illiterate

I woke up at about four o’clock this morning after waking from a dream in which My Darling B came straight to my desk at work from a meeting where she got a copy of a report that I wrote.

She handed her copy to me. Even though I wrote it, I didn’t recognize it, probably because I couldn’t read it. Whenever I’m given anything to read in my dreams, I can’t read a word of it. It’s all just gibberish, like this: Etaoin shrudlu epsi mundus feri abundus wubba dispi lorem ipsem. Except I can’t even make the sounds of the words in my head, because I don’t know the sounds the letters make. Like if I were show Chinese ideograms and asked to say them out loud. I don’t have language any more. I become totally illiterate.

The report was filled with columns of numbers that she said didn’t add up. She had scribbled notes all over it to point out the errors. I tried to add them up in my head, but had the same problem with the numbers that I had with the words: I had no idea how to add. I tried over and over, but I simply couldn’t do it.

And then I woke up. And I thought, Geeze, that was stupid. I would never try to add numbers in my head in real life. In real life, I would just go to my computer, find the report and the spread sheet that I used to add up all those numbers, and figure out where I went wrong.

When I dozed off, I was right back in that dream again, trying to add up the numbers. That went on for quite a while before I woke up again to berate myself some more for not looking up the report on the computer.

And I dozed off. And I was right back in the dream. And so on.

So what I’m saying is, I feel like I started work at four o’clock this morning. I’m a little tired now.