Dreams, Moments, Travels
The following are my top 10 favorite Japanese films:
1. Spirited Away – Animation
2. Kikujiro – Takeshi Kitano
3. Tampopo – Tsutomu Yamazaki
4. Princess Mononoke – Animation
5. Akira – Animation
6. Tetsuo II – Iron Man
7. Ran – Tatsuya Nakadai
8. Grave of the Fireflies – Animation
9. Godzilla – Godzilla
10. Barefoot Gen – Animation
The following are my top 10 favorite Chinese films:
1. Chinese Ghost Story
2. Postman in the Mountain
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Shaolin Soccer
5. The Killer
6. The Road Home
7. God of Cookery
8. Hero
9. Raise the Red Lantern
10. Eat Drink Man Woman
The following are my top 10 favorite European films:
1. Amelie – French
2. Werckmeister Harmonies – Hungarian
3. Elling – Norwegian
4. Toto The Hero – French / Belgian
5. Quadrophenia – UK
6. City of Lost Children – French
7. Dancer in the Dark – Denmark
8. Run Lola Run – Germany
9. Europa – Denmark
10. Das Experiment – Germany
I could not pick just 10 of my all-time favorite films, so here are the top 15:
1. Amelie – 2001 France
2. Spirited Away – 2001 Japan
3. Kikujiro – 1999 Japan
4. Fifth Element – 1997 France
5. Lawrence of Arabia – 1962 United Kingdom
6. Dil Chahta Hai – 2001 India
7. Dune – 1984 United States
8. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? – 1966 United States
9. Blade Runner – 1982 United States
10. Quadrophenia – 1979 United Kingdom
11. Tampopo – 1985 Japan
12. Smoke Signals – 1998 Native American
13. Deadman – 1995 United States / Germany
14. Chinese Ghost Story – 1987 China
15. The Matrix – 1999 United States
This local Hindu youth group from Phoenix, Arizona, who studies Swadhyay together, performed a lesson for life for this sidewalk theater performance. Swadhyay is a religious group that exemplifies finding God within one’s self. The performance in Hindi without subtitles was about maintaining your path to a moral end and not being distracted by superstition, false promises, materialism, and remaining a positive influence on others. Thanks to Hemu, who translated for us.
Rarely do I have nightmares, but tonight was one of those rarities. It is not so much the content of the dream I want to convey here today but what might be the impetus behind the ugly dream. On these occasions, when my dreams are filled with violence, it could be typified as being of brutal carnage. Often, the scenes in the nightmare are warlike; they start with pursuit and end with some type of bloody death. It was no different this evening, except the methodology of the last killings was telling, at least in regards to what I have thought might be the trigger of these types of dreams. The method of killing was what appeared to be an electric or high-pressure staple gun; on waking, I could not be certain that it wasn’t a bolt device.
These dreams with gory violence only occur after I have eaten a large piece of meat or a large portion of ice cream. Due to not eating meat for breakfast or lunch and then only eating it at dinner one to two times a week at the most, I have enough vegetarian days where I also remember my dreams, and I do think that on those days, my dreams are devoid of gore. The dreams after eating a vegetarian meal may still be intense, but I cannot remember once when my dreams turned so horrific that I forced myself awake due to what I was witnessing or what was about to happen to me.
The question I would like to pose here in this posting is, has anyone else noticed in transitioning to a more vegetarian diet that they can distinguish a trend in their dreams where violence accompanies their dreams after having consumed animal products?