March 25, 2007
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Owls, Wolves, and Fur
While Glasgow is swathed in its usual gray today, yesterday we had an absolutely gorgeous day. All week we’ve had the pleasure of a brilliant sun and calm skies, but yesterday the temperature matched the scenery. It was warm enough to go out in my birthday “Loch Ness Imposter” t-shirt with only a light jumper over it. Yay!
After taking my happy morning run, I packed a bag with my favorite things–camera, journal, and book–and headed off to the park. I took lots of springtime pictures along the way, on view now at The Loch Ness Blog.
Once his shift at work was over and my legs were sore from walking all afternoon long, Shaun and I went to see the movie, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. Since Arbus is one of my favorite artists (her obsessions arrest me, as they are also mine) and I am a fan of the fake bio-pic (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), I knew I would like this movie. But I didn’t like this movie. I loved it.
I felt such an affinity with Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Arbus, a woman whose exterior is the epitome of normality but whose inner self is fascinated with the idiosyncrasies of this world, many of which society has turned their backs on, shielded their eyes from. Arbus knew that beauty is quirk and adaptation and bravery. In the movie, Arbus feels like a freak, sensing that her peers do not share her obsessions, especially in the 1950s. She is passionate, alive, and I love her. It is a really great movie. Robert Downey Jr is haunting and exquisite, playing opposite of Kidman, matching her move for move. Oh I can’t wait to see it again! Apparently this movie came out in the states before it did in the UK; the DVD is for sale May 8. I will own it. I will show it to everyone I love in this world.
In other news, last week I had a really striking dream. I don’t remember the particulars, but I remember waking with the knowledge that wolves and owls are the same thing; that they have the same spiritual thing inside them that makes them different from oh, say, a bear. I am reading a great book that takes place in the bush of 1867 Canada, but so far wolves have only made a breif apperence. So where this dream came from, I can’t say. But it sort of makes sense, in a way….
________________________________________________________________________________________Have you ever woken from a dream with what felt like a new knowledge?
::Random Tangent::
Psst! Remember to go to The Loch Ness Blog to read my good post for the week.
Comments (3)
I enjoyed a good laugh from the Scrabble/Well This Just Really Sucks shirt from that site.It’s very foggy here today, so maybe it’s a bit like Scotland. Is that a stereotype?Once had a dream where I was learning to play a song on the bass. For whatever reason, I remembered the fretwork and, when I played it in real life, it was the interpolation of a piece of classical music … not that I’d ever thought about it before. Strange, eh?
I’ve never had it where I’ve woken up with the feeling of new knowledge. I have had it, though, when I’ve woken up and can’t quite distinguish whether the dream I had was a dream or if it was something that really happened. BF recently had a dream that I cheated on him with a television character, and was mad at me for the whole next day despite the fact it was a dream. Humans are odd, no?
Wolves and owls have a bit of shared etymological heritage as to ferrets and bears. I think it’s called Indo-European? It is not a language of words but of sounds. Many animals have connections in those sounds. I like to picture days of pre-complicated language and how they communicated ideas precisely. You just know that a wolf and an owl had the same sound, but with different hand gestures and context to identify them precisely to another.Now I HAVE to see that movie too. I am actually on a renting kick of late. Which has kind of eaten into blog reading time and probably why I missed this entry for so darned long! So i will check it out as soon as I find it.Oh that t-shirt site is cool. I will have to surf it a it more. Cute Tee!Hope you are well. Must off to Loch Ness Blog!