Entry Two Hundred Eight.
Tuesday, 2017.09.12, 3:48 AM CST.
Introspection and the end of "Twin Peaks."  (Spoiler-ish.)
Current Mood:  Sad.  Emotionally displaced.  Off...
Current Scent:  Lingering traces of Blue Jeans by Versace.

Well, it's over.

Again.

The final two episodes of the third and presumably final season of "Twin Peaks" aired on September 2nd, and I have been kind of numb about its end for a while.  I won't go into the details of the finale here, not only because I don't like giving specific spoilers, but also because, frankly, even I don't really understand it.

That being said... I will be mentioning a general concept that becomes fairly important in the season's closure.  So, if you don't want to know anything at all about the end of the series, it might be best to stop reading this for now.

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Once "Twin Peaks" ended, I expected to be saddened.  This was my favourite TV series of all time, and to know that David Lynch and Mark Frost had brought back the series after over a quarter of a century for eighteen more episodes, as I had posted here in May, had me all kinds of excited.

The concept of time has always been extremely intriguing to me.  We live in four dimensions that we can palpably experience, along with further dimensions that are theoretical in nature.  Those four dimensions, of course, are our three-dimensional world, plus the element of time.

We can control the first three.  I can walk around Tulsa and my latitude and longitude will change as I move.  These are like my points on the X and Y axes.  If I were to ride an elevator from the ground floor of the Grand View Hotel to the tenth floor... my point on the Z axis would change.

Time has an axis ranging from an infinity earlier than human existence up to an infinity after human existence.  Our lifetimes are but dots on the surface of time - mere blips.  If I live to be a hundred years old, thos hundred years will still be nothing more than that faint "blip" in time.  (It is for that reason that it is important to leave some kind of legacy - but that is a discussion for another post.)

Unlike the X and Y and Z positioning, however, time doesn't allow us to consciously move back and forth.  We are at its mercy; it trudges forward, dragging us along, and no matter how we may struggle and wish for the ability to move ourselves backwards... it won't happen.

Experiences, good and bad, will end.  People will enter and leave our timelines, some without the possibility of returning.  Children will grow old, the old will grow older unless interrupted, and the older will eventually pass on... to what, I honestly don't know.

We can't go back.  Time travel, even if it were possible, would theoretically carry with it the danger of creating a time paradox.  Ever seen Back to the Future?  If so, then you know what I'm talking about.  One could theoretically go back in time and change history (their own and/or those of countless others) in a way that would cause things to be irreversably altered.  Major events wouldn't happen.  Some people would simply never exist.

But... what if someone were able to move back, and the changes that they made forced them to move over to a different point on a fifth (or higher) dimension?  Their storyline would split.

Let's say that later this morning, I had a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast... then, theoretically, going back in time to a point before I made that decision, I re-made the decision and this time I chose to eat a couple of waffles.

Would there still be a Badger in one timeline who actually ate the oatmeal, and a Badger in a second timeline who actually ate the waffles?  If so, then those two timelines would, in theory, continue on without any further intersection.  The first Badger could go on to do amazing things for the world, while the second Badger could get accidentally hit by a truck within twenty-four hours.

All so, so very intriguing.

(And, for the record, I am completely sober at the time of this writing.)

When "Twin Peaks" ended, I sat and watched the ending with my relatively new, but close, friends Dave [not DJ Dave French] and Delta.  Frankly, I'm not sure if any of us made it through the final episode without falling asleep.  (There are some pretty dry parts in it.)  I had to go back and watch it again... and, in parts, a third time.

The idea of time manipulation and interdimensional travel was (apparently) integral to certain portions of the season, and especially to parts of its conclusion.  The end of the season, and most likely the end of the entire series, was left rather open-ended.  That's not completely surprising coming from David Lynch, but the manner in which he did it - and the manner in which he treated the timeline of at least one particular integral character - was very disappointing.

But, as I'm sure he well intended, Lynch made me think a great deal... and I had to consider a number of possibilities that I had kind of tried to shove into the back of my mind for a good long time.

As strange as it may seem... I didn't really cry about the (arguably quite depressing) ending until I was listening to a Kyle MacLachlan interview while I was doing dishes at about 1:00 AM this morning.

That's when I became really introspective, and certain things hit me... and I just quietly wept as I stood there at the sink with my Bluetooth earbuds.

We live in strange times, and it is sometimes uncomfortable to be as introspective as I am right now.

I need sleep.

More soon... thanks for reading.

Badger

(Very minor wording adjustments were performed on 2017-11-01.)