Her Pilgrim Soul
Her Pilgrim Soul
June 9, 2013 4:15 PM
This is the entry I finished writing about midnight of May 24, on a hammock in Pearl Farm.
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Save for National Geographic and some shows on History channel, there is nothing on TV today--- and I mean nothing --- that provides thought-provoking, insightful entertainment. Those who say that I don’t watch TV enough to pass such harsh judgement are missing the point. The time I spend/waste on TV dwindled because there has been no material good enough to entertain me with.
Internet’s the culprit here. As great as it has been for humankind, we can ascribe the deterioration of people’s taste to the Internet. Studies have shown that the Internet has provided people a lot of short cuts including getting to the crux of a story. And Writers and Producers know this. This is why they give what people (most people that is) expect and are willing to eat: CRAP.
I am proud to belong to a generation with a zeitgeist that is characterized by intelligence, class, and romance. Not the content that’s crass or toilet-humored or violent or sexualized that’s predominant these days. And thanks to the Internet, it’s relatively easy to leave crapdom and go back in time.
And if you have taste, you’ll search for and find works of geniuses that are rarefied today. Sadly, thats a big if among 95% of people today.
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On March 27 ;-) I sauntered down memory lane and watched Her Pilgrim Soul, one of the episodes of Twilight Zone. So beautiful I think even William Butler Yeats wouldn’t have raised a stink his poem was used for this 1985 masterpiece. To this day, reviews on the episode’s message are being written. These reviews are great. It somehow guides common minds to the scientific basis of the story. Also, it’s a reminder that once upon a life, there were materials that fused romance, spirituality, and quantum physics all in a beautiful 40-minute story.
It begins with Dr. Kevin Drayton and Dr. Dan who developed a holographic machine, the first of its kind that shows not only awesome holographic images but demonstrates real-life behavior of what it is programmed to do like planets, stars, and whatnot. The machine was working as expected until one hopeless night, an image of a nine-month fetus inexplicably formed.
The two were baffled. It shouldn’t have been there for any reason. But it was. Thinking it was a system glitch, they did a hard reset.
Of the two, Kevin worked obsessively. People who do not know any better would describe him as one who “does not have a life outside of work”. Carol, his wife, has been doing everything to keep their marriage which was falling apart. Meanwhile, Kevin who is becoming more and more uncommunicative, spends more time in the laboratory than he ever has where he seems to experience solace and finds answers to the emptiness that is manifesting in his life.
The one question that remains unanswered, which was deepening the wedge between the couple was his anxiety over having a baby. While he loves children, he couldn’t seem to get his head wrap around having his own .
The next day at the lab, Kevin was astonished. It was no system glitch.The fetus that formed, despite the hard reset, “grew” and is now 6-7 years old.
Alone, the child was crying so Kevin programmed the machine and created balls and other toys to appease her. The “holographic girl” responded and played the way any child would. She’s aging about * 5 months an hour or 10 years a day. When asked what she was doing there (in the holographic machine), the girl simply responded “this is where I am supposed to be”.
She told them her name and where she was from. Nola Granville from Westchester, New York.
***
What Kevin was experiencing at the lab was an unprecedented phenomena. He knew it won’t last forever and he wasn’t to miss a second of it. He decided to stay there for “a few days” at the risk of losing his already unstable marriage.
Nola’s getting older not enjoying toys anymore.
Before long, she was in her twenties and she and Kevin hit it off. Their fondness of one another grew by the day from exchanging stories and playing chess. Nola shared just about everything...her childhood, defiance of her father, her passion and her romance with Robert Goldstone who was “nothing like the polo-playing dunderheads I grew up with”.
Kevin listened with an intense fixation and unusual fondness with Nola who was charming, funny, smart, CLASSY, elegant and so inquisitive, even asking the proverbial “why am I here?”
Nola was having a wonderful time recalling the highs of her life until she remembered a low of point (to say the least). She was screaming in obvious, unbearable pain. It was the memory of her miscarriage. So painful, she had to disappear for some time.
***
Meanwhile, Dan learned from a blind man, an acquaintance of the couple, that Nola died giving birth. Robert was never the same. Distraught throughout his life.
***
They say someday we’ll all figure life out.
For Nola, that time was now. On the 6th or 7th day, all 70, she used a voice synthesizer to make her voice sound like Kevin’s and called Carol to come to the lab and pick “me” up.
The visibly exhausted Kevin was roused in his sleep by Nola who was now saying goodbye. She explained that, having figured out what she came to Kevin’s life for, it was time to leave. Kevin didn’t get any of this and asked her to stay.
When she said “I have no choice”, he started yelling “No! I have lost you before and I wouldn’t lose you again.”
(Note: As I reach this part, I am having goosebumps and trying very hard to fight off tears)
Realizing now that he is Robert-incarnated, Nola explained that just because “I left you too soon my darling”, he should have lived his life. She came back for him to help him realize that he carried his grief in his life and into the next (in Kevin’s) and that now, he has a life to live out which he must not let pass him by.
Before Nola disappeared for good, Robert (in Kevin’s body) grabbed a book a read out the second stanza of Yeats’ “When You Are Old” :
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
With that, Nola said “Goodbye, Robert. I love you.”
A few seconds after, Carol came in to “pick her husband up”. They hugged each other and knew beyond doubt that what they’ve lost, was found again.
Then, Carol noticed a ball from the machine where Nola “lived” for about a week. Carol asked what it was. Before Robert could answer, the ball bounced into their direction.
They caught it. Held it.
***
Judging from our periodic exchanges, a lot---if not most---of the people who read mycorrectview are intelligent individuals (I’ve always done things, including writing, to please myself. But knowing that you read the stuff I write adds sunshine to my day.☺). But because sharing anything on the Internet is effortless, this could end up in the wrong hands...meaning people whose appreciation of the arts is within the scope of garbage shared in social media sites.
And because I do not want to be bothered by conscience for having shared a material put together by people of preternatural talent and insatiable passion, I deem it my duty to direct the minds of those obsessed with taking pictures of their food to a few of the salient parts of the episode:
-Karma. The ineffable belief of Hindus and Buddhists which is now reduced to “what goes around comes around” by imbeciles is presented scientifically.
-A person’s awakening to spirituality demonstrated when the child Nola said with all her naiveté “This is where I’m supposed to be” when asked what she was doing there and the wakeful Nola in her inquisitive 20s asked “Why am I here?”
-“If all darkness is all that’s ahead of me, I think I can make the best of it” said the blind old man who was a friend of the couple.
-“That’s what we fall in love with when we fall in love. The spirit.” said Dan after he alleged and Kevin ridiculed that he’s falling for Nola.
-And of course, the music.
***
There are so many diagrams and symbols used to show space-time continuum but the one I like best is Einstein’s cone, the illusion that makes the observer and the observed think they are two separate entities. That there is a past and a future when all there is here and now. People truly in love intuitively know that true love is not bound by time and space. Nola and Robert are two of them. Without a doubt, what they had/have is so meaningful and important. Unlike any other. Their love is so strong they opened the cone.
If you leave something for yourself, it’s not true love. The paradox is this: In love, only in losing yourself completely in and for the other will you see your true self.
This one’s for those who have found, lost and are looking for a cone opener.
***