THAT DAY

For months I've been taking seven drugs and herbs for lifelong fevers probably caused by Lyme disease plus babesiosis ("Nantucket fever"); my list may be useful for anyone with chronic fatigue or recurrent fevers--Lyme or not.

My treatment's been working--for the first time in decades, I can control my symptoms. I worried I was missing dosages or skimping--I don't measure them carefully, just dump spoonfuls in--but today I noticed I'm running out of the bulk herbs right on schedule! I ordered 225 days ago, and I bought a pound each (c. 450) grams--so I really HAVE been taking an average of 2 grams daily just by eyeballing them. Impressive.

Insomnia at bedtime, so I read N.K. Jemison's Kingdom of Gods...

THAT NIGHT

I'm on the board of a political campaign or civic organization, but I feel out of my depth among these movers & shakers in their power suits. One director, a middle-aged white guy, keeps teasing a bright nerdy woman who's the board's expert on the web and social media. She goes by the webname 2010, pronounced "Two-oh-one-oh". But he keeps saying "Twenty-ten" to annoy her. When she objects, he says "It's the same number however you say it, you pompous twit."

At last I get insulting, say "No it's not. Twenty-ten is either a date or very sharp eyesight; two-oh-one-oh is binary for ten [sic]. Your math-ignorance is embarrassing us all. It's like calling our Japanese boardmember Chinese, and defending your mistake by saying 'So what? You speak the same language after all.'"

I wake still convinced 2010 is binary for 10! Only as I write the number down does the dream-trance break: 2010 can't be binary, not with a 2 in it (and even if the notation allowed 2s, ten would be 210 not 2010). Instantly, I know "Two-oh-one-oh" was base three--trinary! Work it out: 2x27 + 0x9 + 1x3 + 0x1 = 57.

My age. Oops. She's ME.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• The apparent math error--base three, not binary: not noise, but signal! Freud and Jung claimed the dreaming mind can't handle logic or math. Wrong! 2-0-1-0 has three readings, and every one has meaning:
  1. 2010: two years earlier, almost to the day, my mom died. She named me executor for her estate, which turned out to be complex. For the next year I lived and breathed numbers!
  2. My apparent error here, "10", is the age I was hospitalized for high fever that probably marked my initial infection with Lyme and babesia.
  3. 57 is my present age. 47 years of undiagnosed infection!
• So what's the message? I caught Lyme at age ten, but I'm not a powerless kid now; I'm 57, with knowledge, abilities and resources I lacked then. I gave the experts half a lifetime to cure me and they failed. Trust my own treatment! I doubted I could even get the dosages right--but I did.
• White guy's mockery: last night, I dreamed I was a teenage girl trying to save some ant people from farmers poisoning them. They just ignored me--"stupid girl".
• Trinary not binary : 1: Kingdom of Gods has a non-Christian Trinity with magical powers; the reference hints that magic/intuition/spirit is my native language, not binary logic or base-ten conventionalism. 2: Trinary is the name of the dolphins' language in David Brin's Uplift books; a language fostering both logic and ESP.
• ACTION: trust that my dreams do know what they're talking about. Not noise, signal!
• ACTION: persevere with antibiotics, herbs AND dreamwork. West and East, logic and ESP. Incompatible? Only if you listen to fools in suits. Or doctor's coats!

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