Natalie Portman and Friend's Dream

I’ve always looked at existence as a trip with many layovers. This is a kind of metaphor that makes plain sense to me. I enjoy picking metaphors which sport a strong experiential basis. Most of the time, at least.

And layovers are what cure boredom. I am certain of this. Especially during trips.

But I digress. And this blog is nothing but a gulasch of digressions.

Ah yes, Natalie Portman and my friend's dream.




When one of my best friends told me that she had a dream in which I was ‘hanging’ with Natalie Portman, I nigh drowned in my own laughter. Our choir of giggles was thus engendered and not just that. That moment in time also marks the beginning of a new inside joke. And inside jokes need to be recognized as well. Just like birthdays.

Aren’t friends great? When you can make an appearance in their dreams, accompanied by Natalie Portman of all people, you know you’ve got it made. Ha.

I like Natalie Portman’s work. I like it because two of the films in which this fellow Gemini has starred have been instrumental to my decoding of many a literary scenario.

I illustrate.

Late Spring of 2004.

Thanks to my cinematic radar, I had heard of a little film called "Garden State". At the time I was living in SLC and the film was not yet playing anywhere near in the state. Ergo, if "Garden State" wouldn’t come to me, I must go to it. And that I did. It was playing in Minneapolis, which is also the city where another good literary friend dwelled. One stone, two birds, I reasoned quickly and in a day I found myself ordering my Venti Nonfat Caramel Macchiato in Minneapolis. I watch "Garden State" and I could clearly see a face for what I have termed ‘21st century, new-world, existentialist angst.’

I fly home and the sense of possibility I felt when watching a simple film in Minneapolis at an old movie theater that looked like a structure directly imported in the 1920’s from a Sicilian village, became my immediate reality. I used to be of the opinion that some sensations/feelings can only be born in certain settings and that the same settings cannot just be replicated simply anywhere. It does not mean that the sensations/feelings are inconstant but rather that their constancy directly depends on the place that allows their birth in the first place. Hmm. That sentence is a mouthful.

The second film is "Closer". And it is far too important a film to me to reside in just one little paragraph. It needs a blog of its own. And that it shall have.

But non sequiturs aside, for some strange reason, hearing my friend tell me about her dream when we were both dwelling in reality felt really, really good. And I can't help but wonder why.