There was a moment in my catching-up of Lost last night (or would that be catching-back, as the show’s already over), during a fifth-season episode called “LaFleur” where Sawyer’s trying to convince Juliet to stay on the island and the next scene’s of them living together three years later—as confusing as the back-and-forth must’ve been to temporal laymen, I for one found the dating transitions unnecessary and an artistic hindrance—I realized the appeal to me, the idea that time is not so much an illusion, but more a matter of perspective; my memory takes me back to a point when I pitched far less charming proposals to the woman who is now feeding our child. Sure, you say, it’s narrative manipulation to the tune of omitting bathroom breaks on 24, or just catering to my attention deficit, but knowing that each excruciating second of him crying will lead someday to his graduation from school and beyond makes them all so bearable.
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