"The Fountain" explained

I saw this movie at the theaters but I didn't really understand it until recently. I think I finally figured it out and if you have not seen it, you may not want to read this first:

So, follow the bouncing ball...

We've been watching this cool new show on Showtime called "Californication" with David Duchovney (aka Fox Mulder) and in that show he has a tattoo on his ring finger to, I assume, demonstrate his dedication to the show's female main character whom he never married. So it got me to thinking that maybe I should do this because as a massage therapist, I never wear my ring anymore. In the movie "The Fountain", after his wife dies, the main character takes an ink quill that his wife had given him and tattoos a ring on his finger. Earlier in the movie, his ring is lost after removing it for surgery. So thinking of all this one day inspired me to dream about "The Fountain" and I solved the puzzle of how the movie ties its three distinct time periods together and what it all means. See, the tattoo is significant because it tells you that the person of the future and the present are the same man and that when he pledges to find a cure for death, he in fact does through ingestion of the tree bark (the Tree of Life). But the tree begins to die and he takes it to Shebulba for, what? Rejuvenation? That's not clear. What's also not clear is the reason for the other tattooing. I speculate it could be for all the wives this man has had or all the ages he's lived. Either way, it's obvious that death is the ending to his "story" but he only realizes it at the end and at the direction of his dead wife whom he is still haunted by either in his own mind or his physical world. The story of the Conquistador is her fictional tale which inspires and directs him ultimately into closing the circle, the ring if you will, of life and death.

The odd part is that I figured this all out in a dream. Crazy...

:)