When he wakes up in the morning, Sayid from Lost takes a shower, makes himself some breakfast, cereal probably, and then goes out and creates red hot paradoxes!

Last night’s episode of Lost, entitled “He’s Our You,” wasn’t a great episode, but it was certain a damn interesting one. And, at least for me, a welcome return to the single character flashback system, focusing wonderfully on Sayid, always the coolest character in any room, but also one of the most interesting, and played with graceful nuance by Naveen Andrews.

And it looks like Ben was right all along about Sayid’s killer nature, years before he ever knew it. Or knew he knew it. Of course, it’s easy being right when you’re laying face down in the mud on the Island.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like Sayid’s bullet hit evil little Harry Potter young Ben right in the chest, practically right in the heart, right? A killing shot, to be sure, and yet I somehow suspect we’re in for some twisty simple non-super crazy fun paradox way out of it. Was little Ben wearing a bullet proof vest? I almost wouldn’t put it past him.

Though I’ve got my fingers crossed for some hot, raw paradox action. Maybe Desmond’s not the only person that the rules don’t apply to.

Even more fascinatingly to me at the moment was the book that Ben gave Sayid to read during his captivity: A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda, the fiction-as-anthropology dealing in Mesoamerican neo-shamanism. The book, one in a series by Castaneda, detail the author’s many years in an apprenticeship with a Yaqui shaman named don juan Matus. Matus, who was perhaps the original Tyler Durden or Jacob, identifies Castaneda as having the energetic configuration of a nagual, essentially saying that he has the soul of a leader-sorcercor, one who can percieve the higher planes of reality via the use of psychotropic plants and may quite possibly have the gift of transmogrification.

Even better: Ben tells Sayid that he’s read it twice. There’s so many shades of things we’ve seen in the technoshamanism that Lost dabbles going on there, that it makes sense. I’d read it twice too, you little shit.

Many critics have doubted the authenticity of Castaneda’s works, including Joyce Carol Oates, and Donald Barthelme even went so far as to parody his books, though substituting any uses of the word brujo with “brillo.” Castaneda is a classic plastic shaman, but he’s an entertaining one. Just don’t forget to wear your God helmet!

Being a mega-dorky fan of this and an even bigger fan of implied connections a la synchronicity, all of this double interests me because of my recent viewing of Altered States (thanks for that, by the way, Benjamin Light), the 1980 film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Ken “Apocalyptic Sexuality” Russell.

The film stars William Hurt as a scientist trying to study other states of consciousness while getting over his loss of (Christian) faith in the world, and ends up experimenting with a fictionalized form of the psychoactive amanita muscaria mushrooms in a sensory deprivation tank because they can supposedly bring about the same hallucination in every user: unlocking the keys to genetic memory. They do in his case, causing him to de-evolve into a type of primitive man beast, and then later into a form of man-shaped cosmic energy. The special effects for the hallucinations and the genetic changes are both amazing for their time period and predictably horrible.

Blair Brown plays Hurt’s wife in the film, and of course his savior, because predictably it’s discovered there really is no God, no Jesus, no higher plan (which makes sense), there’s only now and love, and, sigh, love conquers all. Young Blair Brown, incidentally, is gorgeous and is bascially eye candy in the film, her acting talents totally wasted accent in a typical wifely “Be careful” whisper as Hurt’s scientist character goes off in search of different levels of understanding. She is currently playing a cyborg on Fringe, which had a scene with a sensory deprivation tank in it’s pilot which worked as a nice little in joke to the film.

Meanwhile, back on the Island…

I like how so many of our main characters on Lost are still so grounded, despite all the weird shit going on around them. At this point, they’re so used to it, so when Sawyer says, “Oh, by the way, we’re in the 70s,” Jack just kinda bobs his head in an understanding way. In fact, he looks like he’s still on the hillbilly heroin in some of these scenes.

But as much as I like Jack, and wold like to see his character return to the fore in a decent way, I’m kinda digging Sawyer as the main man in the 70s. I can’t say that I’m really excited about a love triangle there, but was happy to see that the Juliet/Kate “confrontation” played out much more civil in the episode than the advertisments would’ve lead us to believe. Essnetially, Juliet: “I’m giving Sawyer what he needs, Man Hips.” Kate (feeling dejected): “Well, shit. Maybe Jack needs a pity fuck…” Juliet: “Or some pills… Oh, hey, there’s Sayid. I bet he’s about to go do something awesome.” Kate: “When is Sayid ever not doing something awesome?”

You got that right, Kate.