Dreaming of kittens
Originally published at all things snurkle. Please leave any comments there.
So, as I drifted in and out of sleep this morning around 8ish, I had this dream, that I had this DVD or something that I was showing to someone, that when played in this special player, produced virtual reality kittens. Really. The idea was that you had the kittens, and they made happy noises and you could pet them and it would make you smile and feel better.
During the demonstration, I placed my hand into the virtual kittens, and one of them grabbed onto my fingers and clawed the snot of out them when I went to remove them, so I had to go into a menu and delete the bugger.
The dream took a turn, and I’ve lost the rest of it. But I do know that when I woke up, my right index finger was hurting. I examined it, and discovered the whole side of it is scratched up with short, straight cuts.
My only explaination is that Spike was being particularly needy this morning, demanding attention as soon as I was slightly stiring, and at some point, he must have had a battle with my hand while it was under a pillow or a blanket. So, here I get to sit, with a slightly painful finger. I even have a scratch under the nail! Geeez.
It’s interesting how your brain can craft a story based on input it is receiving that you are not even aware of. I do feel that our dreams are trying to tell us something, and that something is some virtual story to help us process the data that has become jammed in the works, as it were. I read somewhere that an important part of dreaming is to present the logic parts of our brains with a false reality, so that it can ‘practice’ a response. Example, you are having a dream over and over about falling out of a window. The reason, according to this story I read that I can’t cite, is that you have a low level fear of falling out of a window, and as such, your brain is running it through ’simulations’ so that you can work out what to do and how to cope. It made a lot of sense to me, as I tend to have dreams that are take-offs from reality and the things that I experience.