(no subject)

[syncategorematic]

No nightmares, exactly, but I am very familiar with academic anxiety dreams and this time I got the mother of all of them. I had to wake up and remember that the presentation in Semantics class I have scheduled for Wednesday is on semantics, is purely in English, is on just one paper, and I've already written the script for it. Because according to my dream, it involved the history of the German language and of Berlin, had to have at least 10% of it entirely in German, and the day before my presentation Ana told me that I should include something on the history of Vienna as well. But I have no time to research the history of Vienna, as in my research, I keep riding up and down escalators, reading about an army captain who, on rescuing people from solitary isolation in caves or beneath the sea, opens with one Livingstone-I-presume joke: "Could you tell me the way to Frederick / Friedlander Street?" Now I know that the real F-street (in my dream) is in London, near Fleet Street that I've walked down once, but I do not find that joke funny, and I give up on integrating the Vienna component, as I have no time. I see a friend walking along the street, and catch up with him, but realize he is not who I thought he was but only one of the Reach for the Top kids I coach, so I go back, down escalators and through Metro and subway and Tube stations, trying to remember my German for that 10%. I can spell "Entschuldigung," that's about it.

I am seriously discombobulated. What I don't like is the constant motif of descent into the underworld (the Tube stations!) and then ascent again. Descent into the long dark tunnel of the soul is the last thing I want, even if I come out of it still knowing nothing about Vienna.