A large airship crashed onto a hilltop and burst into flame, silhouetting people who tried to escape, but...
A friend gave me a meat-cutting board, with channels for the blood. Eww.
So why'd it become three cats worshiping the sun?
CAUTION: NUDITY
A hunter catches a Rabbit-Eared Doe by her yard-long ears, pulls on them like reins, and mates with her!
She doesn't object; maybe ear-pulling's normal for her. Should I intervene? I can't tell if this is love or rape!
CAUTION: STRANGE FURRY SEX
I'm a telepathic rabbit defending our world from space-laser attack. We do, but do we modernize too much?
CAUTION: IDEAS
I asked my dreams why I had no more sexual desire for my rage-prone boyfriend. I dream
a nature show says "Rabid dogs can't be cured" and shows the horrible wounds they inflict...
CAUTION: THERAPIST TRIVIALIZES URGENT DREAM-WARNING
A precognitive dream about levitating snake girls, raccoons, and lunar eclipses.
CAUTION: MY SNAKE BREASTS
Suddenly I hate and fear black kids in school! The counselor says I'm clinically paranoid: I need drugs!
My dad says "How strange, how sad." And goes home to light a candle at his shrine to the Confederacy...
CAUTION: INDUCED RACISM
My friend Chris gets tied up at the office--that's his job, looking martyred! But when the boss is away...
CAUTION: NUDITY
Radar O'Reilly's teddy bear is stolen. He builds spy-planes to find it. One morning the camp wakes to find...
In the recording studio, some background noise. Isolated and amplified, it's a chorus of
inhuman voices praising an unknown deity. The song becomes a mandala pulling me in...
by Jenny Badger Sultan, 1999/5/15, 6/12 & 7/14, a painting based on 3 dreams
I'm in the Hypogeum, an ancient Maltese dream-temple. I join some women
staging a ritual; a little girl draped in a web plays the role of an insect...
The rest of us heavenly bodies have each other, but from the Sun's viewpoint, we're just rubble. Alone...
In the Cave of the Ant Ambassador, I meet his mate, a beautiful translucent fox named
Raethe. Way happier with her mate (& body!) than in that dream just two months ago...
twin dreams predicting their children and nation will prosper.
Ragnhild sees a lovely tree rooted in her pain and blood;
Halfdan sleeps with pigs and dreams he has a great head of hair...
CAUTION: KIDNAPPING, ARSON, GENERAL BARBARISM (check the date!)
I was just a street rat, but I danced with the princess at a ball, and fell in love. Three rich suitors pulled their blades...
Strange beings from the realm of Platonic Ideals rain down like meteors on San Francisco.
I work as a tour guide, teaching the newbies not to step in front of a bus...
CAUTION: CRUSHED IDEALS
Women rain out of the sky. People shrug "Suicides." I don't believe it--and what if one falls on me?
CAUTION: SEXIST BLINDNESS TO VIOLENCE
In Rainbow Food Co-op, a huge statue of a sleeping woman emerged from the floor, shedding shoppers...
I'm in an alt-world Berkeley where mythic creatures shop on College Avenue. Marigold
the unicorn flirts with me. Rainbow Dash the pegasus has turned male. Very very male...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY (AND CRUDITY)
In our steamy future, after the cities drown, I'm hiking through Rainbow Tunnel, when I meet a holy man...
Why wait for the Rapture when you can use a chinup machine and raise yourself off that cross?...
CAUTION: NUDE PSEUDO-CRUCIFIXION, SACRILEGIOUS SELF-HELP
I saw a red screen, as if formed by flowing blood. On it, a hand wrote elliptical integrals.
I knew they were from Lakshmi. As soon as I woke, I committed them to writing...
1: My dad can't see my world. Literally can't see my world...
2: The House of Busyness is unlivable--busy, crowded, noisy...
3: Achievement takes twelve factors; any one can block you...
A Borges story of a were-tigress provokes a dream of a ranch
crawling with weird were-women. Weird, but I LIKE them...
CAUTION: NUDE CREATURES
Only at age 33 did Marc Liblin at last meet someone who spoke his dream language.
He married her, and moved to Rapa Iti, the only place in the world it's spoken...
I was just sitting, minding my own business, when these
golden wedge-birds and a tiny flying white mare divebombed me...
My sister hoists us up to the Goddess's country too early, or too late: the ice is thawing, treacherous...
Millay dreams her lover's attacked in the street, and wakes to realize it's already happened; he's lost.
The wildcat Rare Bit Fiends slinks out of the hills to stalk and maul
dreamers--until one day she rears up to teach a dream workshop...
Bob is at the window asking to be let into my house. He is dressed as Santa Claus; but I think he's really...
CAUTION: MURDER ATTEMPT
My parents invite me out to dinner, but there's a rattlesnake under the table,
and my mom chases it up my leg. I wake to find two holes in my knee...
I dreamed I was riding a huge toy train, and a gigantic rattlesnake was at the controls...
My girlfriend Raven dreams I keep poking her awake,
while I dream that a giant raven gives me weird advice...
In a church-tent, I find glowing pictures of mine I've never seen awake. One's half-done; I work on it.
I wake, and read how Jung, in a Ravenna church, saw luminous images he later learned burned centuries ago!
CAUTION: NUDE STAINED GLASS
A raven summons a levitating mirror that shows her face as a human, and
tries out moods & expressions based on Tarot cards plucked from a tree...
20,000 years from now, a deer-harpist named Razi finds the Holy Wino's not quite the ruin he seems...
CAUTION: BAD PENGUINS, DEER NUDITY, RUDE DRUNK
A man slowly walled in by neighbors till he died, is now a mad, murderous ghost.
And he's me! Can I exorcise MYSELF?
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
How do we make dream narratives readable, when so many
readers are brainwashed to think they're nonsense?
Jung Chang’s exposé of Mao's brutal deeds and legacy
provoke dreams of leaders who don't listen--till I scream...
My dream shows me how one world can be a fiction within another that's a fiction within the first!
Dreams aren't simulations but windows into worlds. So be nice to dream-figures! Turns out you ARE one...
My city's invaded and occupied. I become a gigantic Owl and fight with impossible stamina.
But in the end I'm dead, stuffed, on a museum wall. Can I let go NOW?
CAUTION: WAR
I was trapped in a Handmaid's Tale dystopia; I was a mannequin, naked &
helpless. I couldn't even walk. But I hid one rebellious act: I kept a diary...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY, CARTOON DYSTOPIA
Sarashina adopts a stray cat with oddly refined manners. Her sister dreams the cat tells of her
last life, as the daughter of a high official. The cat does seem to understand human speech...
First I try to break the sound barrier like my girlfriend. Nope!
Then I fly slowly to her apartment. Nothing flashy, but I make it.
Last, I zoom back to ancient China, where I find a candle-lit shrine dedicated to... me?
Puzzled me why I (the girl on the left) was so outraged about the gift of a perfectly nice levitating flower...
CAUTION: NUDITY, INGRATITUDE, WITCHCRAFT, ELVIS
Even after the Resurrection, a mother and daughter still have issues to clean up...
I DREAM I buy a record I've wanted. But someone warns "You'll have trouble with it; you should have gone to another store."
I WAKE as my phone rings. "A clerical error in our records will delay the supplies you ordered." Wish I'd picked another store...
Is our brain trying to tell us something that, evidently, we haven't heard the last 70 times? Or is the
dream-manufacturing area feeling a little lazy? I have no idea, but here are some of my "classics"...
Julie keeps dreaming that she gives birth to a cat, or a part-cat baby...
CAUTION: NUDITY, BIRTH, UNBIRTH, REBIRTH...
Trapped in elementary school, Julie is forced to study the alphabet
until she declares "I'm a professional cartoonist, goddammit!"...
Ann Marten kept dreaming that her stepdaughter had not eloped but was buried under a nearby red barn...
CAUTION: MURDER
I was timid. Red scared me. But this huge confident dream-beast hinted at a new energy...
I was at a nice party when a wild horse burst in and insisted on taking me into a wilderness...
CAUTION: CUT-OFF ADVENTURE?
I'm in my home town, but at two times at once! Murderous boys explain why: I died here in 1861...
Mt Everest is snowfree and red; in the next dream I redden a sandstone cave with ochre. I feel uneasy...
DREAM: I climb a stair to a surreal space where kids dance in tights spattered with wet red paint.
NEXT DAY: I watch Wednesday--Wednesday Addams dances & gets spattered with wet red paint...
CAUTION: NUDITY, ESP SPECULATION
Calmly, I watch a girl trapped in a lab try to escape, and die; and watch a man lose his head to a hungry thing...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
You're looking down on a landscape at something red, scalloped and twisty. A barrier or a path to follow?
DREAM: I see the leaves outside turning from red to green, not green-to-red as usual in fall.
AWAKE: I've been dating two boys called Red and Green. Guess my dreams have chosen...
As a boy I dreamt my uncle (a calm man) glared at me in red rage; I was terrified. A decade later, in a bar...
I dreamt I saw, over a balcony rail, bright-colored, spectacular scenery. Years after in Arizona, I took a detour...
I face two gunmen fleeing an invasion of dragons I support--since inside I'm a dragon. But I won't hurt them. Why?
I'm not a normal wolf: I'm a were-woman. When I turn wolf again, I'm in heat; but I want to be alone! So...
CAUTION: SEX TALK
The moon's a sailing ship propelled not by wind but light: the light of night-movies. Dreams...
Night. A mirror-maze of contradictory preachings. But in the secret mermaid pool, I find love.
Then... sphinx-angels war in the air! A war of riddles. Can I, a batwinged devil, make peace?
CAUTION: SEX, NUDITY, MEAN ANGELS, AND ONE HAPPY DEVIL
I dreamed a tired soldier visited an oracle or priestess,
who hummed a simple tune and provided refuge...
The jewels in the hoard had strange powers, but the advice of the dragon guarding them was even stranger...
I dream of a therapist who allows kids to regress to crying babies; they take weeks
to re-mature to face the present. Will it work for me? Can't see why not...
An insecure girl who looks like my anima is rehearsing a controversial love scene with an alien wolf...
These days I'm doubtful about both an afterlife AND utter extinction.
Was Shakespeare wrong about what gets buried, what lives on?
Reindeer linked by their heads--curiously analogous to language, or culture, or the Web, isn't it...
Now and then I model. I'm offered a gig doing ads for Trump--at $1000 a session! Tempting, but no.
As I go home, my cabbie is shocked--"I'd take that gig!" "But would you really?"...
CAUTION: HARSH TO COMPROMISERS
A middle-class girl rejects me, and a newsman declares my politics irrelevant. "Liberal media" my ass...
CAUTION: POLITICS
Famine. Our Tibetan monastery's prayers are answered. A caravan of yaks comes over the pass, bearing...
Wilkins visits his parents in a dream. Only they think he's a ghost, and panic--in the real world...
I'm an abused girl turning tricks to survive. But this is San Francisco: I join a prostitutes' co-op, and meet...
CAUTION: PROSTITUTES WITH SELF-RESPECT, OH NO!
I dream I'm telling a tall tale about a cat-funeral with hung-over mice pulling the hearse. But it turns a bit too real...
A refugee girl crawls into my bed. We become lovers. I protect her. But over time... am I holding her back?
CAUTION: ABUSE? OR NOT?
Lounging in the sun, I do a magical make-over--molding my bones to give myself more room for
intuition, judgment, nerve--all the while feeling shallow & indulgent for self-improving!...
The mysterious glyphs above the model's head are dream-language, warning me to...
CAUTION: NUDITY
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?
A horde of demented dwarves invades Market Street, jumping up & down, shaking the skyscrapers...
Despite corporate crooks, missiles and floods, Angelina Jolie and I find the lock of mermaid hair...
I'm a rebel leader released from prison only to find my people beaten down
and malnourished. I swear to eject our oppressors despite the price of war. ...
Turns out you can float in deep space without a helmet.
But there's this weird disturbing smell, like an electrical fire...
Dreams and other revelations shouldn't be dissected--they need to be reveiled, not revealed...
CAUTION: INTENSE MYSTICISM
All I usually hide, I strip bare, & vice versa. Like that Playboy cartoon with the stockings & gloves--the Femlin!
Behaviorally, too, I reverse all my habits and judgments. Perverse, self-destructive! But my life still works...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY. ALSO, A LOSER SUCCEEDS.
When whites invade, two shapeshifting Native American cubs resist architecturally...
Biking, I find myself chanting a dinosaur name--Rhamphorhynchus. I don't even know what kind it is.
At home I open a novel, and a Rhamphorhynchus appears, politely defined for me by our obliging universe...
CAUTION: E.S.P.?
My sister and I played games based on the Rhine Institute's ESP studies. Our scores were not random...
DREAMS: 1: I can't afford language classes. 2: A beautyqueen rigs a stargate; I kill monsters & sell their bones...
NEXT DAY: I'm asked "Why don't you get a language degree?" I can't afford it! I go home & watch Dr Who...
A stunning girl fixes a spacetime portal. Smugglers kill alien monsters & sell their ashes as a drug...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND CREEPY DISPOSAL OF BODIES
After seeing 150 years of family photos, I dream of being teased by time-traveling cheerleaders, and...
I was in the grave. Worse, a living skeleton was trying to crush my ribs. Though terrified, I fought back, and...
I dreamed I met a wealthy werewolf. My parents were leftists and told me the rich are wicked--but...
CAUTION: INDECENT T-SHIRT, INDECENT WEREWOLF
A rich serial killer in a sports car flaunts his virtual immunity, till I go after him in a light plane...
A movie version of heaven. Souls line up for rejuvenation from a great
fountain. But fat old rich guys crash the line, demanding to be first...
CAUTION: UGLY NUDITY, UGLY BEHAVIOR, POLITICALLY PREDICTIVE
I'm told a girl in an armored nutrient-bath wheechair has my shoes. I need them back. But
to get them I have to answer the riddle written on her breasts. We both get a bit distracted...
CAUTION: CARTOON BREASTS
Predawn. The beach. A gypsy goddess rises from the waves. She says
"Begin to ride the gods of the Hand, in London." I say "What?"...
CAUTION: CRYPTIC BUT FIRM
I'm single and feeling shy. So I asked my dreams for an image of my true love, and got...
CAUTION: SEX
I'm not ambivalent--I'm confused! I live here by the Rift Zone and I don't. I'm single and not. Two lives!...
A mad scientist sneaks me into a museum that holds the Ring of Power I made at 14. I put it on, and
slip into the spirit world--as a dragon! An ice-drake sent by Sauron comes to duel me for my Ring...
Six women in six similar feudal empires swap places repeatedly. They can never meet,
but they can leave notes, each helping out the next soul to swap in...
CAUTION: ADVANCED DREAMWORK
I knew the universe worked perfectly. Its existence was joyous, and I was part of it. This was imageless insight,
but to aid recall, I summoned images; I depicted the universe by a flowing circle of stars. And I was one...
I'm a raft guide on a circular river that may just be reincarnation. A girl in my
tour group jumps ship: she dreads the white water of rocky relationships ahead...
CAUTION: METAPHYSICS, SEX, WEAK SOULS...
Widely held notions manifest easier. I could forge Sauron's Ring, and it'd really work! But do I want to?...
One day, in the ruins of an American city whose name was lost, I met a Ringman under an oak...
CAUTION: GROSS WORK, IF YOU CAN GET IT
I'm in the park, feeling sad, till a girl on the lawn near me semaphores a message via rings and turquoise...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM
Earth has rainbow rings. They're braided like Saturn's, so their shadows create tinted microclimates...
A dream of innocent incest turns guilty, growing to a war of ghosts versus a cult of sexy but dishonest psychics...
CAUTION: INCEST ISSUES, NIGHTMARE
I tossed the crystal decanter of my self into the river, and watched it float away...
Leading a party out of slavery, I got off the road when God warned me to. He insisted I must ford a cold river.
Turned out the slaveowner had posted a reward at the station ahead; we were saved by divine guidance...
Eleven years after I dreamt of that green dress and green riverbank and dreamy day, I was convalescing in...
The white road is my life history, told in women: friends, lovers, relatives, ancestors--and one past life...
They were both beauties and look rather feline to me--I'm drawn to feline beauties still, and wonder...
CAUTION: INCEST ISSUES
Friends, and lovers, and some who got away. And the big question mark in the future...
"Go back! Wrong way!" says the sign--not because the past is dead, because it isn't...
CAUTION: INCEST ISSUES
The Rem Road I climb every night, from flesh to spirit, earth to sky. Though tonight, all these
wounded skateboarders worry me! And my own bruises say I overdid it in contact improv today...
Night. A jungle full of prowling lions and leopards. So naturally, I get up on a rock and roar back...
Our teams search through fountains and pavilions, finding & trading the glowing stones.
None of the magic makes me go lucid, but as we sail toward the finish line...
Blake was broke. Couldn’t typeset Songs of Innocence and Experience.
But in a dream, his brother advised him...
Jeffers, that harsh, visionary, ecological poet, seems drunk on Darwinism,
blind to kindness--or is he just reporting Big Sur's true, mean spirit(s)?
CAUTION: LITERARY AND MYSTICAL
I'm with friends in a cafe. A robot beggar scuttles in and says I must be a saint and give, give, give.
I eject the robo-nag. But it comes back in the form of an Old Testament prophet with the same spiel!
This time it takes fists. At last I give the nagging saint the old heave-ho, yelling "AND STAY OUT!"...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALIST BLASPHEMY
After too much TV, I dream I'm plotting against a regime of suave, treacherous magical beings. But
a unicorn sorceress suggests I enlist the robots. She's right--they find plutocratic thaumocracy ugly...
CAUTION: ANTI-CAPITALIST
I'm a robot in high school. I have my first dream, but I'm deaf to its message cuz it's not spectacular...
At 16, Rochan dreamt she rose from her body and explored outside, seeing a white car and brown bag. She
woke--and checked! White car, brown bag. Now, adult, she trusts her dream intuitions about larger things...
Floating in my parents' house, I get trapped in free-fall! How can I get a grip? (Nothing symbolic here!)
A proud angry picture-poem during a hard time, when great gifts flowed through my hands...
A friend's tragic accident confines him to disco roller skates for life! Worse yet, he's in a Rocky Relationship...
CAUTION: "ROCKY HORROR" REFS, SEX
As Roger, I can't get enough of Tina, though I know she lies and steals. After she vanishes with
my leather jacket, I hunt for her. Spot her shoplifting, and I want to catch her, but let go at last...
In a bar I meet a guy who claims the Army hired him to try
to inspire crops to grow taller by marching tall soldiers past...
I'm sitting in a car teetering in the front row of a theater balcony. By me, R. is licking a cherry-
flavored sucker. As the film crew yells "Roll it!" my foot slips on the brake and I do...
The posse lost their enemy; reluctantly they asked a tracking detective--me.
They found him where I knew he'd be--from eating my Rolodex cards...
I was a robot who had a soul--till the Reagans stole it! I track them down, and
demand it back. Simply confronting them works--the hole inside me is filled...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC POLITICS
DREAM: a distinctive house with a tempting green field by it. But the field's forbidden...
DAY: Ronald's analyst had rented that house--but the adjacent field was forbidden...
CAUTION: E.S.P. THEORIES
In the woods I catch a beautiful rooster. It doesn't struggle; it turns into a dog.
We make friends. We sleep together in the wood; I dream we grow old together.
The dog's owner wakes me; farewell, dog! But at least the funeral has caviar...
I'm a Brazilian in the Olympic waterfall-jumping finals. The Russian & American cheat--threaten my family.
I snap! Fight recklessly, knocking them off their ropes. We all tumble down the cliff...
CAUTION: BULLYING, VIOLENT REVENGE
The mayor declares war on bikers, blames us for gridlock! I dream of Rosa Parks' influence and realize...
We're swallowed by Swamp Sofas and enslaved to The Man Who Prays on Us. Time to grow some thorns!
Gloom clung to me & I skipped the dance. I begged Frances to ride in a safe car, but coming home...
A psychedelic study of Henri Rousseau's painting of a flutist in the jungle,
revealing how I really see the world...
The ship I was on going down in the Irish Sea. It was not till yesterday,
looking at an old paper, I saw about the sinking of the Rowan in the Irish sea...
DAY: Rowland needed papers for a legal case, but couldn't find where his father had stashed them.
DREAM: his long-dead dad told R.J. a lawyer R.J. he'd never heard of had them, 'but the man may need
some reminding', and gave details of Portuguese gold and a drinking bout. Next day, it worked. But how?
CAUTION: GHOST? E.S.P.?
Roya's mother-in-law had a painful death. Roya dreamt she met her, a joyous bird,
who had forgotten the pain of death just as we forget the pain of birth...
CAUTION: NICE, BUT NOT EVIDENCE
My mom and sister take me to see a bondage film. But the movie steals my pants! I should have known...
CAUTION: WORSE THAN PEEWEE HERMAN
I dreamed of a woman whose jeep stalls on the Antarctic ice. Along comes the ghost of a Volkswagen...
My dead friend lost patience with the local dump, so I beat the trash--and out came shining people...
THAT DAY: My bandmates want to record crowd-pleasing songs. I want to record our strangest ones...
THAT NIGHT: In a woman's art studio, I'm struck by a low, feline, muscular unicorn mare, carved
out of a giant ruby. I ask, and she says "Oh, that's not mine. I found it in the trash"...
I just wanted to imagine getting licked by a nice friendly escapist dog on a nice shaggy rug, but...
CAUTION: BESTIALITY! SEX! METAPHYSICAL DOUBTS!
The Inner Theater. I'm duelling someone who keeps changing the rules. But so can I... can we make a deal?
Think of your dreams as a rainforest, clearcut every morning--unless you make the effort to remember...
CAUTION: TINY NAKED ANGELS
NIGHTMARE: a huge horse goes wild, leaps a fence and chases me.
NEXT DAY: a horse does just that--yet every detail's different...
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
I'm a small child in Finland writing out the meaning of three ancient runes
about trees, ships and elbow room. They seem to hold serious advice...
A Japanese high school athlete has no friends, till she starts meeting animal spirits on her long solo runs...
I couldn't make it to Spain to see the Running of the Bulls, so I found an American equivalent...
I'm a flightless bird hopping down a line of marble columns rising from the sea, as they topple behind me...
A rather feline runner poised for the starting gun...
I'm in a vast cavern full of skyscrapers--sucked into the underworld. Rusty steel plates cover
their now-useless windows. In the shadows, horned, fanged businessdevils scurry by...
It was way too late to call, but an irrational urge made me wake my friend up and pester her until...