The Garden of Valenzetti
Some Thoughts on The Leftovers 2.01: Axis Mundi
by
Pearson Moore
Park rangers carry tasers and sidearms. Cowboys are high priests wielding ceremonial knives. Firefighters are sworn vigilantes, protecting with fire and flame the purity of this rare place. And peeing in the water makes it holy and sweet. Welcome to Jarden. Behold the Miracle, this garden untouched by God.
"But in Jarden Town the sun shone bright, a Miracle," young Evie sang out, with conviction to tremble the soul and warm the heart:
The Light of Love poured down, it's a Miracle.
Our hearts are pure, we knew for sure, a Miracle.
That God has spared our Town.
The story began three years ago, we were told in Season One. The sudden, unaccountable, instantaneous disappearance of two percent of the world's population left the world stunned, angry, desperate, and grieving, injecting hearts and minds with depths of emotion unknown to innocent humanity.
But the prologue to Season Two offered us fresh perspective. Suffering, grief, and death have never lacked depth or misery. Innocence? The idea is attractive, compelling, uplifting--but the concept has always been a fiction, conceived by tainted yet hopeful humanity. "Your water: Will it make us safe?" The question, posed in German by a frail, overweight, pasty-skinned, 50-something man, induced its own wave of sadness. He was a dead man walking. If not today, tomorrow. If not this year, then next. But we knew sometime, and sometime soon, this man would become rotting flesh entombed in moist earth. Whether or not a second 'departure' occurred, this desperate man, ready to spend thousands of Euros for a few hours under the Texas sun, would not be spared.
The idea of perception is central to this newest incarnation of Damon Lindelof's vision of the human condition. "We’re playing with this idea of what is it that makes magical places magical. It has to start with something that happened there. In this construct, Jarden, Texas is exceptional because nobody departed from there and there has to be a reason for that. What that reason is, is less interesting to us as storytellers than what people think the reason may be." (Damon Lindelof, interview with Christina Rasish, Collider.com, 4 October 2015) As Tom Perrotta related, both the book and the series are "about the variety of the responses, individually and collectively" to the inexplicable disappearance of a fraction of the world's population. (Tom Perrotta, interview with Alan Sepinwall, Hitflix.com, 26 June 2014)
But perception is not free-flowing. There are constraints on what Jarden, Texas is or might be. Lindelof framed the idea of constrained perception earlier this month:
Why is Jerusalem, Jerusalem? Why is Mecca, Mecca? These are places that have great religious significance. Is it because someone told stories about them, or is it because this is where Jesus lived or came, or is it because this is where Muhammad preached or lived? Why a pilgrimage from Mecca to Medina? Why is Vatican City in Rome? These are all intensely spiritual places. If you’ve been to any of them, it doesn’t matter if you believe in that religion, you feel it flowing through your body. It’s not just history, it’s something else. It’s infused with that power. (Damon Lindelof, Collider.com, 4 October 2015)
There is a reality permeating Mecca, Jerusalem, the Vatican, and now the unremarkable town of Jarden, Texas. No single cause and effect relation can explain the truth of any of these places. "It’s not just history, it’s something else. It’s infused with that power."
If you're reading my words in this quiet corner of the Internet, you've probably digested other reviews of Axis Mundi. But you have unanswered questions. Why did the earthquake kill the pregnant woman's companions? Why was Jarden renamed 'Miracle'? The other reviewers reported these facts but provided no explanation. I also lack answers. But I don't think you're going to be disappointed. You see, I don't accept the other reviewers' perceptions. I reject them, whole-heartedly, because I feel they're simply wrong. Perception is not open-ended, as Lindelof told us. There are, in fact, right and wrong ways of looking at the problem of the Departure. There are right and wrong ways of thinking about the Miracle that is Jarden.
First of all, we don't know that the pregnant cavewoman's companions died in the earthquake. If you wish proof of this, please see one of Damon Lindelof's first television episodes, Lost 1.07, "The Moth." In this Lost, Season One episode, two of the main characters, Jack and Charlie, are trapped inside a cave when the entrance collapses. But they don't die, and in fact, their confinement leads to a life-giving discovery.
Now I seriously doubt we're ever going to learn whether the cavewoman's 'companions' lived or died. But their death is not the point of the prologue. The point is that they were not 'companions' at all. These dirty, naked women and men were the members of her clan. They were the source of her nourishment, her health, the life flowing in her blood, and the life growing in her womb. The clan was everything, and now she was forever separated from everything. There was no life, but there was hope.
The broad-winged bird circling overhead was not a vulture. Now some eagle-eyed (hah!) fan with Ultra HD-television will leave a comment: "You're wrong, Pearson. I froze the scene and zoomed in on the bird. It's Gymnogyps californianus, the California Condor, commonly known as a vulture. So you're wrong, and I'm never going to read your essays again!" I'm perfectly willing to admit the bird could be a condor. But it's not a vulture.
The distinction is not balanced on semantics or scientific definitions, but on perception and symbolic interpretation. We could certainly interpret the circling bird as waiting patiently, knowingly, for the woman's death, and the feast it would enjoy as it tore into her still-warm flesh. But again, the perception and the interpretation are incomplete, and terribly misleading. Take a closer look at what actually happened. Train those eagle eyes of yours on the events that transpired from 5:20 to 5:45. The woman is cuddling her newborn, tired and on the verge of sleep, when she hears the piercing cry of the circling hawk. She looks up, sees the fearsome source of the sound, and follows the bird's path through the sky. The hawk is circling not over her, but around a far-off column of smoke. Whether intentional or not, the bird of prey has drawn her attention to smoke, which means fire, which means clan, which means nourishment and health, love and life. It means everything.
The hawk is not a vulture because the bird doesn't symbolize death, but something else entirely. Nature is not only death, but life. Nature awaited her death, yes, of course, but it also provided the means for her to continue her life, and even woke her and virtually led her to a new clan. A meaningful interpretation, consistent with Lindelofian constraint, is that the bird was not a symbol of death, but in fact a symbol of life.
While I honor that interpretation, this is not the perception I would apply. I openly admit to strong bias, born of the time I spent on a free-floating island that ranged across various points on the Pacific Ocean over the six years from 2004 to 2010. So I look at that hawk as I might one of the Dharma polar bears, or sharks stamped with the eight-sided Dharmacakra, or the Smoke Monster himself. The various living avatars of the Island are neither 'good' nor 'evil', but manifestations of raw power, reduced to concrete form in the Cave of Light seen in Season Six of Lost. The hawk, for me, and probably for many fans of Damon Lindelof, is a symbol of pure, uncontrollable power. The Power of God, if you will.
The cavewoman's vision of the hawk was her frightful, hopeful, horrible, brilliant confrontation with the Divine. This is a deity at once cold and forbidding, yet warm and inviting. It is Paul Tillich's Ground of All Being, but also Source of All Death. It is Alpha and Omega, life and death, suffering and joy, terror and rapture, beginning and end.
You don't have to believe as I do. Perhaps the bird symbolizes enlightenment, or humanity's connection to earth and sky, or the circle of life, or some other concept foreign to my biased thoughts. The hawk may have little symbolic importance to the greater story occurring at the mystical spring 12,000 years later, when Jarden was spared the anguish of the Departure. But it doesn't symbolize death, and that's the truth--no matter how much you insist otherwise in the comments section below.
A Town Renamed
They shook their fists,
And cursed the skies,
Demanding explanation.
No answers came,
No soothing words,
To silence and frustration.
But in Jarden Town the sun shone bright:
A Miracle.
Jarden is the Miracle. It is the answer the world has been seeking for three long years. Pilgrims come from all over the world, determined, eager, wild-eyed, desperate, for a few moments under the bearded prophet's concrete pillar and a taste of life-giving water.
I've read close to 20 analyses of Episode 2.01, this spectacular reboot of the series. But I skimmed and ultimately passed over several dozen more. Good or bad, nearly every review I read spoke of the fact that Jarden had been renamed Miracle. Well, respectfully, I disagree. As far as I can tell, the town was never renamed. By some mechanism not yet explained, the entire town has been taken up into what the Federal government calls Miracle National Park. But the town signs remain. No one has scrawled out Jarden and written some other name for the place. Fierce-believing, energetic teenage girls call their town Jarden, not 'Miracle'. The town was not renamed. It is Jarden.
The names are important because they reflect perception and power. In fact, perception is power. To the Federal government, and to thousands of pilgrims lifting trembling arms to blue sky, this place is called Miracle. To proud and grateful residents, the town has been and will always be Jarden, Texas. Speak of miracles if you will, but do so without specificity. Don't tell the world you know what Jarden is, because in the telling, you assume the mantel of power. Don't try to claim understanding, don't sell mystical enlightenment in the reading of palms or words of truth from the pulpit, or town elders will shut you down, shut you up, threaten you (even in church), and if no other means of censorship works, burn your house to cinders and smoke. Perception is Power, and Jarden owns copyright, trademark, and patent on Power. You're just a visitor. Don't forget your wristband. Don't take it off. Or armed park rangers will taser you until you drop.
Jarden reflects biased perception, too. 'Jordan' seems to be the correct Texas pronunciation, but the etymology has no relation to the Biblical river flowing into the Dead Sea. Jarden is a variant of the Spanish word Jardín, or the French word Jardin, rendered in English as 'Garden'. The name doesn't refer to Texas. The reference is profound, mystical, and foundational to the second season.
Garden is a metaphor, sometimes understood as primitive perfection, but it seems to me one feasible interpretation, especially in the context of the prologue to Season Two, is that the Garden in our tale refers to a starting point. The clan we saw in the first moments of the prologue was sleeping at the First Fire, gathered in the First Cave, placed at the shores of the first waters that sustained human life. This clan, unknowingly, had taken up residence in the Garden of Eden. That baby, saved from the snake, was the First Mother. She was Eve, or in the parlance of our story, Evie.
Is she the pure one then, the Mother who trampled the snake underfoot rather than succumbing to its charm? Listen to the music. I find it fascinating that so many commentators have invoked parallels to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" in discussing the prologue. I can't help but think that one of the factors stimulating such comparisons was the choice of music. The light, cheery orchestration certainly sounds like a waltz, and I suppose to untrained ears, like mine, the semblance to Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz must have led to the conviction that Lindelof intended to hark back to the 1968 cinematic masterpiece. I believe such a possibility exists, but after researching the music, I'm not so sure. In fact, I think it more useful to consider the choice of music as having resonance with the specific theme of this long introduction to the season. The classical piece accompanying the cavewoman's birthing scene was written not by Johann Strauss but by Guiseppe Verdi, and it wasn't a waltz, but an overture to an opera: La Traviata, or in English, The Fallen Woman. The cavewoman is the Fallen Woman. Yes, she crushed the snake, but she was bitten, too, and eventually she succumbed to its venom. Eve from the Garden of Eden, who fell under the snake's spell? Or Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, who crushed the snake? Perhaps she is both.
Now here's why I believe it's important not to make assumptions about what a scene did or did not tell us. The fact that we don't know whether the cavewoman's clanmates are dead or alive is crucial to our understanding of the greater story. If we don't know something, if we aren't given enough information to make a reasonable determination of symbolic value or cause and effect, then this unknowable something is not germane to the story. There was a Departure, yes. Why? "What that reason is, is less interesting to us as storytellers than what people think the reason may be." Both the Departure and the earthquake that separated the cavewoman from her clan are unfathomable starting points. We can't build any guesses or metaphors of value based on the clanmates' death, but only on the separation of pregnant clan member from clan. From the cavewoman's point of view, her clanmates might as well be among the Departed. Her anguish and grief are the focal points, not anyone's supposed death.
Once you realize this truth, the possibilities are breathtaking. The rocks barring the woman's path back to the cave, in our mind's eye, become stand-ins for the barbed wire fence guarding Miracle National Park. Everyone outside the gates is suffering anguish and loss no less profound than the cavewoman's. These pilgrims grasp hands with family and friends, lift eyes to the sky, just as the cavewoman did when she grasped her newborn's hand and held her close.
Jarden was spared, but just what does that truth mean? God spared the town. God did not touch a single resident. What does this mean, to be untouched by God? Is salvation to be found in being spared? Does being untouched by That Which is to be feared indicate a state of grace? Or does being untouched by That Which is Love indicate a state of damnation? Is Jarden the Garden of Eden, or does it inhabit the First Circle of Hell? Watch the first ten minutes again. This is not just prologue. It is metaphor. It is the symbolic exposition of everything we will witness in Season Two.
Evangeline
Winona Ryder as Abigail Williams,
"The Crucible," Twentieth Century Fox, 1996
"But in Jarden Town the sun shone bright, a Miracle," young Evie Murphy sang out, convicted in truth, courageous in word. Her strong voice spread the message of salvation that is Jarden, the Miracle wrought by God. More than anyone else we have met in this series, Evie is the purest, truest representation of hope. She is the most articulate messenger of the gospel message of Miracle. To use religious terminology, she is an evangelist, meaning one who spreads the gospel.
Evie is short for Evangeline, a name that gained popularity just about the time Jarden, Texas was founded (1848). Evangeline means 'woman who spreads the gospel'. The name appears on thousands of birth certificates of the era, especially among American pioneer families, no less fiery and convicted than young Evie, supported in their westward migration by the widely promulgated religious doctrine called Manifest Destiny. The sun shone bright, the Light of Love poured down on the United States of America, for it was the Promised Land, and it was America's destiny--America's Manifest Destiny--to fill the continent from sea to shining sea.
The town name is no accident, then. The reference is certainly to the Garden of Eden, for this garden was in the very center of the continent. It was God's will that America was the Promised Land, predetermined--to use Michael Murphy's choice of word--no less than the Biblical readings at Sacred Mission Baptist Church that accused Michael's father, John.
I don't believe the name for John Murphy's daughter was random or accidental, either. Evie might mean Eve or Evangeline, Mother of Humanity or Evangelist of Jarden--or it might mean both. (And I suppose it might serve as an homage to one of Lindelof's favorite actresses, Evangeline Lilly.) I think the dual meaning is intentional. What does it mean to be the First Mother, or the most gifted evangelist?
She urinated in the water, just as our primordial First Woman did in the prologue. The act is not a one-off, throw-away action then, but an event imbued with great significance. Evie thought it a joke played on a too-serious chemist studying the miraculous waters. The cavewoman thought it nothing more than the simple act of relieving her bladder. But the repetition of the event was a signal: Look for significance.
My epiphany came when Evie and her two friends raced naked through the forest. This was no frantic run, but timed, choreographed, measured, full of patience and care. I don't know that I was supposed to tie this strange spectacle to the forest witchcraft scene that opened "The Crucible." I hadn't seen the film in nearly 20 years, but the memory came in a flash, and I looked on Evie with eyes newly-opened.
I am not saying Evie is a witch, or that she will point an accusing finger at those she wishes to condemn to hanging, as Abigail Williams did during the Salem witch trials in February to May, 1693. But I believe both Abigail and Evie are, or think themselves, in a fundamental and important way connected to powers beyond human comprehension. Evie knows, or thinks she knows, Jarden. It's not just a place, after all. "It’s not just history, it’s something else. It’s infused with [...] power."
Evie is brimming, full to overflowing with the power that is Jarden. And that's a dangerous state for any mere mortal. She drinks from the Cup of Life. Christians know this great chalice as the Cup of Christ that brings eternal life. Fans of Lost know it as the Cup of Jacob that likewise brings immortality. But note well: Every disciple who drank from the Holy Grail at the Last Supper was hunted down and executed. And Jack, the hero of Lost, accepted the Cup of Jacob, only to die at the MIB's hand. So that which is life brings suffering and death. Should we expect Evie will be spared a gruesome or mysterious fate?
Axis Mundi
We think of Mapleton, New York, and Jarden, Texas, as the only locales of significance in our story. In similar fashion, many fans of Lost probably consider that the Island and Los Angeles were the only locations of importance to Jack and Kate and Locke's story. But we already know of two characters connected to a third place of importance, and we will see many more as the season continues. How can I be so sure Australia will play an important role in The Leftovers?
Over the six years of Lost we came to know 29 characters with direct, personal connections to Australia. The most important of these carried mystical connotations that helped immensely in understanding the nature of the Island. Already in Episode 2.01 we've learned the unnamed bearded prophet living atop the town's 'Miracle' pillar has or will establish a relationship with a certain David Burton, living at the origin of Flight 815: Sydney, Australia. David Burton, again, is not a throw-away name. He's wielding Chekhov's Gun, and we will certainly hear of him again, and most likely meet him, later in Season Two or sometime in Season Three. Other important characters will come to have connections with the continent.
Why?
Geographies of the mind are connected to time and place. If we wish to make sense of emotions and states of being, we must inevitably describe profound connections to physical locales. In Lindelof's words, there are "intensely spiritual places. If you’ve been to any of them, it doesn’t matter if you believe in that religion, you feel it flowing through your body."
So why was it necessary to use Australia as a focal point in Lost? Wasn't the Island enough?
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The Island was more profound than metaphor, so the connections had to be understood as real, pervasive, and relevant to everyone on Flight 815, which is to say everyone who watched the television series. The Island was Lost's Axis Mundi, the center around which the world turned, or as I said in several of my books, it was the umbilical:
[The Island] is the umbilical, the connection between the natural world and whatever lies beyond the realm of the senses. It is through the [Island] that we live and move and have our being. Each of us carries a bit of the Light inside our hearts, as Jacob's guardian told us. When the Light goes out, we lose our identity, our connection to reality, we lose any possibility of life, death, or rebirth. (LOST Humanity, 7.93)
Jarden is clearly The Leftover's Axis Mundi, but it's not at all clear that we should think of Jarden as somehow similar to or the same as the Island. They could be very different or even antithetical to each other. In both Lost and in The Leftovers we can count on 'secondary' axes mundi, such as Australia, to bring clarity to the true meaning of the central geographical axis.
Many of you will never watch Lost, or never revisit the series if you did watch during its run from 2004-2010. But if you plan on doing so anytime in the future, you may wish to skip over the next section. I am going to spell out in fewer than ten words what the Island was, and I will expand on the idea, to show why I believe Jarden has a different meaning.
The Gospel According to Lindelof
"The Light Returns"
Jack Shephard after successfully replacing the Cork Stone
Lost 6.18, "The End," ABC Television, 2010
I've said the Island was an umbilical, but the image I danced around in my books, without ever coming out and saying it, carried the most profound significance. Here it is: The Island is the Ark of the Covenant.
The Island wasn't the Covenant itself, but the great floating chamber that housed the words of the Covenant. The Covenant, as I understand its expression in the television series, was an ongoing agreement, a never-ending work, that secured the Island's place as the guarantor of human survival. The words of the Covenant were carved into the Cork Stone, which sealed the Cave of Light and allowed pure divine energy to be transformed into life-giving water.
To remove the Cork Stone was to profane it, but also to destroy the Covenant or balance that allowed the Island to act as Axis mundi, give life, and guarantee human survival. Therefore profane hands, those of a man physically gifted but spiritually impure, had to remove the stone, and this was accomplished by electromagnetically-resistant but spiritually wounded Desmond Hume. It took physically wounded but spiritually pure Jack Shephard (i.e., Shepherd of Souls, the New Moses) to touch the engraved rock with clean hands and re-secure this Covenant Stone in its proper place, bringing equilibrium back to the world.
I doubt Damon Lindelof's artistic compulsion--to illustrate the nature of humanity's connection to the divine--will play out in the same way in The Leftovers. Some 30 million people watched the Lost finale, and there was probably not a dry eye among us. But half of us decided we didn't like the ending, and of those who thought it a satisfying finale, probably few understood what had happened. Lindelof was visibly disappointed in this reaction, and he's not likely to follow the same storytelling tack in The Leftovers.
But millions of us did understand, among them a certain Vince Gilligan, who paid tribute to Lost in the final scene of Breaking Bad. The last moments of Walter White paralleled almost frame-for-frame the final breaths of Jack Shephard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vTgK4CiJhg
The premise and story elements are strong, but at the very least they're going to be rearranged, spun into new thread, woven into new cloth. The appeal will be changed, probably narrowed, so as to stimulate new thought and discussion around the basic idea of human-divine connectivity. Perhaps the ending of The Leftovers will bring fewer tears, but I'm pretty sure the intention among Lindelof and his lieutenants is to instill a more profound sense of appreciation.
The Numbers
Yep. I saw it, too. Of course I saw it. I've written dozens of essays on The Numbers. You think I'd miss a framed instance of the most important of the Lost numbers? Hah!
For those of you new to the symbolic world of Lindelof, you will find a small but quite dedicated and very animated contingent of The Leftovers fans who pour over every frame of each episode, looking for important clues. And there, 19 minutes and 25 seconds into Episode 2.01, we had a biggie. It appeared only for a split second. Getting the screencap above took me three tries--that's how short its residence time was. But for Lost veterans, that fifth of a second is an eternity.
If you're not up for this microscopic analysis of every image and flash, don't worry. Numbers of any kind have made few conspicuous appearances in Season One, and they're unlikely to suddenly become important going forward. So you can ignore the numbers--even a number of monumental importance like 108.
Now, if you wish to go deeper, you can certainly meditate on the number's significance. 108 didn't appear accidentally. Lindelof and Company knew a certain important segment of the fan base would go crazy when they saw this number. But on The Leftovers 108 doesn't mean the sum of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, as it meant in Lost. There are no Candidates on this show. There's no Dharma Initiative. It is a number unto itself this time around, and its significance is tied to the identity of the pilgrims on the bus. The green bus, by the way. The color carries greater significance than the number, but we'll discuss that later.
What does 108 have to do with people hoping to find safety or salvation in a small Texas town enclosed by barbed wire? Look at the people getting off the bus. There's a nun, in the traditional black and white 'penguin' habit. There are two stereotypical Orthodox jews in big hats, black suits, and long beards. Some are in wheelchairs. Others--the bulk of those coming off the bus--raise their arms high and look to the sky with bright, grateful, expectant faces. They grasp hands, form a circle, bow their heads. One of the men--the group leader--raises his arm to the heavens. You're not supposed to just let this go. As with the nun image and the Jew caricature, you're to understand these people as Evangelical Christians.
Everyone on the bus is a pilgrim, and by this I mean pilgrim in the most completely spiritual sense we can imagine. These are people committed to their religion who understand Jarden, Texas, as playing out truths central to the theological teachings of their faith traditions. It is in this light that we can formulate some guesses regarding the intended meaning of Number 108.
Hindu prayer chains (Japa mala) carry 108 beads. Each bead represents one of the 108 names or forms of the Lord Shiva, making 108 a holy number in Hinduism. The number 108 is considered important or holy by Buddhists, some Jews, and practitioners of several of the Eastern martial arts, among them Wing Chun and Kuk Sool Wan. When I saw the 108, the nun, the Orthodox Jews, and the Evangelical Christians, the number made perfect contextual sense. The 108 was a stand-in for the Hindus on the bus.
The idea of numbers is important, though, because of the way Lindelof has used the idea in the past. "Oh yes, the mystical numbers." Well, no, they're not mystical, and that's the point I wish to make here. Many of you are thinking this a brash statement, contrary to everything we learned in Lost. But consider these words from Season Six:
KATE: Why did you cross my name off of your wall?
JACOB: Because you became a mother. It's just a line of chalk in a cave. The job is yours if you want it, Kate.
(Lost 6.16, "What They Died For")
In Jacob's own words, Kate's name (and her Candidate Number, 51) were "just a line of chalk in a cave." There was no connection between the Candidate Numbers and any motif or truth, meaning 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 carried no intrinsic significance. Yet we know the numbers had tremendous meaning to the series. They appeared in virtually every one of the 121 episodes. How can I say they 'carried no intrinsic significance'?
The Numbers were an overlay. They were a value perception applied by various individuals and groups that had an incomplete or totally wrong-headed understanding of the Island, its powers, and its deeper significance. They were a misinterpretation, a misunderstanding. The Dharma Initiative was a misdirected effort to understand the Valenzetti Equation, which itself was a broken, half-assed scientific approach to what was, in the end, a problem of spiritual import.
If you read any of the interviews Damon Lindelof has given on the structure of The Leftovers, he's said repeatedly that his greatest ambition is to elicit a multitude of responses. As Tom Perrotta said, the series will depict "the variety of the responses, individually and collectively" of the characters. Our responses will mirror those of the characters, and we'll come up with our own, too. Everyone watching will produce a perceptual overlay that will contain various amounts of truth. This goes to the storytelling expectation of observer participation, which I discussed at length in several of my books on Lost. Without going into detail, it should be obvious to anyone reading these words that each of us holds dear certain truths. It follows logically that we will apply these truths to any work of art, and we'll interpret the art on that basis. In that sense, then, we participate in the artistic creation, imbueing the work--overlaying it--with truths it would otherwise lack.
The truth I see when I look at Jarden is that it is no Garden of Eden--at least, not the Garden I'm familiar with from the story in Genesis. So 'Garden of Valenzetti' is my way of saying that to think of Jarden as a perfect place is to construct a flawed and incorrect overlay. Superficially, in my mind anyway, Jarden seems to be a perfect place, spared the tribulations of God's wrath, but will soon be revealed as something frightful, and perhaps beautiful and frightful at the same time. Not a garden at all, then, but the Axis Mundi, with the fullest range of terror and wonder that any of us can imagine.
Daß ist eine Prüfung?
"Was kostet das?" the German pilgrim asked.
Michael shrugged. "It's whatever you wanna give."
The man grunted. "Daß ist eine Prüfung?"
Is this a test? he asked. Some children's game? And he and his translator friend walked away, throwing Michael's church brochure back at him.
Of course it was a test. Michael poured the water from a one-liter Nalgene Tritan copolyester biological sample bottle into a rack of cork-stoppered glass test tubes. Scientific test tubes--used to contain what almost every pilgrim on the bus--on the green bus--would have considered precious holy water.
What is this strange obsession I have with the color green?
"Le Destin Vert"
("Green Destiny")
Copyright 2012 Pearson Moore
In the mythology of Lost, blue represents the Valenzetti-loving Dharma Initiative, the Man in Black, and pre-enlightenment, science-loving Jack Shephard. Yellow represents the Man of Faith, John Locke, the immortal Jacob, and the Light emanating from the Source. If you mix the two colors together, you get green, which was most visibly seen in the green pill of Lost Episode 6.03, "What Kate Does."
To boil these colors down to basics, blue represents science, which in Lost is understood as an imperfect and often incorrect overlay, and yellow represents faith, which is trust in the power of the Island. Green, then, is a mixture of the two, a complicated melange not at all conducive to facile explanations.
When I look at Michael I see the color yellow. He is as pure as they come, which he demonstrated not only with the German couple, but more importantly in the pulpit, when he stared down his own father, and told him, in the words of Paul of Tarsus, "See that no one returns evil for evil." (1 Th 5:15) He doesn't countenance John Murphy's Fahrenheit 451 raids, and he won't sully the pulpit by proclaiming anything less than the full truth.
When I look at Evie I see a woman superficially enamored of her town's status, but I see much more going on underneath. She seems to proclaim the Gospel of Jarden, but notice she sings Jarden's spiritual anthem not from the Baptist Church, but from the confines of her town's secular, non-religious high school. So Evie, to my eyes, is clothed in pure blue.
Yet Evie is touched in some way. Her parents understand her condition as epilepsy, but they speak of her as having 'left' or 'gone away'. "Come back, Evie," Erika implores as Evie's eyes stare blankly, her fingers twitching. When Evie finally 'comes back', she asks simply, "I went away?"
The implication is that in a town full of pure, untouched souls, she is unique, touched by the Hand of God. Many would consider such a woman to occupy an elevated state of grace. In the words of Father Peyramale, "You are the rarest of mortal beings," young Evie. Perhaps she is clothed in yellow after all. But I still see blue when I look on her face, and wait for the time when she betrays some hidden falsehood or conceit of the heart. All of which means Lindelof will build her into a saint greater than Father Peyramale's Bernadette of Lourdes, just to spite me and my half-baked theories. We shall see!
"But what about those test tubes, Pearson? Why would a Man of Faith like Michael Murphy condescend to the use of scientific symbols in proffering holy water? I thought you said he wore yellow, not blue."
I have ideas about that, certainly. But I've already written 6000 words. Do you think I'll ruminate on complex visual juxtapositions in fewer than a thousand words? We'd be here all night if we had to discuss the contradictions and miscues and red herrings of Episode 2.01, not to mention the strange mysteries popping up every minute. What's the deal with watering the lawn in formal wedding gowns? What's up with the plexiglas sarcophagus covering Asphalt Eruption #7 on the street leading into the town square? And what was Cowboy Jerry's goat sacrifice, the strange restaurant sin offering, supposed to achieve? Most of all, was that bird dead or alive when Erika buried it several days ago?
There is much to discuss, and more than could be covered in another 6000 words or even 12,000 words. Our discussion will have to wait. You have a life to live, don't you? So until then, watch out for snakes, eat raw eggs--shell and all, and beware the test, the children's game, of sacred water in profane tubes.
