What's Rose Doing on a Monk's Desk?

Whether you know me in "real life," or whether you know me only from reading this blog, you know one thing about me for sure: I am a huge fan of Lost.

So, imagine my excitement last weekend when I found myself at the same party with actress Fionnula Flanagan. While she's best known these days for her role as matriarch Rose Caffee on the Showtime series Brotherhood, my fascination with Ms. Flanagan stems from her guest appearance last season on the aforementioned Lost.

Flanagan turned up in a Desmond-centric episode of Lost, in which she played Ms. Hawking, a salesperson in a jewelry store... a somewhat mysterious salesperson, actually, as she ultimately ended up delivering a strange message to Desmond. Very weird, and naturally very much in the style of Lost.

Now, what makes Ms. Flanagan's connection to Lost even more important is that, several weeks after her appearance on the show, her photograph turned up in yet another episode. For reasons that have yet to be explained to us, the humble viewers, a photo of Ms. Flanagan was in a monastery (of all places), perched on the desk of the monastery's head monk! Huh? Ms. Hawking... and the head monk? It was one of those "blink and you miss it" moments for which Lost is famous... thank god for the freeze-frame button on my TiVo! Of course, I was completely perplexed, and I became obsessed with learning the connection.

Fast-forward to last Saturday night: I was at the closing-night party of the Newport International Film Festival. As I was engaging in casual conversation with some friends, I turned my head and... there she was: Fionnula Flanagan! Immediately, and almost instinctually, I bolted from my conversation in order to head across the room in order to introduce myself to Ms. Flanagan. After she and I exchanged some pleasantries, I came right to the point: I was there to ask her a question. THE question. I said to her... "I have to know - what was your photo doing on the monk's desk on Lost?"

Here it was. The moment I'd been waiting for. I was about to get an answer to one of Lost's more vexing "blink and you miss it" mysteries. As my anticipation built, she responded with a direct and to-the-point "I don't know." It turns out that the whole thing was a mystery to her as well! In fact, she's been kind of lost on Lost, and had asked her agent to send her the Lost DVDs so that she can at least get caught up on the show. Why would she want to get caught up on the show, you may ask? Well, because she'll likely be making another appearance on the show next season! Get ready for the return of Ms. Hawking! But what about the monk?

Anyway... she's expecting to be invited to a Lost party in the not-too-distant future, and she hopes to get some answers to the mystery of who her character really is... and why that monk has her photo on his desk. She said that she'd let me know if she finds anything out... but something tells me that I'm going to vanish from her memory faster than Nikki and Paolo vanished from the Lost island.