inci-denta

[u][b]Inci-dental[/b][/u]

"As a specular mirage, love is essentially deception.  It is situated in the field established at the level of the pleasure reference, of that sole signifier necessary to introduce a perspective centered on the Ideal point, capital I, placed somewhere in the Other, from which the Other sees me, in the form I like to be seen."

 [b]Planned Parenthood[/b]

 Jack, following Daniel's opus posthumous to the letter, wakes Sawyer, Jin, Kate, Miles, Hurley and Juliet from their dharmic slumber.  Sayid, dead set, has already enlisted.  Their mission, their destiny? To insert Jughead's seed, the warhead's payload, deep within the island's womb, into the island's "pocket of exotic matter." Is this energetic fold near the icy canal that delivered brothers in spirit, if not more, from the idyll of the island into the cold world?

 Obviously Jack's intended plan and satisfaction will be frustrated, but prior to this inevitability what is the big idea in his head. Why is this man so hard up on it?

 Sawyer, equally concerned with Jack's swelling passion, asks the same question.

 Sawyer: What did you [i]screw[/i] up so bad the first time around you're willing to blow up a damn nuke just for a second chance. [emphasis mine]

 Knowing the answer, Sawyer asks narcissus the question. The crotch shot Sawyer gives Jack, just seconds later, couldn't be better timed.

 But for the moment, Jack shields his throbbing self interest.

 Jack: Three years ago, Locke told me that all this was happening for  reason, that us being here was our destiny.

 Sawyer, eyes locked on a similar object, sees the hole in this explanation, plumbs deeper.

 Sawyer: I don't speak 'destiny'. What I do understand is a man does what he does 'cause he wants something for himself. What do you want Jack?

 Pinned down now on all fours, Jack exposes his plan.

 Jack: I had her. I had her, and I lost her.

[b]Be her now or her today, gone tomorrow[/b]

"When in love, I solicit a look or a gaze, what is profoundly unsatisfying and always missing is this -- You never look at me from the place from which I see you. Conversely, what I look at is never what I wish to see."

So, Jack's plan ... he intends to go deep in the island this time.  Jack intends to penetrate so completely the object possessing him through the object's absence, the object that is "lost", will never have the opportunity to be separated from Jack again. Jack's aim is not to find the object. Jack shoots for the object's erasure: his desire is that the game of lost and found, fort/da, must stop, for his sake. Jack wants mastery so bad.

 What did Jack lose? To answer this one must ask the prerequisite what did Jack think he had found? Mercifully this season finale gives a semblance of an answer.

 To cut to the chase and repeat, Jack had her.

 Who? Her. The woman that mended the wound on his back, fixed the problem that his own hands couldn't reach.

 This tear in his flesh, what is its nature? Who opened it? Obviously shoots of bamboo.  Jack persuades Kate to close it. And in order to overcome what he perceives to be her fear Jack stands in Christian's shoes.  When standing in for Christian, Kate can see Jack as such. When she closes his flesh in episode one Jack gives her his side of the 5 second story. According to Jack, after the nick of the dural sac:

 Jack: [...] And the terror was just so ... crazy. So real. And I know I had to deal with it. [...] So I just made a choice. I'd let the fear in, let it take over, let it do its thing, but only for five seconds, that's all I was going to give it. So I started to count. [...]

 One aspect of this story is true; the moment was so Real. But as we now know, as this finale reveals, Jack using his scalpel amputated a key component. Instead of being his moment of innate mastery, as Jack mediates himself to Kate, it was, instead, maybe the moment Jack felt the least in control. Jack full of school and pride needed Daddy and his shoes, the man who calls him "kiddo" to step in.

 Now the wound mended: self conscious, Jack sees others around him seeing him as the son he feels he is but cannot accept to be. His identity as Christians son that he will never overcome.

 Christian: Something wrong Jack?

Jack: You embarrassed me.

Christian: Did I?

Jack: You know, it is bad enough that everybody in this hospital thinks the only reason I got this residency is because you are my father. But then you ... [sighs] you put me in time out during my first major procedure, in front of my entire team. [Sighs] Dad, I know you don't believe in me, but I need them to.

Christian: Are you sure I'm the one who doesn't believe in you Jack?

This is not the moment the flesh is torn, but in this scene you can take your finger, touch the scar, and read it like braille--Jack will always be in Christian's shadow so long as Jack sees others seeing him in his father's shadow.

 Kate, insofar as we and Jack know, never knew Jack's father. Jack, with Kate holding the standard black thread and needle, can stand in the shoes of his father.  He takes Kate through the motions, tells her the same story. What Jack lost in "hav[ing] her" was not her, but his ideal image of himself, his desire. In having her, this thread holds the scar close.

 But as we know, this wound will not heal.  It's no wonder, then, the moment Jack moves in to seal the deal and proposes to Kate, the shows writers shuffle in scenes of Jack's haunting by his father.

 Narcissus kissing the image of himself prefers to join himself to this image of himself forever rather than exist in the purgatory of knowing its impossibility.

 It is in this spirit Jack proceeds to the the pocket of exotic matter aiming on annihilation.

 In the finale, after the flashback supra, Kate reminds Jack of their, now, ancient idyllic history, their moment on the beach.  To Adam, this paradise "seems like a million years ago." This wound, broken open, is festering. Rather than risk gangrenous infection, Doc diagnoses and finds its time to amputate this member, once so cocksure.

 This operation will likely be unsuccessful. And because Jack's involved, we can rest assured he'll screw it up again.

 [b]Drilling it home[/b]

 Meanwhile, Chang, with R[o]d-zinski applying the switch, drills rhythmically. Rod's got his lubricated bit hammering away, hovering over this pocket of exotic matter. Like the drill, Rod is starting to get hot. If he could just touch this surplus energy, he will be ecstatic.

 Radzinski: I've been working on this project for six years. Designing a station that'll be able to manipulate electromagnetism in ways we only dreamed of.

 Chang tries to cool his passion; throws up a roadblock.

 Chang: Have you thought about the consequences of drilling in that pocket? We have no idea what we are gonna--

 To which Rod modestly replies

 Radzinski: If Edison was only worried about the consequences we'd ll be waiting in the dark. I came to this island to change the world, Pierre; that is exactly what I intend to do. [...] Let's get it started.

 Rod's goal is merely to change the world.

[b]Jouissance or Juliettessance[/b]

 So these two pricks epees drawn cross swords on the rim of this hole, the hole that so attracts them like a magnet, one aiming to mark his name on the future, the other hoping to erase his past. One succeds in planting his seed within the fold, only to find the seed does not take.

 It only makes sense, then, for the fertility doctor to descend into this womb, to massage the seed with rock blows, to work it over, to plead with it to give birth.

 The natural end result is that the male desires will be frustrated. What these men aimed for cannot be satisfied. Jack's plan, in his eyes, might seem to him to succeed, but this bomb and this past is a necessary condition precedent to Oceanic's arrival. Likewise, in Rod's case, without the blast there is no need for the swan sarcophagus he will be trapped in.

 Here, a woman intervenes repeating, maybe, the frustration her mother bore earlier. While both men aimed straight, their trajectories aimed to break free. Juliet bends these lines back on themselves, giving birth to return and maybe another chance for the cycle to be broken.

 [b]Inci-dental[/b]

 Is it merely an innocuous, incidental detail that we are introduced to the power of the exotic matter through the final ruminations of a dead man?

 Hurley: Dude, what happened to him?

[...]

Miles: His name is Alvarez. He was digging a hole and thinking about some chick named Andrea. Then he felt this sharp pain in his mouth, which turned out to be  filling from his tooth being yanked right out of its socket ... blowing through his brain. Then he was dead.

 Is this tooth merely inci-dental, or does it foreshadow the season's finale?

 If you search "Andrea" on Lostpedia the page for "Andrea (Some Like it Hoth)" lists (or did list, I haven't been there recently) as "trivia":

"Andrea Alvarez is a Spanish language avant-garde artist and drummer. She is well-known for her Medusa-like hair, which is very similar in appearance to that of [dead] Alvarez."

 Did Alvarez see Andrea's Medusa hair in his mind? Did he become fascinated by this image, attracted to the gravity of this image, mortified by her evil eye.

 The hole seems to bring out men's best thoughts and freezes them forever, fixed like stone.