Sometimes I just have to linger at one of the passages in this story, to roll it around in my mind to savor its exquisite body and flavour:
He knew he was dying, and he wished for the distraction of his life flashing before his eyes. Clark had always found that idea comforting, somehow, but it wasn’t happening properly for him at all. He’d imagined it like a movie shown in fast forward, but this was more like bits and pieces of mental flotsam that were bobbing randomly through his mind. He’d try to catch hold of one, and it would slip from his grasp and be replaced by something unrelated.
This image of what it would be like to summarize your life in your dying moments is like being offered a poignant, precious insight. You'll forgive me for being insufficiently moved by Clark's plight in itself, Caroline, but I have come across Clark's almost-dying so many times that I'm not always moved by the situation as such. But it's so rare to be offered a glimpse of what an almost-dying mind would honestly, and so movingly, experience. The only LnC comparison I can think of is the Gorn's A Consummate Revelation and its fantastic description of the thoughts and images flashing through Lois's mind, when she comes close to drowning.
The things Clark does remember are so interesting. Consider the girl he kissed in Florence, and consider his memory of Lana:
A girl he’d kissed once in Florence…her name had been lost to time, but he could still taste the wine on her lips and feel her hair slipping between his fingers. There was music playing somewhere in the distance, drifting towards them on the soft night air, and he felt again the frisson of excitement as she pressed her body close to his in obvious invitation…
…and that gave way to a high school math test, a problem he had no idea how to solve, the drone of a fly flinging itself against the window, and the added distraction of Lana Lang in a short skirt, her gloriously smooth legs crossed just within his line of vision in the next row.
What does Clark remember of these girls? He remembers the first girl's wine-tasting lips and the feel of her hair between his fingers, as well as his own excitement as she leaned her body against his. With Lana, he remembers her short skirt and her smooth legs, and again his own excitement.
Nevertheless, Clark doesn't remember these girls as fully rounded human beings. I'm sure he didn't really know the girl in Florence, so he couldn't remember her as the person she really was. I do believe he knew Lana pretty well, but when all is said and done, he remembers her as a short skirt and a pair of legs.
Have you seen "Pretty Woman" with Julia Roberts? In the opening scene of that movie, the camera zooms in on various body parts of Julia Roberts' character. I don't remember which body parts, but it might have been an eye, a hand, a shoulder, a cheek. The main thing is that Julia Roberts' character comes through as disjointed, as a collection of body parts. She is not a whole person. She is, of course, a prostitute.
The fact that Clark remembers Lana and the girl in Florence mainly as body parts does not mean, of course, that he regards them as prostitutes. I think it does mean, however, that he is ultimately not interested in them as fully rounded human beings - he is not interested in them as
themselves. But when it comes to Lois, he can't picture a single moment and certainly not a single body part that defines her. Because Clark's love for her is all-encompassing. To Clark, Lois can't be reduced to something piecemeal or fleeting: she is overwhelmingly herself in her overwhelming integrity. And that's how Clark loves her: as completely, totally herself.
Later, when Luthor brags to Clark that Lois is coming to Metropolis and that he, Luthor, is going to make her his, then Clark realizes what has honestly been staring him in the face for most of the time after he revealed his secret identity to Lois: that she loves him. That she values his life higher than her own, and what greater love is there?
While LnC's Lois has obviously been in denial about her own feelings for Clark, I personally think that Clark himself has been in denial just as much. How can he honestly ask Lois to love him for himself, then deny her the right to know him as himself by keeping his double identity a secret from her?
Personally I've always thought that Clark's secrecy about his double identity has been the root cause of his problems with Lois. And that's why I appreciated it so much that Lois was shaken out of her own denial when Clark revealed his true self and double identity to her in this story. When Clark showed Lois who he really was, then she was truly able to love him for himself, for the man who is both farmboy and superhero. And in this part, Clark acknowledged both his own overwhelming love for Lois as well as Lois's unconditional love for him.
Another thing that I loved about this part was that when Clark saw his own life flashing before his eyes as disjointed snippets, then he seemed to grow younger and younger in his recollections. He saw himself as steadily younger, seemingly going backwards in time. In the final image, he saw himself as an infant being held by his Kryptonian mother, Lara. I was so moved by Clark's gratitude to Luthor for giving him this memory of his biological mother. But I was equally moved by the mode of dying that Clark's recollections suggested: death by youth. Personally I've always thought that this would be an extremely poignant way of dying: by continually growing younger, gradually un-learning everything you know. Finally you would be back in your mother's womb, still growing ever smaller and simpler, until in the end the fertilized egg that you grew out of would separate itself into an unfertilized egg and a sperm, and that would be the final oblivion.
Oh, and... yes, good A-plot, Caroline. But I'll leave it to others to comment on that, except to say that it would be very interesting if you would let Martha and Jonathan be the ones who ultimately defeat Luthor and save Lois and Clark.
Ann
....I think that pretty much explains it all...I can't wait for the next part!
