Difference and Difference

I was lying on my back last evening on the couch reading Hamlet when I encountered the word "difference," and it affected me. I had to stop, and I was stopped, staring toward the ceiling and walls, when Sanja, a housemate, came into the room. She said hi, got something, and left.

I had had a dream, the night before. Yes, that had been where I'd experienced a peculiarity with that word. Two uses of the word "difference." I'd played a phrase over in my head, having awoken [in] a dreamlike state. I had had the feeling that this phrase was important. I placed several variations of the word in the sentence, in the semantic form in which it had come to me. "Difference;" "differentiation," ... but, finally, I'd had to resolve that the phrase did not make as much sense as I had thought that it had. I'd gone back to sleep.

Then, as I mentioned, this experience recurred to me last evening. I don't know whether I read the word "difference," or just recalled the experience tangentially. Just as Sanja was coming into the room....

Today in the post there is a package for Sanja from Germany. The name of the company from which it was posted is "Differenz & Differenz."

— 25 May, 2006