Last night we attended a free screening of this fabulous animated movie, Howl's Moving Castle. It starts out like an ordinary fairy tale, with hand-drawn animation that is augmented with some digital effects. Then, in the style that this director has become famous for, the story veers off in dreamlike, more bizarre directions. The mythic undertones and the characters with real personalities, combined with the absolutely gorgeous imagery - well, let me say that my mouth was open for much of this movie, I was so stunned.

My dreams last night were strongly influenced by having seen the movie. In my dream, my Japanese lover Yo-chan came to visit, to plead with me to take him back. He was very, very old in the dream, but (as in the movie) his age varied, depending on the emotion of the scene. He thought that I was under some kind of spell, and if I found the key to breaking that spell, I would take him back. The key had something to do with the Japanese word for "eleven". I couldn't remember that word in the dream. Someone else kept saying the German word for eleven, and that confused me even further. He gave me a box with items from our time together, including a dictionary. I pawed through the dictionary, looking for the word, to no avail.

All the time, I knew I wouldn't be leaving Barbara for him, but still I was intrigued. I felt so wanted and desired by his pleading.

Today, I read some reviews of the movie that mentioned how unfaithful the movie was to the original book. Luckily, I had never even heard of the book, a children's fantasy by an English author. I ordered it today on amazon, along with more books by the author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I must be in a Japanese period.

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