Everything That Rises Must Converge

I love Lost. Can't help it. Only one other show, ever, has captured my imagination like this, and that was Northern Exposure. So now, it's Lost. I avoided it for four-plus years, but my neighbor Curt loaned me the first four seasons on DVD and I watched it all in about three days. Not sure whether to thank Curt or curse him. Considering the complicated nature of the show, maybe both courses of action are appropriate.

So, thank you, Curt. And curse you!

I got hooked early because of the literary allusions and direct references to things that interest me. Early on, I liked the idea that Sawyer, the resident con man, was a big reader. And when the first book he read on the show was Watership Down -- one of the books that shaped my literary ambitions as a child -- I was absolutely geeked.

It's been like that throughout, actually. They'll sneak in a subtle reference to a literary work or music and it makes the geek in me glow. This season, Daniel Faraday, the resident mad physicist, played Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu as a kid in a flashback. His mom told him to knock it off, because he was destined to use his mind in other pursuits (like manipulating the space-time continuum). Still, there was my favorite composer, Chopin, smack dab in the middle of my favorite show. Someone on a fan site noticed that the song itself, as played by the young Faraday, picked up at the 1:08 mark. It actually is the beginning of the prettiest segment of the song, my favorite part of the song. Anyone who's watched the show knows the significance of that number (1:08). There is no way it's coincidence that the scene began with Faraday playing the song at that instant, and that's one of the reasons I love this show.

Like most of the geeks who've been sucked into this show's vortex of mind-numbing mystery, I have theories. I'm not going to write them here, though. Instead (and this part will be of interest only to those who watch the show), I'll point out what I thought was a huge clue from the season finale.

It occurred as Jacob sat on a park bench in the "real world" off the island, waiting for (the real) John Locke to be pushed out of an eighth-story window by his father. Before we see Locke's body plunge to Earth in the background, Jacob (a moving force -- for good? for evil? -- on the island) is reading Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. The title itself is a pretty big clue, coming as it did from the work of this guy, who basically believed that human existence is a collective striving to cast off the crude, violent nature inherent to the species and "rise" to "converge" into a single, higher level of existence. OK, I found that on a fan site, but as big a geek as I am about these things I had never heard of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin before Wednesday. (And oh, can it be coincidence that one of the main Dharma characters, Dr. Chang, is named Pierre?)

So, the good vs. evil dynamic being played out on the island is actually about Jacob's belief that, despite the apparent brutal nature of human beings, it is possible to ascend to a higher form collectively -- eventually.

Now, what about O'Connor's book? I happen to own it, and when I went back to read the title story, I noticed something astounding. Among the other titles in the collection are these stories: A View of the Woods; the Comforts of Home; the Lame Shall Enter First; Why Do the Heathen Rage?; Revelation; Parker's Back; Judgement (sic) Day.

Wow. It's almost as if the writers of Lost took almost every important theme they've explored for the past five years directly from the titles in O'Connor's collection.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that's what this show does to you. It's actually participatory television (if your curiosity is powerful enough) and it makes you want to search deeper into the mystery.

Can't wait for Season Six. In January. Curse you, Curt. And thank you.