The King of Pointland

Dream a Little Dream

This, from Oliver Sacks's recent piece in the New Yorker (sorry, not available on-line to the unwashed masses):

Sometimes, as one is falling asleep, there may be a massive, involuntary jerk-a myoclonic jerk-of the body. Though such jerks are generated by primitive parts of the brain stem (they are, so to speak, brain-stem reflexes), and as such are without any intrinsic meaning or motive, they may be given meaning and context, turned into acts, by an instantly improvised dream. Thus the jerk may be associated with a dream of tripping, or stepping over a precipice, lunging forward to catch a ball, and so on. Such dreams may be extremely vivid, and have several "scenes." Subjectively, they appear to start before the jerk, and yet presumably the entire dream mechanism is stimulated by the first, preconscious perception of the jerk. All of this elaborate restructuring of time occurs in a second or less.

Last night I had a dream. I was in an airport. In fact, it was Seattle Tacoma International Airport. One of the women behind the ticket counter was having some sort of problem with a male customer. What happened next isn't as clear. The female employee either released a biological agent into the airport, or pretended that she had, or maliciously raised the possibility that such an agent had already been released.

Everybody panicked. [ If you're interested, I can explain what recent real-world events prompted this part of the dream. ] It later became apparent that the germ only affected men. Before leaving the airport, all men were required to get vaccinated. After receiving my shot, as I walked to the exit, I rubbed my arm, and it tingled.

Soon thereafter I awoke. I could not feel or locate my right arm. I was not concerned; this has happened to me before. I put my left hand on my right shoulder and, working my way down my bicep, located the missing arm, pinned behind my head. I could feel the skin under my fingers but had absolutely no sensation from the arm itself. It might have belonged to somebody else.

What I find fascinating is that, when my arm grew numb as I slept, my brain concocted this entire airport bio-weapon dream to explain it. I wonder how long that took.