14/04/2002 - 9:48 a.m.

The greatest traveller and huntsman in this age of the world

OK, there's two entries from yesterday before this one: one's legitimate, and the other's a quiz I didn't have time to stick on the page where they belong. Skip that one. Read the legitimate entry before it.

I only mention this because I'm rather fond of the entry before the last. Too many times I follow up good entries by bollocks. (It's wise to agree with me on this point, by the way.)

The Brits are leading in the "People who Read My Diary" polls. This isn't exactly an accurate representation, but I'll say it is anyway. I think it's nifty that my own native people won't read my diary, but people across the pond will.

Now, the Diary Toilette (the word Housekeeping just isn't as much fun) out of the way- I've got another dream to tell.

I woke up and was rather in a rush to catch the bus on time. I was almost ready to go except my shoes. Well, I grabbed a pair of shoes that matched, but I didn't have time to put them on. So I put on (because it was rainy out, otherwise I would've just run to the bus in my socks) my Wellingtons and ran to the bus. The bus left going the wrong way down the street, actually, it was going the right way, but it wasn't going the way it goes on this route. In this short amount of time I've lost my shoes and decide just to wear the boots all day.

I get off the bus, and I'm not at school, I'm in the kitchen of a house I was in once for a family reunion years ago. And there's a crowd of people all standing around Viggo Mortensen, who does not look at all the way he actually looks: more like a cross between Patrick and Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi (who looks insanely different from regular Ewan McGregor, if anyone's noticed), but I recognise him as Viggo Mortensen. He's wearing normal clothes but also Aragorn's cloak, boots, and sword. (Now, right now, I'm thinking to all of the possible symbolic interpretation of this, and I hate my subconcious mind.)

So, the crowd of my friends (I couldn't say who any of them actually were, but I knew they were all my friends) are asking for autographs and if he could read lines from the book and whether he liked kissing Liv Tyler, and he's just sort of standing there not replying to any of them.

In the meantime, I've climbed up and sat on the kitchen counter. One of the people from the crowd comes over to me. It's either Brandy or Ren (as unlikely as that sounds), but I don't know who they were. She asks me why I don't ask him something; I must want to ask him something. I shake my head, but I'm thinking that I want to know why they didn't put any songs in the movie.

Finally, the crowd leaves, and it's just me and Viggo Mortensen in the room. I'm faced away from him (Even though I hadn't been previously, but I never actually turned around. I hate the conventions of dreams) engrossed in a copy of the book with the whole trilogy in it (it just turned up somehow), looking through to find good Aragorn lines to use for titles for Diaryland entries (seriously).

He comes up behind me and hands me two CD's, one of those little phoney things that doesn't look like it'd actually work and another regular sized CD. The little one's design I can't remember, but the larger one is a sort of creamy beige colour tinted with green (don't ask how, but it was a pretty colour) and there was a sort of dragon shaped curve that gave way into a sky of stars and graced by a sword. It was gorgeous. I told him so and asked him what it was. He told me that it was the CD with all of Tolkien's songs on it, which had been left out of the movie at the last minute.

I turned around and expressed my lamentations, saying that perhaps Legolas couldn't do it, but as for him, he was a poet and...

He interuppted and explained that he was the one who wanted them taken out. He was a poet, but he wasn't Tolkien's kind of poet (I have no idea, I've never gotten around to reading any of his work) and he was worried that the two styles would get in the way, which he didn't want to happen.

We fell to discussing the book, and suddenly he wasn't Viggo Mortensen anymore, he was Aragorn. This was infinitely better because I don't feel like I'm taking advantage of some movie star, I'm just talking to this really awesome fictional king. I am not strange. I was bragging about my knowledge of the book, and he asked me to name any name from the map and he'd tell me a story about it from when he'd been there. I couldn't think of a name because I didn't want to give him one that had already been described thoroughly in the book. I finally came up with the Iron Hills when I woke up this morning.

(OK, I have to go, I'll finish this later.)

So, backing up a bit, I couldn't come up with a place name. Aragorn mentions my Wellingtons, and I say that I wore them in case anything exciting happened to me. Suddenly, I'm in Middle Earth. (I don't know whether we went through the book, or if it was a random dream scene change, or what.) It's a very green place, Middle Earth, lots of hills. Unfortunately, my mother woke me up about this time, so I didn't get to find out where we were going, or why he decided to take me.

It's funny, Aragorn used to be my favourite. Well, Frodo came first, but I was about six at that time, and hobbits were cool. But by the time I was thirteen Aragorn was topping the list. After seeing the movie, I don't hold him in such high regard. It wasn't as though he was dissapointing, because he was fantastic and I admire Viggo Mortensen as an actor (not as a sex object, thank you very much). However, tying with Legolas for first just isn't what I expected. There's probably a little bit of that "Aragorn straying from the path" stuff from the movie that I don't like, it makes him more shallow, but it's such an insignificant part of the movie. I guess we'll have to wait for the rest of the movies to come out (two years!) and see how the character develops.