Alfred's Odd Observation #20

Alfred's Odd Observation #20   

[on the conclusion of Spielberg's "Taken"]

by Alfred Lehmberg

It's just not going to go away, is it? Dread for some. Expectancy for others. Anticipation for others, still? Not all bad, reader. Not by any means.

Hurrying through my observation for that shivery period, the clear winter skies had begun to quicken (in the traditional Jack Frost sense... snow once as I recall). Vague shapes flitted in peripheral vision in the night skies. Silent glowing orbs traversed the heavens on busy errands and at divergent speeds. I sensed a realized propensity:  an actualization of the idea that if something can happen in this universe (?), it will happen!  

Given the space and time we view as separate but are actually one, it's understood... ...even now.  Add to all this an infinity, as far as we're concerned, of "surface area"! That's a lot of propensity!  

The expectancy I felt at the time was real, the premonition I sensed was valid, and my anticipation for a perceived cosmic denouement was genuine. A secular kingdom was at hand, I'd felt, and as real as any postulated divine one (... in fact the singular fountain of energy for that same misidentified divinity!), right here and now!  There was no dread, there was only change.  There was no fear.  There was only empowerment.  Within reach but to grasp!

We are that which we seek.  We are what we'll draw strength from in the future.  We (You, I) are key! Good news, eh?  It's a consequence of defining yourself and not letting others define you.  ...Back at the Ranch?

I expected artistic betrayal in the final episode of "Taken," some phony plot splice or an intervention of some *God* to tie everything up in the usual warm 'n fuzzy ball, and was happily disappointed.  Struggle, loss, and hope in equal parts are still better than sappy Hollywood endings resembling hammered bovine fecal matter.

I kept thinking though, that there had to be some kind of *dovetail* back to the otherwise hijacked "mainstream sensibility" so the watching audience wouldn't be left with the impression that their institutions of government and their agencies of law enforcement were a duplicitous concoction of dark agendas and arbitrary judgments completely disconnected and apart from that which they are supposed to have faithfully served... Institutions and agencies actually preying upon powerless (and largely innocent) individuals, disqualifying them, deriding them, and dismissing them?  But no.  I was happily disappointed there also.  

Truth is better than fiction where you prefer a useful history and not a prevaricating, disingenuous, and unusable fable.

You can't steer a cultural ship with a fable for very long.  With real history as a preferred rudder, a cultural course is clearest and most efficacious.  Real History is rife.

Oh sure... there were good guys in the legion of darkness depicted in the teleplay (even the worst had 'moments'), but notice that that only worked on an individual level.  The interests these fronted were still completely corrupted, I mean, the "system" tolerated people who blew up hamsters in microwaves to make a casual point, fa-chris'sakes!  Corruption is as corruption does.  Who is served?  Who is penalized?

I teared up quietly a few times towards the conclusion of the film, gratified that so much of what I suspect about this "thing" that interests so many of us was even inconclusively validated but saddened at our unrealized potential as illustrated and depicted: that in our imaginations we would have value to conjectured extraterrestrials as we would be valued; that they could have value to us as those seeing us as we wished we could be seen; that together we might be greater than the sum of our parts... 

That they ARE!  

That individual responsibility was key to efficacious individual self-actualization and that all sentience (wherever it is found!) is united in a grand creation that strives so passionately to know itself, recapture what had been lost, and further work for efficacious gain...

Reinforced for me was my contention that we have (we ARE!) power we don't use, knowledge we can seek and attain... happiness and fulfillment we can achieve.  I have full awareness that Spielberg's epic was just a play, a show, and a clever vehicle to sell *soap* that won't get anyone of us *clean* ironically (I'm not a child), but I am also encouraged that the story could be told at all (the WAY it was told) and could so completely capture the optimism I sustain as a result of a personal investigation... into this "thing" that just is.  Verily. [g] 

We'll get the answers we demand, articulate the questions we would seek, and solve the puzzles these present because it is our nature to challenge a "conventional wisdom" plainly betraying us.  This search for better questions is beyond mere love of country, love of family, and love for self because it is the DISTILLATION of all those things... and more things beyond our present understanding.  Our will to understand is fueled, and NOT fooled by that distillate.

Here at Alienviews is that same guileless desire aspired to, to achieve a refined synergy of will required to break on through to the next level of human evolution we all sense approaching, looming even, uncorrupted by self-serving institutions, conflicted sociopaths and the misinformed unfortunates who support them.  We're poised to advantage ourselves in a new reality invalidating the short-sighted concerns of that which has gone before... looking forward with informed confidence as we gain a new appreciation for an unvarnished history, experience that new comprehension facilitated by an open-minded and genuine science actually going where the data goes!  Heaven on Earth!  The kingdom at hand!  

...Though "heavens" fall.

Having left the swaddle of our self-imposed confinement at last, we will stumble and skin our knees on the grounds outside it, we will burn our hands on the cosmic stove... we will cut our fingers on knives of a greater reality outside that self-inflicted gulag we presently endure, and we assuredly will suffer updated shocks our new flesh will be heir to, as Shakespeare had already pointed out...

 ...But we'll learn from our mistakes too, this time, remember our past accurately, this time, and so have a solid rudder with which to steer to a future star.  It may be true that a lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on—even zipping up the side—but pants on and rolling it easily kicks any lie's ass. The reader knows that to be true, so I say true, and truth's not fragile.  

"Taken" was one of the most significant things on television for the period—it really stepped outside its box is my considered estimation—and I think it was one of the beginnings of a new approach to our place in open-ended time-space... born into the new reality?  Such may be so. 

Sometimes art is the lie that tells the truth, sometimes fiction will reflect the actuality, sometimes what could be, is.  My optimism is emboldened at any rate. Incredible things call from the future, and not all of them bad.  Not by any means, reader. Not by any means.

That's enough. I remain watching the skies.  Read on.