失，失，失

Walden may have been Mekas' first diary film, but the film that incorporated Mekas' earliest footage was the one that told the story of his postwar arrival in America, Lost Lost Lost. The film is divided into two parts: the first concerns life in the Lithuanian community of Williamsburg, and the second chronicles Mekas' move to Manhattan and his integration into the independent film and art scenes of New York.
　　Here Mekas is at his most deeply personal. He describes the loneliness and struggle of those early years with mournful music and spoken laments: “Long, lonely days; long, lonely nights. There was a lot of walking through the nights of Manhattan. I don't think I have ever been as lonely.” Mekas also closely follows the lives of his fellow Lithuanian immigrants. During a gathering in Connecticut, he explains, “occasionally we used to escape to Stonybrook, places where immigrants exchanged their memories. We all gathered there, we all lived on memories there.” As the first section progresses, however, a tension develops between Mekas and the other immigrants. Though Mekas sympathises with them, he grows increasingly disenchanted with their hopes to reform and return to Lithuania. By the end of the reel, he leaves the community in Williamsburg and moves to Manhattan.
　　These were our last times together. I began to feel that I had been turning on one spot around my memories. I began to feel if anything can be done for Lithuania, it can only be done by the people that live there. That the only way that I can be useful to Lithuania is by building myself from scratch, from the beginning, and then giving myself back to it, back to Lithuania, however I am.
　　Part two, the section entitled “Diaries, Notes, Sketches”, describes the beginnings of Mekas' involvement in the underground film community, and his gradual establishment of roots in Manhattan. It includes unfinished scenes from the first film that he and Adolfas worked on, a story about a woman who presages the death of her husband. This is also documentary footage of Mekas on the set of Guns of the Trees, standing with his arms crossed and jaw tensing, obviously uncomfortable. Living in New York and making friends, Mekas gains in enthusiasm: “It was exciting; everything was new.” Still, Mekas is a long way from the jubilant life portrayed in Walden. He admits, “there is very little known about this period of our protagonist's life. It's known that he was very shy and very lonely during this period. He used to take long, long walks. He felt very close to the parks, to the street, to the city.”
　　What dominates the second part of Lost Lost Lost is Mekas' imperative to film. He is drawn to the bravery of people who insist on being heard: the protesters gathered at City Hall, pamphleteers hailing a “New America”, and the leaflet women who stood outside on the coldest day of the year. With his camera-eye, he gives them the recognition they seek. “I have seen you, the leaflet women,” he calls. “They are known in rain, in snow, in cold, in hot summer days. I've seen you, the leaflet women.” As Mekas voices his salute in the moment of editing, however, it is decades later, long after the struggles themselves have been forgotten.
　　Moments later, he reveals a deeper motive for filming. “It's my nature now, to record. To try to keep everything I'm passing through, to keep at least bits of it. I have lost too much so now I have these bits that I have passed through.” The “too much” that Mekas refers to, his pre-war life and irretrievable childhood, resonate as loss in the images he does manage to collect. Mekas' insistence t