coelacanth dream

Jolted awake by a neighbor's alarm clock- the neighbor not being home; a brief conversation with their fusebox stopped the noise, but by then, I was wide awake. At least it woke me from a disturbing dream:

I was in Potsdam, at the house of a neighbor where I used to swim, back in high school; it was the middle of the night. No one was home, but in the dream, that was all right; I walked out to the pool. I could sense that there was something odd about it; I switched on the pool light... and saw a coelacanth. It was an enormous specimen, almost eight feet long; it floated placidly in the pool, completely at ease (although outside of dreams, coelacanths are saltwater fish). At first, I was nervous about approaching it- coelacanths have formidable jaws- but it paid me no attention when I tentatively splashed a hand, then an arm, in the water. Finally, I pulled on a scuba mask, and slipped under the surface.

Its eyes glowed like a cat's in the pool lights (ordinarily, even this much light would disturb a real coelacanth); its scales- much larger than those of most fish- were a beautiful shade of midnight blue, intermixed with flecks of gold. It regarded me placidly as I stared at it, this creature from four hundred million years ago; at one point, I even lightly traced a fingertip along the scales of its belly. It was a moment out of time, this floating state of grace with a being that was old before dinosaurs walked the earth. I don't know how long I was underwater- certainly much longer than I can hold my breath in real life- but I finally came up for air...

...and saw that the sun was about to rise. I began to panic; coelacanths are very sensitive to changes in temperature; if the water is too warm, they lose the ability to extract sufficient oxygen, and suffocate. In a frenzy, I ran around, looking for a pool cover as the coelacanth began to swim about agitatedly; I was having an frantic conversation with an operator on my cell phone, as I tried to get her to tell me who the hell could come and help save this ancient, miraculous fish...

...when I woke up.

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roadnotes updates:

Soren had the EEG yesterday; we should get the results today. I'm heading over to the hospital in a little while.

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Huh; I see that The Boat That Rocked, which I saw at the Embassy in Wellington back in April, has finally been released here... as Pirate Radio. (Are they hoping it'll be mistaken for a Johnny Depp film?) I don't understand the title change, otherwise; The Boat That Rocked is a rather thin play on words... but who the hell knows what pirate radio is, anymore (other than my brilliant LJ friends, of course)?

Under either title, it's the new film by Richard Curtis, who did Love, Actually; it's a movie whose heart is in the right place, although I did think it was trying too hard in places. There are several times where the main characters tell embarrassing stories about each other, and then laugh nostalgically, so that we know they're friends; the editing is surprisingly fast-paced, in what feels like an attempt to capture the old Richard Lester energy (the film is set in the '60s, as about the same time Lester was making his Beatles films, and there are scenes of characters gooning for the camera in the patented Lester fashion), although without Lester's cinematic energy, it just seems pointlessly frenetic; there's a central plot revelation about one of the character's parenthood... which turns out to be not all that central, really. Oh, and Kenneth Branagh's character has an assistant named- wait for it- "Twatt." Also,

( Brief spoiler here. )

Still, I have to admit, I've never seen Philip Seymour Hoffman take the center of a film so effortlessly; he's relaxed and charismatic as the leading man, and it's wonderful to see.

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A lovley astronomy-themed artwork, courtesy of wcg.