters of the story of my life.  That has led to more, and more.

Maybe it will help to keep me on track to post a status of this memoir's progress, say each week on Sunday.  Perhaps that will encourage me to stay committed.

Here it is as of September 22nd, 22024: so far, not counting the preface, there are fifteen chapters that have been written.  I spent most of this past week working on one, that had really been making me struggle.  It's still considered a VERY rough draft but early word that a dear friend I shared it with is that it's good.

There are going to be at least six parts.  Part one is complete.  There are five chapters done so far for part five, which is currently titled "Three Months and Three Ladies".  I'm not writing this book in sequential order.  Just working on it as the Muse leads me.

There is still a lot of work to be done.  Ideally I would be producing two to three chapters a week, but I'll be happy if it's even just one.  This book is finally getting the attention I needed to lavish upon it.  It's not going to be rushed.  But when it's finished, I will have written my life story, as well as such things are possible.

And that's how things stand now.

Lost turns twenty

4 8 15 16 23 42

 

It was twenty years ago tonight - September 22, 2004 - that arguably the greatest television series of the new millennium premiered.

Lost was an instant sensation and for six seasons its tale of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 gripped the world's consciousness.  ABC's hit broke all the rules, subverted expectations, and cooked long-held tropes like so many White Castle hamburgers.  Lost was television of the highest order of storytelling.  Yes, its story ended without every mystery getting a solid answer... and many maddeningly unresolved.  But some things should be left to the imagination and Lost certainly provided viewers with fresh new enigmas seemingly every week to ruminate upon.

I think that Lost wasn't so much about the riddles as it was about the characters.  That was the greatest ensemble cast assembled in the modern history of the medium and they brought to life some incredibly deep and multi-layered personas.  My most favorite character was John Locke: the crippled "man of faith" who inexplicably regained the ability to walk after Oceanic 815 crashed on the island.  There was so much about him that resonated with me.  And I also came to have some sympathy for Benjamin Linus, perhaps the most flawed of the show's characters.  I like to think that Ben found redemption in the end, and truly repented of his ways.  It was as good an end to his arc as there could probably be had.

I'm not going to post about Lost without mentioning my personal favorite theory, something that I've never seen anyone else posit.  I think that David, Jack's son from the flash-sideways world, was the child who came about when Jack and Kate made love before taking off on the Ajira flight.  Eloise had told the people who came to the Lamp Post that they had to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the original flight. What she told Kate was that she had to conceive a child so that Kate could be a proxy for Claire, who had been pregnant on the Oceanic 815 flight.  Well, David had to come from somewhere.  And he even looks like he could be a child of Kate and Jack, too.  He was very well cast.

I also think that the Man in Black wasn't Jacob's brother at all.  As evidenced by the hieroglypics that Ben found, the Smoke Monster had existed on the island long before Jacob's mother came.  The Monster simply assumed the appearance of Jacob's brother.  Jacob found his brother's body, it hadn't been transformed at all.  Again, just a theory.

Well, I could go on.  This show left us with so much that we're still discussing and debating fourteen years after its final episode.  That says something about any series's timeless quality.  And I doubt that in another twenty years we'll be too exhausted to still be talking about it.

So, let's raise our glasses of Dharma Initiative cola and toast Lost on its twentieth anniversary!  Just as amazing today as it was in 2004.

Rest in peace James Earl Jones

 

I got to meet him, briefly, in 2003.  Amazing man, with an intellect as formidable as his voice if not more so.

Ninety-three is a good run.  And he definitely made his mark.

Who else could make saying the alphabet so dramatic?

Godspeed Mr. Jones.  Thank you for sharing your gifts with us for so long.