Thank you Oliver Sacks
Aug. 27th, 2004 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaI have wondered about this for many many years, asked the b.org hivemind once, and before that the Sayers list I frequented, two of the most erudite gatherings I have ever encountered, and nobody knew. And then Sacks just drops it in to his recent New Yorker essay:
"Sometimes, as one is falling asleep, there may be a massive, involuntary jerk - a myloconic jerk - of the body. Thogh such jerks are generated in 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 preumably the enitre 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."
My myloconic jerk dreams are usually stairs, occasionally stepping off a curb.
Also, in flea trivia, celebrity name-dropping division, I once served dinner to Oliver Sacks, when he lectured at my college. He asked what the fish on the plate was, and I had to go ask, and the cook said "molly molly" which I repeated, and Sacks looked perplexed then came up with "mahi mahi." And I felt dumb (I'd never heard of it.)
"Sometimes, as one is falling asleep, there may be a massive, involuntary jerk - a myloconic jerk - of the body. Thogh such jerks are generated in 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 preumably the enitre 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."
My myloconic jerk dreams are usually stairs, occasionally stepping off a curb.
Also, in flea trivia, celebrity name-dropping division, I once served dinner to Oliver Sacks, when he lectured at my college. He asked what the fish on the plate was, and I had to go ask, and the cook said "molly molly" which I repeated, and Sacks looked perplexed then came up with "mahi mahi." And I felt dumb (I'd never heard of it.)