Strange Dream in Ohio, September 24

One week ago now, the Friday night before my mom, Wesley, and I went to Cedar Point, I had a very strange dream that I will finally report in English, due to its detail that I would not be able to capture in the little bit of French that I do know.

The setting of the dream was a mixture of my school and Hogwarts on Christmas Eve night. To explain that statement, the exterior of the school was like Reynolds, and the picnic area and auditorium were exactly as they are in real life, but the main building had multiple stories and was decorated lavishly with marble and other things characteristic of the Hogwarts described in the Harry Potter series. There was also a hospital wing on the top floor of one of the towers, and this part of the building was of special concern in the dream, given the fact that Albus Dumbledore was in the process of giving birth in the hospital wing through the entire dream. The oddity of this did not occur to my slumbering self, or I might have woken up a lot sooner than I did. In any case, everyone was very excited about this and multitudes of visiters came to the school from all around to pay Dumbledore a visit and wish him well in his labor. Mostly, they seemed to appreciate the religious irony of a baby being born on Christmas Eve, as I heard variations of, "How fitting! A baby born on Christmas Eve!" multiple times throughout the dream as I passed by excited people dashing up to the hospital wing. In any case, while I was excited for Dumbledore, I was more excited about the Christmas Eve concert scheduled to take place in the auditorium that night. Various groups, including students, would be performing Christmas music. So, after I had dressed myself to the nines in a black dress and matching coat, I walked down the marble steps (past groups of people headed for the hospital wing), exited the main building, walked around to the audience entrance of the auditorium, climbed a lot of steps, and found a nice seat by the railing of the balcony, from which I had a clear view of everything on the stage. I gripped the smooth railing and peered over, watching each of the performers step on and off the stage between acts.
I vaguely remember enjoying each of the acts, though I remember nothing in particular until the very last act, when two pianos were pushed to opposite corners of the stage, one a beautiful, glossy Steinway and the other a beaten-up school upright. Then, to tumultuous applause, Katlyn, a girl from the color guard and the drama club, stepped onto the stage and bowed. She was wearing a strange costume which consisted of black leggings and accessories and an extravagant, blood-red dress. Her face was decorated with an obnoxious amount of blush and varying hues of red, and she wore gigantic, reflective red disks in her ears for earrings. She had dyed her hair red for the performance as well - the crowd was going absolutely wild over her costume. Then, almost unnoticed, Glenn Gould stepped onto the stage. I nearly fell over the railing in shock - however, it didn't occur to me until I awoke that he is dead; this isn't what shocked me - I was merely shocked in the same way that one would be shocked to see, say, President Obama out walking his dog. I also realized that this was strange, given that the following day (that is, the 25th) is his birthday. He appeared to be in his late 20's, and was wearing his habitual winter wear, down to his gloves. He carried his chair under his arm, which he placed behind the Steinway piano. What followed was a strange song/dance, in which either Katlyn or Gould would be dancing while the other played something on one of the pianos, and then they would switch. Katlyn wore tap dancing shoes, and was tap-dancing to Bach at one point in the performance. At the end of this ordeal, everyone madly applauded and I was jealous about the whole thing. So, as everyone was filing out of the auditorium (it was the last act of the concert), I walked back down a lot of steps, pushed past the crowd into the aisle on the first floor, and approached the stage, where Katlyn sat with her legs dangling over the edge, entertaining a group of fans.
"So, Katlyn," I said, "How did you manage to set up an act for a school concert with Glenn Gould?"
"Oh, it was Mr. Hicks' idea." she said, "Apparently there's some concert they're doing in honor of his original works tomorrow. Renee Fleming is going to sing 'So You Want to Write a Fugue.' So he thought it'd be a good idea to invite him to perform with the school."
"Ah." I said. "Well, your act was very good."
She shrugged. "I screwed up a lot. I might not have been so terrible if he had showed up on time for the rehearsal yesterday."
I left her grumbling about this and returned to the main building, where many of the performers had congregated and were just hearing the news about Dumbledore from a group of people who had returned from the hospital wing. I decided to help all of those who didn't attend Reynolds up to the hospital wing. We took a shiny, mirrored elevator, and climbed innumerable floors until we reached a very white hallway like ones typically seen in a hospital setting. In one of the walls was set a glass window, though which you could see but could not be seen. I led the group of people, including Gould, up to this window, through which Dumbledore could be seen, lying on his back on an operating table with surgeons around him. He was about to deliver his baby through a Caesarian Section. Though many of the performers were eager to catch a glimpse of Dumbledore through the window, it seemed that no one really wanted to go in and wish him well, as I received a bunch of mumbled, "Don't want to interrupt the proceedings" when I offered to lead them inside the ward. My job finished, I wandered back toward the elevator, followed idly by Glenn Gould and a few stragglers. During the long trip down to the first floor, I complimented his act from earlier that night and he accepted it awkwardly. Then, I asked him if he was going to go to his tribute concert the next night, and he seemed bewildered. "There's a concert and they're playing something I wrote?" he asked incredulously, as we emerged from the elevator. "That is to say, what made them think of choosing something of mine? Which piece?"
"Well," I said, "Considering that they're going to have a world-class soprano singing with them, it makes sense that they'll do 'So You Want to Write a Fugue,' which is also a great piece, by the way."
He waved his hand awkwardly to express his gratitude and smiled. "Wow," he said, "How strange." He talked a little more after that, but mainly seemed to be flattered at the thought of someone doing a concert in his honor.
During this entire conversation, we were passing the picnic tables in front of the school. A piano was set up on the Gfeller stage and a young girl who looked like Anita (and who was supposed to be her younger sister in the dream) was playing Mozart on it. It was beautifully-done, and she was dancing to it as if it had been choreographed by the pianist Mitsuko Uchida herself. After she was finished, I approached the stage with the intent of playing Bach's Invention 14 (for kudos points) followed up by the "Adagio" of Beethoven's "Tempest." However, once I had reached the stage, I saw that the nice piano which had been there moments before was replaced with a crappy keyboard which sounded nasally when played and which didn't have nearly enough keys on it to play Bach, let alone Beethoven. While I struggled with this keyboard, I heard my mother call from nearby, and I was aware that she was preparing dinner in our house, which had suddenly spawned from the far end of the picnic tables. Telling her that I'd be over for dinner in a second, I continued to struggle with the plastic keys, watching all of the performers from the hospital wing gather around the dining room table. I eventually gave up and went over to join them, and was immediately enveloped by the warmth of celebrating people around a Christmas dinner.

Une autre reve bizarre (sans les accents correctes)

Hier soir, j'ai reve de deux choses. Dans la premiere reve, je parlais avec un homme sur l'Internet, et apres deux semaines, nos parents ont decide que nous devrions nous marier, en depit du fait que nous n'avons jamais rencontre. Quand nous avons rencontre, le soir avant le mariage, je ne l'aime pas du tout. Apres les noces, ses parents, mes parents, et moi nous asseyions sur des canapes au salon. C'etait maladroit. Puis, ma mere m'a passe un livre qui decrivait ce que est fait sur le soir d'un mariage. Dois-je dire plus? Ensuite, mon mari m'a invite a notre chambre, et je n'y voulais pas aller. C'etait la fin de cette reve.
Dans la deuxieme reve, je me promenais a mon vieil ecole, Brunson, avec des amis de la fanfare. Nous avons traverse la rue d'Hawthorne, et nous sommes montes la colline qui est au bord de la fleuve. Il n'y avait pas d'autre personne de-hors, mais nous avions l'air d'attendre quelquechose. Je pensais ca, quand, tout a coup, les eleves de l'ecole sont venus de-hors. Le voix de M. Lester-Niles a sonne au dessus des gens, et il a dit qu'il y aurait un match d'un sport (je ne souvenis pas quel sport). Tout le monde applaudissait et, soudain, j'ai entendu la musique exquise de la Sonate "Pathetique" de Beethoven. La musique etait de l'autre cote de la champ, et j'etais la seule personne qui pouvait l'entendre. J'ai tourne a mes amis pour les dire autour de la musique, mais quand j'ai tourne, j'ai recu une suprise: mes amis etaient plus jeunes, vers 9 ans, comme les autres eleves de Brunson. Ils avaient l'air d'avoir 7 or 8 ans. Ils courissaient sur la colline, mais un enfant, le garcon des cheveux roux, n'a pas marche. Les enfants, mais surtout cet garcon, etaient comme des petits anges. Le soleil se couchait et il y avait la musique qui etait la-bas toujours, avant qu'elle a ete ecrite - avant tous les choses.

Reynolds vs. East Forsyth et Une Reve en Francais

So, it has been a very long time since I've last written, but I decided to come on here and summarize a bit of the goings-on since August.
I've just returned from the most violent game of football that I've attended - it was a home game against East Forsyth, and there were two major injuries - that is, two which involved the use of stretchers and which made a trip to the hospital necessary. I told Mr. James about my mother's philosophy on football - that high schoolers should only play flag-football. He agreed.
A dapper young man from my English class was also at the game, but he did not greet me and chose to spend his time with the obnoxious group of Rowdies, who took up the entire section to our left tonight.
As far as marching the show goes, this was our second night of marching the first segment of the show at a game. Our first competition is in about two weeks, so Mr. James is wanting to rush us through the "Carry On, My Wayward Son" portion of the song so that we can have the whole show prepared for this event. I look forward to Appalachian's competition, though I know enough this year to dress warmly, in case it snows again. In creative writing club the other day, I showed Molly and Chloe (the latter of which I have been sitting with at lunch most days) a scene from the play that I tried to write last year - the scene which highlighted the events of the App. Competition last year - and they both seemed to like it, despite its inevitable cheesiness.
I still like all of my teachers. Mr. Allen is hilarious, Mr. Bragg is brilliant, and Ms. Freitag is a sweet lady, and I'm fairly confident about my performance in each of their classes, respectively. However, we took a math test today, and I'm super worried that on top of making a bunch of careless errors, I most certainly missed an entire question that I wasn't sure about involving the graphing of an absolute value equation - or rather, the writing of an absolute value equation, when given the graph. Madame Matisko, of course, is awesome as usual and so is French class. Speaking of that, I'm going to relate an odd dream that I had last night in French, partially because I'd like to practice and partially just because I feel like it.
Hier soir, j'ai eu une reve bizarre. J'etais au terrain de stationnement pres de la salle de la fanfare au Batiment des Arts. Je montais la colline pour aller au Batiment des Arts et parlais avec Elisabeth quand nous sommes passees par un groupe des gens. Ces gens etaient de la fanfare aussi, et ils allaient trouver leurs instruments au terrain de staionnement. Dans le groupe etait un garcon avec les cheveux roux qui j'aimais dans la reve (mais je ne le connais pas bien dans la vie vraiment). Elisabeth a vu que je regardais cette personne pendant que nous nous les passions par, et elle a souri avant qu'elle a dit quelquechose comme, "Hmmm, tu regardes quoi, Robyn? Ou devrais-moi dire, tu regardes qui?" Et j'ai repondu, "Fermez la bouche, Elisabeth." C'est seulement une reve, mais je me demande, quelquefois, si les reves ont un peu de verite.

Reynolds vs. Atkins and First Week of School

I just returned home from my first football game of the year against Atkins (the marching band's first game was last week, but I was in Florida at the time - perhaps this is why Reynolds lost). Our team won gloriously, ending the score with 35 to compare with Atkins' 6. We did not go onto the field to perform the half-time show, though we played the first third of it in the stands during half-time, the part which includes the "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Bicycle" themes. At one point, a girl named Alexi, who plays the flute, announced to no one in particular, "It's hotter than Satan's toenails," which was partially true and a beautiful way to put it.
School started this past Wednesday, and I really like my new teachers so far. My first paper for English on archetypes was due today - we had to choose a modern story which contained as many archetypes as we could possibly think of, and so I chose to write about Fahrenheit 451. This assignment kept me up until the wee hours of the morning, but that was also partially because my dad and I went out driving in Old Bessie, which is the new name for his Toyota Camry. This, I know, is not a suitable name, given that I've already named our school's green xylophone Old Bessie, but both objects (that is, the car and the xylophone) fit the name too well for me to consider changing it. I received my permit about a week ago, and so I've been going out in my mom's stick shift P. T. Cruiser to practice. At this point, I am tired, and so I shall be retiring; only three days of school have passed and I'm already exhausted.

"Dead Poets' Society" and the Confusing Nature of Sadness

So, I just finished watching "Dead Poets' Society," as it happened to be on television. I still have not seen the very beginning, because when I walked in, the movie just happened to be at the part that Mrs. Allman reserved for the day in class that we watched it, just before the students are instructed to rip out the introductions of their poetry textbooks.
But in any case: Wow. Not only was the soundtrack amazing (two Beethoven pieces - can't go wrong with that!), but I was sucked into the character development to the extent that I had forgotten my mother's vague mention of the movie as we passed it one day in the movie store: "Now, there's a depressing movie." I suppose when she said it, I must have thought that the movie would end with the death (in old age) of Robin Williams' character, with all of the boys he had inspired gathered loyally around his deathbed. But no, I suppose that would have been far too cheerful. (Spoiler:) They take the boy's ringleader, the spirited character and martyred actor Neil, and combine his boyish impulsiveness with his father's obstinate close-mindedness to produce the grounds for the boy's suicide in the middle of the movie, just after he celebrates his success in the role of Puck for the school's production of "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Something about the way that entire scene is executed is devastating, even more so because of the setting (Neil's parents' house with pictures of himself as a little boy randomly placed) which accentuates his youth. His father has just announced that he will be placing Neil in military school, withdrawing him not only from his dreams of acting, but from his friends, and from the only legitimate role model in his life, Mr. Keating. After this sentence, Neil commences to make the speech he was advised to make by Mr. Keating (and which he should have made, as advised, before he actually performed in the play) about how acting is important to him, etc. But he is beaten into submission with a glare from his father and a dismissive, "You can just forget about acting." His mother then urges him to get some sleep, and he sits with a determined expression, at which point the audience becomes uneasy; one initially wonders, given the boys' innovation thus far, about how he plans to escape his house that night and make it back to the school and to his friends, and what his plans are from there on. However, this vague hopefulness is replaced with dread when Neil goes to stand before the open window with part of his costume from the night's play on, a peacefully determined and vacant expression on his face. Slowly, laboriously, he wanders downstairs to a desk, produces a small key (the audience furtively hopes, "Oh! This must be a car key, or something!" though they know this is false), and withdraws his father's gun from a desk drawer. When he is found by his parents, they fall into hysterics and the scene is complete.
What was so devastating about this climax in the movie, I guess, was probably the fact that the initial conflict was almost miniscule in comparison with other conflicts that the audience suspects will develop in a much greater magnitude than this mere disagreement with Neil's father over Neil's extracurricular activities. But, as noted above, it is this conflict which spirals out of control, while the others (the principal's suspicion of Mr. Keating, the discovery of the Dead Poets' Society, one of the other boy's pursuit of a girl, among others) are either resolved or affected directly by Neil's suicide. One example of the latter is how the principal takes the oppurtunity of Neil's death to lay the blame on Mr. Keating for "encouraging" the activities of the Dead Poets' Society along with Neil's acting dreams, hence the elimination of Mr. Keating's tenure as teacher by the end of the movie.
Of course, as one is already tearful for the remaining half of the movie (because of everyone's reaction to the death and because it is easy to hate the principal with a tearful passion), they decide to end the movie with one of those scenes which is meant to be a subtle, small, but yet beautiful triumph over the evil that seems to dominate (this evil being the principal, who has fired Mr. Keating and taken over his job temporarily as English teacher). As Mr. Keating is about to exit his classroom with his personal belongings, one of his faithful students stands on his desk and addresses him by the nickname he told them to use at the beginning of the semester: "Oh Captain, my Captain." Other students follow suit, saluting their former teacher, and ignoring the principal as he snaps at each of them to sit down. Mr. Keating beholds the reverent farewell that he is receiving, thanks the boys, and turns to depart. Then the credits roll.
So, my mother was right; the movie was depressing, and Robin Williams lived through the whole thing. Perhaps it was so depressing because the spiraling of the conflict was such an unexpected thing (that is, until just before Neil does the deed). But it was a well-done tragedy, much in the same way that Looking for Alaska was a well-done tragedy, and the book My Sister's Keeper. In each of these, the tragedy is a shock to the reader, and the "left-over" characters' reactions are very real and heart-wrenching.
So, as far as the nature of sadness goes, I just wanted to comment on a feeling I have shared with many others (from what I am told) that often, when tears seem to be called for in real life, it is hard to summon them, while when we immerse ourselves in tragic fiction, they come easily and at the right time. Why is this? Is it because when we read or watch fiction, we're not only crying for the tragedy, but also for the sheer art of it, for the poetic language or graceful movements - whereas, real life lacks that glamor and tragedy is often like a canvas stabbed through with a knife with nothing about the piece that can be glorified? Or does it have something to do with this quote of Dostoyevsky's from Notes from Underground: "Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once...We are oppressed at being men -- men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man." Is it that we use fiction as our means to know what we are to do with tragedy, how it should be dealt with, how one should go about their mourning - but that when we find ourselves in that potent reality, we are "oppressed" by our mortality, by our clinging to fiction as a way to cope with reality? Are we simply put into shock by how very real and beyond-control tragedy is? Are we so out of touch with what living "is, and what it is called" that we forget that we ourselves are characters in this huge plot woven by God which is impossible for the "generalised man" that we have created of ourselves to comprehend? Isn't it impossible for anyone to comprehend, for that matter? In any case, one can conclude that real tragedy is a jolt of faith in which one inches out on the branch of a tree to ponder the depths of a chasm which is said to have a soft landing place that cannot be seen from above, and the tip of the branch breaks off and falls within, followed by the fearful eyes of the living.
So, I will quit rambling now and retire.

Two Neighborhood Dreams

Right now I am listening to my newfound discovery and life-long goal (as far as being able to play music), which is Beethoven's "Eroica" Variations, which I assume are variations on his 3rd Symphony, also entitled "Eroica," and initially dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, that is, before Napoleon came to a position of power. Upon hearing this news from a close friend, Beethoven viciously erased Bonaparte's name from the front of the score, declaring that "he, too, is but a mortal man," or something along those lines. In any case, I'm listening to a Glenn Gould interpretation (who else would one listen to?), and it is this part of my random start-of-post anecdote which directly relates back to one of the two dreams that I have had this past week involving my dad's neighborhood.
The first dream was a very cute one. In the dream, my mother, my cousins, my uncle, and I were lounging in the living room of my father's house (he wasn't there at the time). It was around 3:00 in the afternoon, slightly overcast outside; we were trying to think of something to do, when we heard a commotion just outside the house. I strode over to the window beside the front door, and peering out of it, I could see a crowd mostly consisting of small children and their parents congregating out in front of the stone house next door. They were all approaching the front door of the house cautiously but excitedly; parents were restraining their kids from running full-on up to the stone steps. I still could not see the source of their excitement, and so I stepped out onto the porch without my shoes on. Turning to the left to face the porch of that house, I beheld a giraffe. Given that it was a rather small giraffe, its neck still managed to tower about ten feet above the crowd it was so adored by. One by one, the children were led up to the animal by their parents, at which point this giraffe would lower its neck and allow each child to pet its brown-spotted skin. I rushed back inside, put on my shoes, told my family to do the same, and dashed back outside with intentions of petting the giraffe myself. I had never pet a giraffe before. Unfortunately for us, the giraffe chose this moment to depart, amid disappointed sighs from its devoted audience. In two strides, it managed to step over the crowd and reach the mercifully-empty street. It began a slow, thunderous journey toward Brunson Elementary; we watched it from the porch, and I woke up shortly thereafter.
The next dream was weird (well, not really any weirder than the giraffe dream). The setting was my neighborhood in the summertime, though I had an addition of two neighbors. In the stone house next door (which was the site of the giraffe in the previous dream) lived Emily Dickinson, the long-dead, reclusive poet. My favorite aspect about her was manifested in the dream - after a certain point in her life, when she was reluctant to leave her house, the most contact that she would make with society was the occasional lowering of a basket of cookies from an upper-floor window, for the children to eat. This happened shortly after I exited the house one day, and much like in the giraffe dream, all the little kids came running from the playground down the street to eat Ms. Dickinson's cookies. A few doors down lived Glenn Gould, a prolific (but also dead) pianist. In his life, he was not as reclusive as Emily Dickinson, but was known to be a very "eccentric" man, even beyond his piano mannerisms. In the dream, he spent most of his time in the house, and I would hear music drifting through his window when I took Lancelot (my dog) outside. My goal in the dream was to somehow find him when he exited the house and convince him to teach me free piano lessons. I never got a chance to do this, though I did eat one of Emily Dickinson's cookies, and they tasted like the sugar cookies at Harris Teeter (which I like a lot : )). Oh, and a fun fact for my avid readers: in the third grade, when we were assigned to dress up as some sort of historical figure for a 1st person autobiographical speech (about aforementioned historical figure), I dressed up as Emily Dickinson (in my white flower-girl dress; she apparently had an obsession with wedding attire, or so I remember from my project) and delivered a speech partially about her writing but mostly about her peculiarities. Two years later, we had a similar assignment, in which I dressed up in the likeness of Andy Warhol. So it goes.

Family Visit, Obscure Time Travel Theories Discussed over Dinner, and Luciano

So, because of my neglect of this wonderful website, I have many things to report today in the wee hours of the morning. For the past week or so, my uncle and three cousins from my mom's side have been visiting with us here. They arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning last week (so not two days ago but the week before) and they just left this Thursday after a breakfast of cinnamon rolls, eggs, and Wesley's famous bacon.
As always, their stay was fun and very easygoing - I always pick up conversations with my cousins as though they had never been gone (which says something, as I am bad about using the telephone and we only correspond occasionally on Facebook). If something negative were to be said about it, it would only be that when you are our age (high school age) it seems that there are fewer things to do as a group than when you are all in elementary school or younger. It is harder for an adolescent to use boredom constructively and create a game from whatever resources abound in the current environment. So, when I had a random desire to play Charades, for instance, I was left to "wish in one hand and sh!^ in the other and see which one filled up faster," or however the saying goes. Haha.
In any case, one of the things of the most event that we did while they were here was to drive out to Durham to visit my grandfather at the Super 8 Motel which he inhabits and where he is employed. We had gotten excited a few days before when we were at the hot guy movie store, and we had mistakenly rented three movies, of which we only watched two. The leftover movie was "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," and I was the only person in the group who hadn't yet seen this movie. So, we stopped by the movie store before departing for Durham, renewed the movie, and drove to the Super 8 with our DVD player and intentions of watching the film at some point while we were there. Upon our arrival, we were given two keys for our own rooms - we took the ground floor room and the cousins and Uncle Alan took the room which happened to be directly above ours. We dawdled around my grandfather's room for a while, admiring the absurdly-obese bird which lives in a cage beside his bed; this bird's name is Lita, and it apparently lives on a diet of chicken and Coca-Cola - the last time that we were visiting my grandfather, my mom engaged him in a discussion about the moral implications of a bird eating a fellow bird. My grandfather insisted, "She likes it! Don't you, Lita?" Lita said nothing.
After hanging out for a while and taking a few pictures of everyone with the baby, we all packed into cars again and traveled to the Golden Corral, where we always eat when we congregate with my grandfather - it has become an odd sort of tradition, despite the fact that no one especially loves it or anything. My grandpa, however, does know just about the entire staff there, and so there is no fear of having our food spat upon. That is always a plus.
Dinner was great, and we left the restaurant feeling a little too full (as one always does when one leaves a Golden Corral). We dawdled some more around our rooms and then finally gathered in Grandpa's room, hooked up the DVD player, and played the movie.
After we were finished watching the movie, I could see why everyone was perfectly willing to watch it a second time for me - it was "excellent," to say the least. It was definitely a stereotypical 80's movie, sure - but it had historical context (I know that you learn doodley-squat from the actors about history, but they sneak in clever little references none the less). One thing that I particularly enjoyed, even if it is not realistic, was the reactions of the various "historical figures" upon being kidnapped for their use in the end-of-year History project - like when they are able to lead Socrates happily from his seminar because Keanu Reeves "philosophises" with him. And when they simply lift Beethoven from his piano bench in the middle of a performance of "Fur Elise." Napoleon might have been my favorite character, though it is hard to say. . .I liked how childishly he reacted to everything, from the ice cream to the water slides. They took a notorious dictator and turned him into something ridiculous, which was wrong but amusing at the same time.
In any case, this movie prompted a very interesting discussion about time travel over our dinner at Tequila a few days after the movie. The scene that was the source of the discussion was the scene in which Bill and Ted are standing outside of the Circle K and are confronted with future representations of themselves, who give them advice about their upcoming "adventure," and then move on to the near future. When you think about it, this moment is trippy in more ways than one: the first reason is, obviously, because they are talking to themselves, but the second is that the way in which they talk to themselves (and when they do it again later in the movie, coming back from the past) implies that this meeting of themselves in front of the Circle K is an infinite ordeal and will keep happening and happening and happening to satisfy the return of the future Bill and Ted from the past. That was probably gibberish. What I mean is that the Bill and Ted who are receiving the advice will inevitably give the advice to the next round of Bill and Ted, who will in turn give the advice to the next Bill and Ted in front of the Circle K, and so on forever. This means that, if this sort of time travel were really possible, the Tralfamadorian perspective on time expressed in Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s book Slaughterhouse Five would be correct; even if one were dead, one would still be alive at some point in time, because that moment always has, always did, and always will exist. It is a cycle.
Most of what we were talking about, however, were various theories on what time travel would be if it did exist - the Ray Bradbury "if-you-crush-a-butterfly-in-the-past-you-dramatically-affect-the-future" perspective versus the "nothing-would-happen-because-the-butterfly-was-crushed-and-always-will-be-crushed" perspective. And then we listed the counter example that disproved both theories, which was this: If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you never would have been able to go back in time in the first place, because you don't exist!
So, our conversation was very interesting and nerdy.
Now for Luciano, who is my most recent bit of news (despite the news that today I have finished learning Bach's "Invention 14," which means that I know 2 Bach pieces and I shall eventually progress to Goldberg Variation 15, which I dreamt of playing on a certain Steinway). The other day, my mom, Kalyn, and I were sitting on my mom's bed, about to read a story. I opened up the book that I had recently brought back over from my dad's house. The book was The Rainy Day Picnic and it was a Minnie Mouse book - just inside the front cover was a little printed thing which said, "This book belongs to Minnie's best friend:" with a space for Minnie's best friend. In the space was scrawled the name "Luciano," in untidy handwriting, and just above it, barely legible, was written a phone number. The five in the number was written backwards.
I was somehow moved by that backwards five. I wondered if, somehow and unknowingly, when I was little, I had taken this book from a boy who thought that he was Minnie Mouse's best friend. I would very much like to call the number, despite the fact that the book is old and Luciano might be in his fifties now - and despite the fact that he probably lives elsewhere and doesn't care. I've never spoken to anyone named Luciano before; I think that this is also a motivating factor. But I suppose that I probably won't call him - I'll keep his treasured book forever, or until Kalyn donates it to another kid who will wonder who Luciano is. I suppose not all moments can be like that scene in "Amelie" where she returns the treasure chest of sorts to an aged-forty-years Bretodeau. A Minnie Mouse book isn't quite so significant as that. By the way, I got my cousins to watch "Amelie," and they enjoyed it a lot, though they found the characters (particularly Amelie) to be creepy. I think that, at most, they are awkward and shy, which makes them all the more likeable and human. That's how all characters in movies should be - likeable and human. Is that too much to ask, Hollywood?