It is a Saturday morning, and I am already pissed at myself because I keep hearing the call of a Snickers ice cream bar in the refrigerator. I haven't answered it yet. YET. I have no self-discipline. I have all kinds of will power for interesting tasks. I can sit down to focus on a journal entry or a mandala until the job is done. I am faithful and diligent with the money producing tasks.

But I have no will power at all to lose weight. My childish nature was a hardship to Laura as she struggled with weight control. I was not able to support her as I should have. I'll always remember the painful fight we had over it.

The three of us had just went to see the movie Monster's Ball. It is a strange movie, rather unnerving. It has as one of its themes an interracial relationship of a white man with a black woman. Actually, to be more accurate, one could say 'pink' man with a 'brown' woman. The color 'brown' has been given symbolic importance in the vast amount of chocolate the various characters eat. The man likes chocolate ice cream. The woman's obese son loves chocolate candy bars.

Afterwards, this movie produced in me a tremendous chocolate craving. We went to the grocery store afterwards, and I wanted chocolate milk SO BAD. Laura didn't think she could stand the temptation of knowing it was in the house. I pouted childishly and she stormed out of the grocery store, furious.

It didn't help that the music I'd picked to clear my mind of the former ''would have been approved of by Hannibal Lecter'', as Julia reminded me about the cultured interests of one of the particular villains in today's movies.

I find I don't need to see horror movies on the big screen. They are plenty intense enough on our small screen. I couldn't have picked a more matching pair of disparate horror movies today if I tried.

I've been wanting to see One Hour Photo for some time now. Robin Williams playing a villain was something I could not imagine. He's been one of my most favorite actors since I saw him in Dead Poet's Society. He's either played the hero or comedic buffoon. Never a villain, but Williams was superbly up to the task. He fully evinced a psychologically tortured man.

His creepy head shot equally matched the creepy head shot of Anthony Hopkins as the second movie Red Dragon began.

Another transition I noticed going from One Hour Photo, and all the many photos seen in that film were all the evidence photos in the opening selection screen of Red Dragon. But that is only a small co-incidence, as the two films reveal a greater co-incidence. Villain number one, in One Hour Photo knew all about his victims. He'd been developing their photos for years. Villain number three, (Hannibal was only acting as clue giver), also knew all about his victims via image processing. 'The Red Dragon' worked as film processor for the video department of a film lab.

Ah, yes, BOTH films make a good case for going digital! One Hour Photo, although intense enough, isn't nearly as visually intense as the much darker Red Dragon. For one thing, no body dies in One Hour Photo. Lots of people die in the second film.

If you haven't seen either, and my review encourages you to do so, watch OHP first. It kind of warms you up for the Dragon, which on the surface is more horrific. And then afterwards, comparision are easily made.

Despite the abundant outer horror he creates, Ralph Fiennes doesn't seem to reveal the inner horror of 'the dragon' as well as Williams did with his villain. Oh, he is sufficiently adequate, but he seemed detached and robotic. Perhaps, this too is part of his psychosis. The back of his muscular body wears the dragon tattoo well, however. I wonder how many hours it took to create the simulated tattoo. Possibly as long as it might to create a real tattoo?

I 'felt sorry' for the intially reluctant intuitive detective, played by Edward Norton. But he gets the job done, despite exhaustion. Another interesting character is the slimy gossip paper reporter well played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman is proving to be another good chameleon who can shift into different characters ably. Emily Watson played an innocent woman literally 'blind' to the Dragon. He is only a man in her mind, until disturbing things happen.

In Red Dragon, many characters hold it together, whereas One Hour Photo is primarily a portrait focusing on one man's gradual descent into insanity. While Red Dragon has greater stylish horror to it, somehow the horror of One Hour Photo is more believable. The photo developer's agonies seem much more possible. His problems could happen to anyone, even us. And this brings the ultimately greater horror.

Again, my slow mind chews on immortality. I think of consciousness, the continuity of consciousness, and what day to day reality is. Consciousness is really a linkage of the moment to moment, held together with the string of memory, which also only exists in the moment.

For all intelligent beings, it is this way. Preposing the existence of a variety of such beings, we might have the Ricean model, demon infused blood in transformed humans; the 'Lansberrian' model, helpful alien blood bits by the thousands inhabiting the transformed humans, or some of the various theories put forth on the web I've seen lately. The still-human vampire may or may not have enhanced longevity. ''All that bloodsucking and no increase of life?'' you ask?

But they have reasons for its compelling nature, and I do believe it's not in the large quantities a Lestat or Sebastian needs to guzzle. Anyway, for those who believe themselves infected with a virus or having acquired a symbiotic, psychic 'life form', consciousness also works in their minds in the same linkage of the moment to moment.

Why do we strive so, if no matter what, consciousness works the same way? Marius, the 2000 year old vampire in Rice's novels, values the continuity of consciousness he has had, and wishes to continue. Basically it just means he has a huge storage of memories, and he no doubt has a better understanding of world history, than those who acquire it vicariously. But all of this is also accessed in the Moment, as with any other conscious being.

If human souls really possess an immortality, their consciousness is broken everytime they reincarnate, and the continuity of consciousness is lost. Although many claim to have faint holdovers from previous lives, and possibly the wisdom gained in one life is transmitted to the next, there is still the sharp breakage.

If such a thing exists, and how I do long for it, I know that I am a new soul. I am raw with newness. At best, I've had one life prior, in which I met Laura, but was not able to join with her, as her soulbond with her previous soulmate had not been broken. I've had those dreams of meeting Laura, both of us in those long dresses of that day, and yes, Laura was transgendered then as in her last incarnation. It was then a sweet meeting, but a painfully unobtainable union.

Also, there is SOMETHING about the art of the late nineteenth century that has a different feel for me than art of earlier ages.

Ah, how strangely emphemeral such sensations are! Or not so, considering the possible insubstantiality of them. Anyway, when I look at creations from this era, there is a sense of familiarity with them, as if I've experienced them in another context.

It's as if I've experienced this art when it was all new and considered wild, debauched and scandalous by the common folk. Could this simply be, because having been raised in such an isolated environment as I was, I can readily feel what the alarm of the day would have been like?

Or is it because the relative modernity of this art, with its vivid colors and dynamic lines, creates within the viewer the sense of visceral closeness? There ARE logical reasons for everything.

Of every strange phenomena I perceive, I remind myself of all the non-fantastic, ordinary mundane reasons for its occurence.

I think of the advice that sagacious Marius gave to the young and painfully curious Lestat:

''Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds--justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is open the door to the whirlwind.''

from The Vampire Lestat, page 332 in the large paperback

I am here, having opened that door, and I await 'the whirlwind'. Do I worry, as Marius asserted ''The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner''? I am not fearful of 'annihilation'. I want my answer. However, it may not be until after death that I get it. Um, this could count as 'annihilation'.

Anyway, it is me, ever the young soul, ever wondering. I will learn to enjoy this almost painful curiousity. It does have a way of making me feel 'so alive'.

And so I smile, take a deep breath, and wonder what today holds. Aye, it is the 'long forward stretch' now shortened to reach one day's length. But always, ever the moment. Yes, it is always, ever the moment.