Words and life …

… Opinion | Swimming in Words With Oliver Sacks - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Oliver chuckled, then went on to describe an elaborate dream he’d had that night in which he was stuck on an alien planet where anthropomorphic clouds turned menacing and “murderously” tipped over the Land Rover he was driving — “a cloud nightmare,” he added, as if it were hardly his first. He had written the note upon waking at 5 a.m., so as not to forget it. (He reported his dreams to the Freudian psychoanalyst he saw twice a week.) “Nepholopsia,” he told me, “either means ‘seeing clouds’ or ‘being enveloped by clouds.’” His brow furrowed — wait a moment, now he wasn’t so sure. “Let’s look it up in the good book,” and together we proceeded straight to the OED (“My Bible,” as Oliver, a devout atheist, often referred to it).

A devout atheist who sees a Freudian analyst twice a week. Ah, the varieties of religious experience.