by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
A friend says lucid dreaming doesn't matter--you can even fly awake if you clearly will it. So I jump...
An economist gets a job as a dragon guarding a data-treasure.
Heroes plot to slay him, but I trust the dragon more than the heroes...
An amicably divorcing man suddenly turns into an elephant to chase a little red demon! What's going on here?
A black dog leads me into the fairy wood. I'm curious what happens
to those who walk under the tree where the Lightning Tiger lurks....
I'm in a college class studying a bizarre alternate Earth where
anarchist co-ops never evolved and (of all things) money rules all...
CAUTION: SCORNS CAPITALISM
I'm a kid in Nevada around 1950, learning that both my folks are lone wolves who gave me a genetic double dose...
CAUTION: RACIAL THEORY ABOUT... LIBERTARIANS?
I'm a misfit--a mortal in an immortal world. Then I meet a girl with an unpredictable illness...
After a day of troubling conflicts over race & art, I dream I'm handed a hot, heavy, mossy head--is it art, or alive?
I read The Best American Poetry, 2007, but it just isn't, and I find myself writing a Savage Poetic Response...
My dream critiques a non-dream artpiece. Does it only count as dream-art
when your dream urges changes, or is creativity partly knowing when to stop?
Playing Mario Kart, I stray into a darkness where Earth floats, burning.
And then Jesus speaks up! But I carelessly hit the OFF button...
My Japanese friend Kotaro looks at me sternly and shoves his phone inside my chest. In my dreams, a phone
can mean ESP, so when I wake I check the news. A huge quake and tsunami have devastated Japan...
Compulsively honest spirit-women with waterjugs invade my friend's house.
I wake to find my girlfriend's obsessing on hair loss. To calm her, I babble about limb loss...
and wake again to find she was a dream too.
After trespassing in a staff-only part of Faerie, I'm cast out.
Only I'm cast like a seed, meant to grow a new elf circle...
After singing dream songs on stage, I dream of a girl on a talkshow displaying the strangest vagina in history...
CAUTION: NUDITY
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
New moons appear. I try to mash them into a spare Earth, but botch the orbits.
So now, runaway moons rumble down a steep San Francisco hill...
CAUTION: ALWAYS SET PARKING BRAKE
The State tests my art. I worry they'll stereotype me as another Crumb.
So I tell an absurd lie about our governor. But my joke kinda makes sense...
A panel of argumentative gods grant me a spare lifetime of piano practice. It takes that long, but...
My friends are all computer programs. But then, so am I. But it's not so bad, because...
CAUTION: DREAM-PUNS
A thief was breaking in. I tried to flee, but my dad got in the way. Woke up, went out to my car, and found...
War, monsters, plague and bombs are just thrills spicing up
this city rising from a tropical sea on an alien world...
I'm a digital superhero, rubbing red-orange oil into my fake skin. I have six more
colors of oil to rub in, six more chakras to heal. But first things first!...
A lonely little girl plays on a swing in her yard. A shy young faun or satyr
who has a crush on her conjures up a strange gift: a translucent wall of candy...
My doctor says (no exam, no tests) "hidden desires inflame you." I'm skeptical--suspect an infection.
Awake, I test both hints--repression and infection. Antibiotics work! I'm still weird--but not sick.
I wake up in a weird sexual situation. But I'm still dreaming--I wake again
to find I'm in an even weirder sexual situation. But I'm still...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, (ANTI?)ROMANTICISM
I pull my mom's sweater onto my legs but get tangled (and bits of anatomy dangle).
Worse, I'm emulating Jesus. Is this any way to get a date?
CAUTION: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, GENDER MALFUNCTION, MOM MALFUNCTION
I love a girl in a big Singapore clan whose matriarch hates me.
But the omens say confronting her will be disastrous...
Fighting alcoholism, I dream I drink all the booze in a bar, then wake up shaken...
so shaken I reach for the bottles by my bed and drink THEM, then wake up shaken...
and clutch my cat, wondering if I'm still dreaming--will I wake up again?
CAUTION: ALCOHOLIC NIGHTMARE(S)
Despite corporate crooks, missiles and floods, Angelina Jolie and I find the lock of mermaid hair...
I can heal people with a touch. But they don't want to be merely restored, but resculpted...
CAUTION: TRANNIES AND FURRIES LEAVE THE CLOSET
Can dreams have taste and smell, I wonder? That night my dreams set out to show me...
I'm very pregnant and feel bloated. My mom says "That's what you get for not using a condom"...
Girls flash and strip and crawl into bed with me, but I'm blind to their interest--
till I become a snakeboy and discover the real limitations of phallic symbolism...
CAUTION: NUDITY, STUPIDITY
I dream the new Dalai Lama's a kind woman who gives me startling health advice
AND shows me how to fly. The next day...
A demon invades our police station, takes over our captain and lieutenant, and pushes them to fight.
But I know demonic possession can't last long. Our copshow's special effects budget is too limited...
My last two businesses went bust. So I let a giant parrot talk me into interviewing
her people, who've been settling all those alien ruins in Amazonia. Great career move...
I find bargain homes in a hidden tract by the river. I think "My sister's house-hunting, call her!" She calls me...
After seeing the cast of Glee interviewed, I dream I'm a paranoid cripple in music school who goes from...
George Jetson is married to Wilma Flintstone--though they're both big cats.
When George comes home high on mushrooms, he doubts what's on his bed...
CAUTION: CARTOON ADULTERY
I smell smoke. I know I'm dreaming; did my sleeping body scent smoke in my home, and insert it in my dream to warn me?
But the dream sees my worry, and erases the scent to clarify it's symbolic smoke! Now I can finish my nightmare in peace...
I met a woman whose art (and her love for the Earth) inspired me to start a series of paintings with creatures hidden in landscapes...
I'm biking on a crowded, steep San Francisco hill, but at the same time
an inexplicably terrifying office meeting gets superimposed. And
the AI feeding me the virtual office gets all snarky about my fear...
On a cruise to Catalina Island, I find friends, a boyfriend and a magical sea of color...
I'm halfway through a sculpture--a pony-size centauroid covered in fake fur and feathers--folded wings, like a pegasus...
I paddle through the grim streets of Karachi on my belly, on a skateboard,
with my flipper-hands, until at last I reach the border to a Higher Realm...
Miniaturized, smuggled over a border inside a she-wolf's mouth, I long
for where I got briefly hidden--her labia. But healing first, sex later!
CAUTION: FURRY SMUT; WEIRD SCIENCE (BUT REAL!)
In a parallel world, a gliding griflynx displays a brilliant
evolutionary strategy: joy! It's the strongest mate magnet...
I cling alone to the cliffs of Lands End, so when the tsunami hits,
I survive. Had I been in the low, crowded Sunset district I'd be dead...
I find myself in a church-like setting. Above me, couples in 18th century dress dance joyfully.
It provides a wonderful, ‘curious’ moment to pause and reflect... before my journey must continue.
This dreamer is starting to notice certain subtle signs that all
is not normal and this may be a dream. Well, not that subtle...
I was focusing on emitting healing energy from my hands which resulted in
an "electric" flow of energy through my entire body. Later in the dream...
I often dream I'm lost in a strange city, wandering the unfamiliar streets
in search of something unknown, and possibly unknowable...
After asking "Am I ready to say yes to someone new?" I dreamed I met my old love...
A wild troupe of sexy, surreal, centaurlike dancers mostly built from Barbie dolls...
CAUTION: EXPLICIT NUDITY, FUR, BARBIE