When a 1 1⁄2-pound dog hops on your lap, there is only one possible response — joy. The dog, a micro-Chihuahua named Pilaf , knows this, and Pilaf’s owner, Demi Moore, knows this as well, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t apologize and ask if you’re OK with Pilaf taking liberties. I’ve had leaves fall on me that felt heavier than this dog, I tell her.
Besides, who could resist an animal that its owner calls the “bonsai tree of dogs”? It’s been all of two minutes and already there’s a lifetime bond. We’re sitting on a couch in the pool house of a Mediterranean-style home in the Hollywood Hills that has been owned over the years by Mary Astor, record producer Marshall Chess and Marilyn Manson. Moore just kicked off her boots and, looking down at the transcription app running on my phone, starts telling me how she uses one to record her dreams.
“Sometimes I have a question that needs to be answered and I can ask that in my dreams,” Moore tells me. “Like lucid dreaming?” “More like dream incubation,” she answers. Before I have time to properly follow up on that, and maybe because we’re sitting in a house giving off big ghost energy, we start talking about the dead appearing in our dreams — and our realities.
“My mother was a big smoker, and I have had quite a few experiences, not necessarily in my home, but in a hotel room or maybe a boat, and all of a sudden I smell cigarette smoke,” Moore says. “And there’s no logical explanati.