« Explanation of the Word Attack Dream »

In About Me, it says that I like to dream about being attacked by words. The truth is, it terrified me while it was happening, but it was a pretty special occasion. I'll explain:

About two months ago, I lucidly dreamt that I was brushing my teeth while examining yellow stickie notes all around my bathroom mirror. I had written single words like gray, cat, exacerbate, and identify on all of them, and as I was brushing, the words began to address me, one at a time, expressing dissatisfaction with their definitions. They wiggled as they enumerated very convincing complaints about grammar and nuances - gray was very outspoken about nuances. None of the words offered me solutions, so I spit out my toothpaste, stretched out my fingers, wrote their definitions on more stickies, and carelessly switched them all around. Over their murmuring, I asked, "Are you happy now? I've given you new places in the English language!"

There was a long pause as each of the words understood what this meant for them. Then, in unison, they started wailing that I had wronged them, demanding that I return their former definitions. I yelled back, "I can't! You are different everywhere now! In dictionaries, in people's minds, even my own! I can't put you back! We'll never know what you were before!" I started to feel guilty and hopeless, and in their silence the words detached themselves from their stickies, threw themselves up in the air, and began to rain down on me, wetting my skin with ink. I sat down on the toilet seat in despair, watching my pajamas darken, and I wondered what would happen to me in the morning.

Then I woke up.

Maybe the way I keep my desktop had an effect on my subconscious:

Comments

[eparrie]

this is gorgeous.