Strange Dreams

[gridlore]

Had this one last night.

I'm watching a Monty Python sketch, John Cleese is working at the local Labour Board, and Eric Idle is looking for work as a rabbit. He's dressed in a rabbit suit, and is quit earnest. Typical Python, but suddenly I realize that I'm not watching this on television, but I'm in the room, and there are a number of people dressed as rabbits besides Idle.

Almost as if on command, all the rabbits and I rise, and leave through a door. No pushing, no speech at all. Behind the door is a long corridor, all in white with numerous doors and side corridors. There are now a ridiculous number of people dressed as rabbits in this hall. As we walk, still in silence (but with the normal sounds of a crowd walking) The rabbits take side corridors and doors, until I'm the last one left, and facing a door at the end of the corridor. I enter without hesitation, and inside is a bed-sized platform, white like everything else. I lay down on it spread-eagle, and begin to float and spin slowly. At no time is there a sensation of fear, just detachment. All at once all the joints in my body "pop" and I wake up utterly terrified.

I have no idea what scared me so, since there was nothing overtly frightening in the dream

Comments

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

Very odd dream -- no real theories on the content, but I can explain the ending. It was what's called a "myoclonal spasm". It happens during light sleep, when sleep paralysis is still imperfectly established, and causes all the large muscles to clench at once. You frequently wake up literally bouncing on the box springs from the force of it.

In its usual wonderful explain-everything-at-all-costs way, the brain happily interprets the sensation as what it feels like -- having been dropped onto the bed from a height. So dreams often end abruptly with some sort of fall (or setup for a fall, like floating in the air). Mine almost invariably involve tripping and falling hard.

Needless to say, the sensation of falling is one of the primary fear-and-adrenaline triggers in humans, as would be expected from a race that used to spend a lot of time sleeping in trees. So you frequently wake up terrified when one of these happens.