And so we have come full circle, tied off all the loose ends. We have watched the dissolution of a Republic and the beginnings of an Empire. We have seen Jedi fall ... even the children.

Thursday when I came out of the theater what seemed stuck in my mind was a quote that I don't even remember where I got it: "Evil done in the name of good is still evil." I spent Thursday night at work adrift, my mind racing around in desperate circles, trying to comprehend all the emotions and thoughts Revenge of the Sith had brought into my mind. I did not want to talk about it. I didn't want to talk about anything at all. It felt like something had solidified into cold stone inside me. The CGaW asked me about it; there I am, stumbling over my words, trying to articulate this lump of numb horror and wordless despair, so numb and stunned still that even him doing weird things with his Mountain Dew bottle hardly registered. I had seen how the world had fallen apart, I had seen the fall of a good person into utter evil, I had seen Obi-Wan turn against his own Padawan, and it had all happened because of love. It had all happened because Anakin wanted to save his wife from death.

I couldn't talk about it. I couldn't. I didn't want to. Whatever I've said over these last few days about it has fallen in front of me like the words were made of lead. It all sounds so lame, hearing myself saying anything about it. It's too much. It can't be said. All these years we've waited for this story, and now I can barely articulate what I'm feeling even here when I'm writing.

Over the weekend it got a little better, mostly because I had some time to process and to be alone.

I went to see it again yesterday after school, and though I still feel this despair and sadness I had a bit more ... I dunno, perspective? Distance? Whatever. I was able to watch it without the shock. I was able to accept it, sort of. This is the mythos around which I have ordered my faith and belief. The story is done. It's complete. It's whole in itself now. Darkness and Light.

And for all of that, it had its moments. Chewie reaching down and pulling Yoda up onto his shoulders. R2 sticking his commlink inside himself, squirting oil on those battledroids and igniting it with his jets. Anakin warning Obi-Wan about "loose wire" jokes. Yoda bitch-slapping the Emperor's guards with the Force. Yoda telling Obi-Wan he'd have some training to do in his solitude on Tattooine -- to learn to commune with the spirit of Qui-Gon. He wasn't alone, those 22 years on Tattooine. I could almost hear the collective gasp and cheers of my old Master/Apprentice friends, and the frantic multiplication of plot bunnies.

I have learned of a website that is collecting fan signatures on a letter to thank George Lucas for Star Wars. You can also post your own message along with. I've already signed the letter, but they're having some problems with the posting system. I'll keep trying. Should you be so inclined, you may do the same. Go to www.thankyouGeorge.com to do so.

Here is what I will post when they've got the posting system working again.


To Do What I Thought I Could Not Do

I remember we were slightly late. My mother, my father and me, creeping into a theater already dark, quite an adventure in itself for a seven-year-old, like going into a cave. I think I remember that the Star Destroyer was already chasing Leia's ship over Tattooine. To this day, walking into that darkness with both my parents is a singular memory -- one for that it is the only memory I have of all of us as a family, and the other for that it is the only memory I have of my father walking. He was already sick with Multiple Sclerosis, the disease that would ultimately take his life little more than seven years later. I remember my dad got as far as the Jawas shooting R2 before he fell asleep -- not a testimony to your most excellent work, but to the MS. I don't think I noticed. I was already lost in that desert, looking for an obsessive-compulsive droid searching for a crazy old wizard.

As the years went on and my family's life fell apart, I lost myself more and more in this world you had created. I don't think I knew then quite how much I needed it. I had an audio tape version of "A New Hope" that I literally memorized verbatim. I'd put it on my mother's stereo and act out the entire thing in our living room in those hours between coming home from school and my mother getting home from work. Sometime between "Empire" and "Jedi" I even began writing stories, putting myself in this world of yours -- I wasn't to know for almost twenty years that I wasn't the only one to write "fanfic". I hid those stories in my closet. Probably I should have taken it as a sign. It took those twenty years to realize that those doodles written in long hand on legal-pad paper were the beginning of my true path in life. Because of you, I found both my imagination and my calling. Now, at age 35, I am never happier than when I'm sitting at my computer writing science-fiction.

Betwixt "Jedi" and "Phantom Menace" I had a pretty much mediocre life. Unexceptional. Numb. Directionless. Maybe I was just dormant. In those years between I drifted. I lost touch with my talent. I tried to live the life that everyone else thought I should live. Star Wars, I thought, was over with.

Five days before "Phantom Menace" came out, I was dinking around on the 'Net reading some Gnostic text translated by Jung and suddenly I started wondering what would happen if there had been a sect of Jedi who didn't believe in dividing the Force between Light and Dark ...

Six months of obsessive writing later, I typed "The End" on a 300,000 word fanfic novel. In the course of those six months I found my talent again and I began to discover who I am. I got involved in writing fanfic, then soon began to wonder if I could do this "for real". I realized that what had guided my hands and my mind for those six months was the Force itself. Nothing in my life has ever moved me, motivated me, more than Star Wars. I have felt the Force. I've seen it in your movies, and through them I've found it within myself.

Thank you, Mr. Lucas, for all of this. Thank you for this incredible world and these characters who have guided me. When I was small and afraid in a frightening world you gave me a place to hide. When I was living in a place where all was bleak and gray, you led me to a place of possibility and hope. I consider you my teacher.

May the Force be with you.