(Entered in paper journal at 5:35 AM on Q-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)
Dream #1
I walked into a movie theater. The lights were still on. A man stood up front, giving a brief discussion of the film that was about to play. I had come in from the left side of the theater. I walked across in front of the front row and over to the right side. I headed out the door. I was looking for the ticket-taker. I wanted to get my ticket torn, but the movie was about to start.
As I walked out the door, I saw a black man. I was about to hand him my ticket: I assumed he was the ticket-taker. But I saw that he was heading in to watch the movie as well. The man had his son, a ten-year-old boy, with him. The father was discussing the importance of Ingmar Bergman to the history of cinema. Apparently the movie Cries and Whispers was showing, though I may have called the film Smiles of a Summer Night.
I walked up a short stairway outside the door and looked left and right for a ticket-taker. The father called to me, "I don't think we give our tickets. I think we just head on in."
I said, "Oh. Okay." I turned back toward the door. The man and son were gone. A ticket-taker, tall, white, with a broad, bald forehead and wearing a suit like a security guard might wear, stood before the door. He took my ticket. I went into the theater.
The theater was now dark. I ran as quickly as I could to the front row -- my favorite area for sitting in a movie theater -- while the theater was still dark, hoping not to impede anybody's view by searching for a seat after the movie came on. I also hoped that once I found a seat, nobody would come along later and accuse me of stealing a seat that they had somehow saved for themselves. But then I remembered (?) that I had sat my stuff in a seat in the front row before I had headed out the right door. I sat beside and older man and woman.
The movie began. Liv Ullmann was walking beside a huge, black-hulled ship with a man and possibly another woman. The time period of the movies was probably the 1970s. The man was olive-skinned, tall, with dark black hair. He looked strong and suave. He wore a long, tan peacoat. Liv Ullmann was fattish and wore a blue, velvet-like (terry cloth?) jumpsuit. Her hair was frizzy and bright and enormous.
The man was telling Ullmann why she wasn't good enough for him. He said she was afraid of everything and that she could never go anywhere with him. Ullmann couldn't take the criticism. She ran of the end of the dock. The man would get on his ship and leave her, I knew. Then Ullmann would go with her sisters somewhere.
I thought, I don't remember this film (Cries and Whispers) being set in modern times. But, I thought, perhaps the village where Ullmann visits her sisters still observes traditions from the older days. Perhaps that's why I remember the style of the movie being that of an older time.
At another part of the docs a person in a huge, thick, old-style diving suit climbed up a ladder and out of the water. Having undone the spherical, metallic diving-helmet, the diver now revealed herself as Bibi Andersson. Andersson was "the tough sister" of the film, with the job of being an underwater explorer. She had come here to meet Ullmann so the two of them could go to the village together.
But now both sisters were in the water together. Ulmann looked a little healthier, less pale. She had short hair (like Andersson's typical short hairstyle), and her hair had a more subdued tone. Neither Ulmann nor Andersson had put their diving helmets on yet.
Near the sisters was a glass sphere. This was the exploration vehicle they would use. Apparently Bibi always took Liv on "one last exploration" before the sisters went to the village together.
The water was murky and brownish. There were a couple large vessels surrounding the sisters and the exploration vehicle. Liv had looked down into the water and was afraid. She had seen a large creature. She asked Bibi (both sisters still treading water) what the creature was. Bibi said, "I'm not sure. It didn't look like a shark or a whale. I guess we'll find out." In my mind's eye, I saw the silhouette of a shark passing over the silhouette of a whale in murky, brown water.
Liv got even more afraid now and started hyperventilating a little. I wondered if she would even get into the exploration vehicle.
No comments:
Post a Comment