Lost in Transit

I can’t wait to see ‘Lost’ tonight.  Last week’s episode (‘The Constant’) was exciting, mainly because it was about Desmond, one of the most mysterious and likeable characters.  But also, something wonderful happened halfway through.  I was thrilled by some strange sort of synchronicity.  Here I am on the other side of the world, and just by chance I am watching this show, made in another corner of the world that suddenly, out of nowhere, pinpoints exactly where I spent three years of my life.

DAN: Where are you supposed to be? Where are you in 1996?

DESMOND: Uh, Camp Milla, it’s a …Royal Scots Regiment, it’s just north of Glasgow.

DAN: I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Desmond, listen. When it happens again, Desmond, I need you to get on a train. Get on a train and go to Oxford, Oxford University, Queens College Physics Department. Alright?

DESMOND: What, why?

DAN: Because I need you to find me.

<cue almost pre-Golden Compass excitement>

<sudden realisation that Queen’s doesn’t really have a Physics department to speak of.  I am intrigued>

DAY.  SUNNY.  CHEERFUL STUDENTS APPEAR TO BE FROLICKING IN QUAD.  I ALREADY SUSPECT THIS IS NOT OXFORD.  CUT TO EXTERIOR OF BUILDING THAT IS CLEARLY NOT OXFORD.  DISAPPOINTINGLY IT IS ST ANDREW’S CATHEDRAL IN HAWAII.

I feel annoyed with myself for thinking they might actually have whisked all the cast and crew off to Oxford to film fifteen seconds of footage.  Hmph.

Feeling

fog 5
Originally uploaded by crumplestiltskin.

‘Each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the power of this question.

The question looms in moments of great despair, when things tend to lose all their weight and all meaning becomes obscured… It is present in all moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem to be there for the first time, as if it might be easier to think that they are not than to understand that they are.

The question is upon us in boredom, when we are equally removed from despair and joy, and everything about us seems so hopelessly commonplace that we no longer care whether anything is or is not.’

Heidegger, ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’, trans. R. Manheim