Finally, I emerge, wraith-like, from under a monster school project that finally gave up the ghost today. It was a long and hardy struggle. Though the dragon lay crumpled on the ground, St. George ain't in particularly good shape himself. A look in the mirror and one word sum it up: shaggy. Time for a shave, haircut, and other amenities of civilization.

To unwind, saw a movie, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. Eight dream-like stories that touches everything from a childhood fantasy about a witnessing a fox wedding in the forest to post-apocalyptic nightmare of mutants and cannibals. Some very powerful stuff but a couple of episodes got too preachy when Mr. Kurosawa is exploring his nuclear-war anxieties.

Some of my favorite pieces:

The Tunnel: A weary Japanese officer is walking home from a POW camp at the end of WWII. On the road, he comes upon a dark gaping tunnel, from which the ghosts of his dead soldiers emerge and haunt his conscience. It is hard to froget the image and the sound of a platoon of dead soldiers marching with relentless military precision, gradually emerging from the inky depth of the tunnel like bad memories welling up unbidden.

Sun Under the Rain: A boy ignores his mother's admonitions to stay in doors on a day when rain is falling on clear sunny day. He ventures to the woods and witness an odd procession of fox spirits. It may sounds like fairy-tale yet the story takes a disquieting turn. The last images of a rainbow striding across a lush valley are beautiful almost beyond belief, but all that beauty is tempered by the uncertain fate of the little boy. Supposedly this is based on an actual dream Kurorsawa had when he was a kid.

Crows: An art lover step into Van Gogh's paintings. Your eyes will think they died and went to heaven.