today at work i was proofing a grant for someone, and i came across these letters:
"f"
"i"
"v"
"e"
lined up, and i said the word in my mind and the number came to me, and i almost moved on to the next word, but something didn't seem right. i looked back at the letters, and they didn't make sense, and i just kept staring at the letters put together and wondered what they meant. then i started telling myself that it's "5", but it just didn't look like it. and i had a hard time convincing myself that those letters equal "5". i tried to forget about it, and just kept on reading.

it reminds me of when i was little and would pick a word like "couch" and say it over and over until it was just a sound. then i'd keep saying it and try to remember what it meant, and when it came back to me, i'd marvel at how a strange sound could also be an object. how our representation of something could become so separated from not only it's meaning, but unattached to the object.

after my grandpa willard had a stroke, we visited him at the hospital in scottsbluff. he'd lay in bed and be half asleep and sometimes say something random. i was 15 or 16, looking for meaning in everything and would create tragically beautiful stories around his comments, springing from the well of his secret past where handwritten letters were like gold, bread was baked not bought, and things were classy and romantic - when grandpa was most likely talking about lunch time. "to be in his mind," i thought, "with all those secrets." the images in my mind were as disconnected from his life as the the word "shoe" and a shoe had become in his.