Perceived Realities

As I gradually come awake, I'm aware of the last fading remnant of my dream sliding away into oblivion; the tail end quickly glimpsed as it slithered away into the dark door, all that's left to remember the experience by...
Except 'glimpsed' isn't the right word.
It took a while to process, but I now realize why this dream had this strange yet familiar texture, falling between visual, symbolic, auditory, where meaning was there but the source felt so chimaeric...
I was dreaming in text.
I was dreaming in that mental state that translates letters on a page into image, sound and smell, without source and without engaging an awareness of the act of conscious reading.
Huh.
Explains a bit of how dreams can be so hard to remember... you're trying to reconstruct the act of reading, not recall.