i awoke from a dream at about five am. in and of itself, that is a great sign, as with rare exceptions i dont sleep well enough at night these days to even be able to dream in my normal way.
but the dream was completely disorienting. they wanted to prepare me for a new surgery. the doctors were using these little tags to identify potential problems and to get a feel for my psychological state . . this last was important because the surgery was to be a kind of brain surgery.
but they were imposing a maddening rule – every word i used on the little tags could only be used once. over and over i would be confronted with a situation like this: i would write a word on the tag in answer to a question and be told, you already used that word. someone would point to the tag where the word was used in the vast proliferation of tags.
i kept trying to find multilingual synonyms. . i would write one time "pee" and be told nope you used that. "urine" id venture. . nope. hmm, "소변"? no look its written down here. why cant you do this?. . you need to help us to take care of you but how can we when you cant do this simple thing? finally, "orina" and a dismissive smile but quickly dissolving into a new unanswerable question.
the dream went on and on like that. . . a linguists nightmare hospital stay. do you realize how dangerous this will be if you dont have the right labels?
crying tears of impotence.
Medically-induced post traumatic stress symptoms, Jared. Dreams like this and unacknowledged feelings of this stuff – while awake – are very common, and your tears of vulnerability and fear are your processing all that has happened on all its levels with all its implications. It’s amazing what our minds can do to us. You’re smart, so this may be already something you’ve thought of, but to me it sounds like your fear of not having all the words is about the tools that you need to survive this. You have them, Jared. You will always have all the words and all the tools that you need.