I like bad taste. Taste always tasted like another Anglo conspiracy to keep me from having fun...
A bounty hunter stalks me through a jungle, but lucidity turns a potential nightmare to joy...
A dragon killed a friend, and threatened worse. I had to fight.
We dueled mid-air, over Lake Tahoe...
My sister and I are playing cards in the air high over Lake Tahoe.
The stakes? The world. But we both cheat...
A friend stockpiling for Armageddon shows me what I thought
was lust is really a need to learn... pelvic anatomy? Why?
CAUTION: NUDITY; LANGUAGE; WE FIND OUT WHY
Eileen rose out of her body. A man dared her "How far away can you go?", then stole her body!
Jony and their daughter Kim had nightmares of invasion too; all three woke up shaken...
An alien is taking over our world, and I feel so helpless that even when I wake I want to just forget the dream...
I'm in Japan, where Rumiko Takahashi tells me of a tragic chicken
who longs to be a lounge singer...
I'm a boy from a Southwestern tribe whose rite of passage is a bike race.
I wear a jasper pendant with mysterious powers...
I've been meeting, talking with, and turning into unicorns in my dreams these last few years...
CAUTION: ANTI-FUNDAMENTALIST
A murderer was stalking Mt Tam. I dreamed I met the murderous spirit; only
by allying with small dancers from inside the mountain could we defeat it...
CAUTION: NEW AGE
Two of us meditation students dreamed one night that we were ice skating in Holland, helping each other...
No, not a guy with a tan. Yves Tanguy was a sailor who became a Surrealist.
When I was nine or ten, his work inspired me to try my first landscape drawings...
In a near-future dictatorship, Democrats are afraid to take any action. But in a suburban lot,
I find a burned-out tank. I need to find these rebels who can defeat military-grade repression...
CAUTION: GRIM
My friend Tanya tries hard to save her marriage, but in her dreams Isidora Duncan,
Carl Jung, even the gods themselves warn her to face their deep incompatibility...
Chased by purple squid from Jupiter, I seek refuge with a guru the Goddess recommends for me...
I'm at the court of Jenghiz Khan, as rival priests try and fail to convert the Mongols
to this faith or that. Then a Taoist demigod walks up...
My wound's taped up, but hurts bad. I peel off the bandage. Nothing! Gone. So I check my other body...
Solve a pictographic riddle and you can fly, shapeshift, work magic!
But someone doesn't want us solving dream-riddles...
The traditional figure is blindfolded, holding two crossed swords. I used crossed TV antennae...
Three friends in a garden pledge loyalty forever with a toast of the wine of the heart...
Floating in tears, have you noticed the other cups behind you, unspilled?
Giving up a wall of material treasure for the moonlit path...
The card confirming those silly fears are true. The nightmare is real. You're in trouble...
The card of excessive self-denial, whether compulsive or artistic or spiritual...
The card of building your dream no matter what. I dreamed I met the Primal Builder...
The card of fertility--and the pangs and effort of starting a new thing...
Mind and body integrated. S/he can hold up even the world-serpent that the gods couldn't lift...
CAUTION: ANDROGYNOUS CENTAUR BREASTS
The card of big messes, confused beginnings--and fertilization...
When the Birth card's reversed, the child clings to the womb like a burrow in a green meadow.
The card of force sparingly needed. The Knight says, "Sometimes ya gotta bust a few heads..."
The card of caring, caregiving, and compassion...
When the card CARING comes up reversed, you get this crucified guy floating over your bed...
The sea-captain, baby bottle in hand... The card of the warm man, the nurturer...
So you die, and to your secular surprise, your soul metamorphoses into...
It's time to tackle that unpleasant task. But so what? You know how. And you have gloves...
Some folks are dogs, bullying underlings, fawning on superiors. But when the Wizard's a Humbug...
Earth is never shown from its axis. Polarly, it's a vast wheel, the real Wheel of Fortune...
Using the mind's blade humbly, minding ideas and people, clarity's disciple may not see her full power...
Humor's one of the big emotions--laughter's as loud and uncontrollable as crying or orgasm...
Hokule'a, the "Star of Gladness", guided Polynesians across thousands of miles of ocean...
Jupiter's massive presence tugs its moons to geologic life. Just being exerts a power and a pull...
The card of driven leaders. It's so refreshing to hear someone honest and passionate. Right? Well...
The card of love. I'm not sure what genders the lovers are, but no matter...
Jung said most people let one aspect of life dominate them. The Mage balances them...
When you scheme too hard you can end up "amazed": lost in the maze of alternatives...
True teachers and leaders do exist, with vision enough to make seeds (and people) sprout...
Deep in the strata inside you, gems lie waiting in the dark for this child to dig them free...
Time, tide, cycles. In the full phase, life brims over. Time for passion & action...
Time, tide, cycles... At ebb, the hourglass drains, the tide recedes, life hides in the cracks...
That moment when you recognize a kindred spirit, and realize he or she feels that way too...
Groundless fears slow you to a crawl, testing every step of a clear, safe path...
The knight of creative fire who takes over when you've mastered technique and can let go...
I dream I'm giving a friend a Tarot reading, and the card she picks for herself is one I've never seen:
You get to fill one tray. Guns sex jewels pot hamburgers TV God power thrills love? Choose!
The card of revolution! The old towers of strength come down, not via war but obsolescence...
The card of intuition, dreams--and asking. She knows all the secrets. And might just tell you, if...
How rare it is to meet the Outstanding whose thinking, sensing, feeling and intuition all work...
This grumpy little greenish Scotsman rode a 'sulky', a one-man buggy, pulled by
a playful black mare. I worried her clowning was a safety valve leaving her unfree...
A wild, happy, homicidal dragon who forced me to fight it midair over Lake Tahoe...
Find your strength in dreams: facing (and befriending) what you've feared, or fought...
The card of fatigue and rest. Tarot's so primal--never a dull moment. Well, take a break...
Having (or living with) a sharp mind is like living with a unicorn. That horn can kill or heal...
I dreamed I was the Spirit of Mexico: a winged coyote flying around Sonora howling at the moon...
The Well of Emotion, guarded by the Black Unicorn, the shadow of all the feelings you deny...
I get speared by Irish warriors, slipped an LSD dose, chased by giant spiders, torpedoed--hey, I'm not bored!
Well, Tarzan and Jane are living in suburbia now, but though Tarzan's given up so much, Jane complains...
I was warned Wolf-Cats turn on people, but I still befriended one. Now I'm looking down its throat...
On the road with a poet and a philosopher, I insist we rescue an owl.
But we get lost, and the poet turns into...
I'm co-teaching a class on ESP. My specialty's sending warnings to my own past self to change the present...
DREAM: a stranger tells me "The Teacher" won the Handicap. AWAKE: At the track I meet the man in my dream! He
says The Teacher is now called Aldrich. But Aldrich's owner discourages me. A friend trusts my dream & wins £1,000...
Seeking my lost teacher-bird, I dabble with the time machine in the basement.
Oops! I summon Bigfoot. But the monster rips out her fur...
I DREAM I'm a kid again, in detention after school. The teacher eyeing me is familiar, but... what's her name?
I WAKE and go to art group. One member says "I visited my retired sister. She talked of you. She taught you!" It's...
Ted died of CO2 poisoning in Hong Kong. His mom dreamed he came to tell her
it was painless. To prove he was real, he told her...
The Conference on Love has two sexy speakers. One says
"my teacher's stalking me" but she clings to him. Love? Hate? Both?
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM--but what are these two exhibiting?
I dreamed a sphinx artist visited humanity and drew the crazy natives. I copied her sketchbook...
CAUTION: NUDITY, PAGANISM, SLACKERISM, ACTUAL IDEAS
A black separatist commune hides two little girls who are psychokinetic.
They fear I'll expose them. But I've spent my whole life passing too...
CAUTION: PARAPSYCHOLOGY, RACIAL SEPARATISTS
I'm on the border of human territory. Beyond is the land of the unnerving
Telepaths, each one different but every one creepy...
I dream Edward Abbey shows me a secret grove of telepath trees.
That night, in my dreams inside my dream, they meet me...
A weird identity-confusion at a dance hints I'm simultaneously psychic, autistic, and... really stupid.
Inside a Renaissance reliquary, I see a dried-up head--but is it St. Sixtus really? Weeks later...
I dream I'm in a cafe joking with my mom's ghost. I say "If you meet a guy called St. Sixtus, tell him..."
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE
High up a scaffold, I was beating the chaff off a huge seed, unable to stop. I was beating my own heart...
My cold-sensitive dinosaur friend makes a find at our archeological dig by thinking like the Old Ones...
I'm at a Robert Bly camp for men only. But I'm no man--not even human--some faun or satyr-like species...
CAUTION: THIS 'TEMENOS' IS A SACRED PHALLIC IMAGE
A ship-captain insisted some castoff clothes were mine. They fit. As I put on an elegant coat,
I recalled it was made in a past life to disguise me so I could enter a temple excluding women...
DAY: I have to read three academics who mock ancient, shamanic and modern amateur dreamwork as superstition.
DREAM: I'm learning to fly in the Temple of Dreamwork, next to a cute new colleague. NEXT DAY, I meet her...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.; DISSES ACADEMICS
I flew through a huge space habitat with ten chambers and thousands of people unaware they were caged...
Hand-puppets, a devil and a witch, have sex, and implant a lunar ghost embryo
into Lois Lane; now Lois & Clarkes, ten clones each, pretend to be puppets...
CAUTION: PUPPET SEX; EVERYONE A FAKE
A friend says lucid dreaming doesn't matter--you can even fly awake if you clearly will it. So I jump...
After reading 170 capsule biographies of famous people I conclude life-plans are
a joke. But I do deduce ten negative rules--ten universal don'ts--that may be of use...
CAUTION: CYNICAL, BUT 170 OBITUARIES WILL DO THAT
A toxic site in Silicon Valley isn't a chemical spill, but angry ghosts, killed in a camp and forgotten...
CAUTION: THE CAMP TURNS OUT TO BE REAL
While living with violent Kay, I dream I meet a cute, gentle moth-girl.
But we must undergo ten trials. Mustn't we? Mustn't we?
CAUTION: RELATIONSHIP TROUBLES, BOTH GAY AND STRAIGHT
I dreamed I drove through snow to my parents' home where my mother lay dead. Ten years later...
(A comic frustration dream hiding a warning)
Our tennis game's spoiled by rubber rackets, fierce grandmas,
Good and Evil (those identical twins) and a bully on stilts...
Teresa mistrusts men. Her best friend Sabina comes on to me in front of Teresa, who blames me...
CAUTION: NUDITY, BETRAYAL, GENDER PARANOIA
A beer-soaked cowboy barbecue goes wrong when a dog named Teri Garr catches fire
and they just laugh and won't waste beer to douse her. Then their big old hats catch fire...
CAUTION: SEXIST BLAMING OF VICTIM; PROBABLE DEATHS BY FIRE
Doctors remove my upper skull and sew my scalp over my brain.
I can get around, if I stay upright, but I'm terribly vulnerable...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE REFLECTS REALITY
A stallion reared to strike me. He was all the fear and rage I’d repressed... A woman said “offer him...
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...
Flying saucers land, and give us weird compulsions. I catch an unusually mild case,
a tertiary infection, and find I'm actually better off...
I dreamed I had to take a bewildering test on who is allowed in the military. I flunked. So will you...
CAUTION: MOCKS HOMOPHOBES
The Lone Star Planet--worldwide Texas--is weirdly empty. No kids at all! Instead, teens
ping into existence pre-formed. An alternate Earth with no concept of change?
The moon as an early gilled fetus. I feel like a half-developed creature walking around in your dry air...
The ship carrying my mom to America sails on, as I drown in the sea;
They strap me down to pull out the pieces of my stillborn baby Obdale;
A family/gang called Thanotos invites me to join them...
CAUTION: MISCARRIAGE, DEATH
On the run I meet a lycan, a pirate, and a mermaid. She causes a flood, and something floats by I just have to grab...
CAUTION: INTERRUPTED SEX
Tour a rugged, scenic moon with air and water in deep canyons sheltering a dozen intelligent species
CAUTION: ANARCHISM, NUDITY, SCIENCE
A sex-fantasy dream that shifts backstage and gets real
In Charlotte they want to lynch her just for dancing. I protest. As she leaves town, she tells me...
Nightmares can warn. But when awake, what warning can you get from nonstop ill-luck?
An artist I know dismisses her (gorgeous) art as just therapy... while the museums are full of trash. Why?
I dreamed the Earth Goddess invited me to live with her. She was lonely to be seen for who she was...
Ethiopian records say Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, had a son who stole
the Ark of the Covenant! Solomon dreamt of the theft but didn't check til it was too late...
Gunmen held me hostage in a grand hall; at last they shot me. Next day: the Moscow Theater hostages...
I dream of strange wide brown houses on the tracks... A knock wakes me--our train's moving out.
As we pass through San Mateo, I see them on the rails, ready to roll--the first prefabricated homes...
I misname my feelings: depressed for sad, paranoid for wary, phobic for scared. It has consequences...
In therapy, I'm wrestling with sex. But workmen invade--hammer & hang pictures. MY pictures!
And my therapist keeps confusing me and her, and our sexual orientations! She means well, but...
CAUTION: NUDE PORTRAIT
Kaleidoscopic constellations? No thanks! A nudist town in Italy? Ugh.
Ah, but singing vaudeville in a monk's robe & roller skates...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY
I'm in Theremin's lab, around 1930, trying to play one of his experimental instruments. Why won't it work?
Usually I wobble on high heels--but with four feet, maybe I can follow the Yellow Brick Road...
CAUTION: NUDITY
My dog and I are abducted by aliens who turn us into cats. We escape & go feral to survive.
How we got back, and what happened along the way, even my own shrink refuses to believe...
CAUTION: LEWD SQUID AND KLEPTOMANIAC BUGS
A workmate said "They feed they lion"; two dreams later, the poem emerged as you see it...
CAUTION: POLITICAL RAGE, SURREALISM
My sisters and their best friends all use me for sex. Sick, but I discover it's better than I USED to be...
CAUTION: JUST PLAIN EMBARRASSING
They're hanging the political traitor in my closet. I stand horrified.
The old man's resigned--no complaint. It's my father, I now realize...
I was a mermaid trying to find Count Coyote's stolen dreams, so I could marry my human girlfriend...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, LESBIAN MARRIAGE, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
Visiting Time City, I witness the "suicide" of a woman named Thieu but suspect it was really assassination...
CAUTION: SUICIDE? MURDER?
As a kid, my nightmares were of Sesame Street characters. In my teens I graduated to
slasher nightmares and recurring lucid dreams. Alcohol trashed my dreams for years, but
now they're not nightmares--just surreal. Hitler wrecks my sex life! What a spoilsport...
CAUTION: (MOSTLY FRUSTRATED) SEX
Those Hollywood lovers in the tub seem perfect together, until... oh, read the title!
CAUTION: RACE- AND GENDER-BENDING
1: Three sisters flash me; one has a third eye in there! Clothed, it's blind. Was she just enlightening herself?
2: In the future, most cars self-drive. I'm the last driver using my own muscles and mind. Can I hold out?
3: A friend charts all of history's wars to prove: democracies don't fight each other. So to get peace...
CAUTION: NAKED EYE
DAY: At a party, this stranger keeps sniping at me. I see no gain for me in fighting him, and just leave.
DREAM: Aliens attack. They've wiped out other planets, so we fight all-out! Not just for us, for the next species...
I find three street parties full of half-naked dancers, jammed together for warmth--and maskless!
Not parties--anti-masker events. Sexy, but their protest risks our lives along with theirs...
CAUTION: FLAMES SCIENCE DENIERS
The animal goddess of peace, stubbornly raising her sign, my sign, as you all slide into your nice holy war...
Dreams of my childhood--bootlegger dad, critical mom, gun-
happy uncles, slaughtered squirrels, slaughtered Jews...
Did sex turn creepy because I sensed the madman stalking us? Or did our sin (casual sex) summon him?
CAUTION: CREEPY SEX, CREEPIER PREMONITIONS
I dream normal women don't turn me on--I like the 30,000 little aliens who just landed!
I wake to see an ad about them on a passing bus... and it turns out I'm NOT still dreaming...
I dreamt a farmer gave me 33 eggs in a bucket. On the stair, he handed me 3 more. I woke, told my family...
An article claimed smell is rare to absent in dreams. My dreams felt insulted and sent me a stinky one!
But why THAT stink? Well... next morning on my way to work...
My father's trapped in a crashed car. But I'm distracted by a young man whose palm cups a living flame...
I dreamt again of that mountain east of Concord where no hill exists. I ascended that long
rocky ridge where wild beasts haunted, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity...
Thorhadd's been slandering his enemy Thorstein. He spars publicly with a dream expert
who interprets all his dreams as: "Your tongue just can't quit!" True. It can't...
CAUTION: VIKING EGOS (AND BODY COUNT)
I live in a beehive. We must mate with dogs. I'm assigned a bitch. But I'm allergic to gods! Oops, I mean...
CAUTION: SEXUAL THEME, DOGGESS WORSHIP
I watch Disney animate the Legend of the Thousand Birds, who pull
a wireframe sleigh of light right through a dark, material Santa...
Night. A hill town. Temples with huge stone statues. But the original figure looms
monstrous over the hills. Which is the threat? The giant, or the cult appeasing it?
Two gunmen break in, call me by a strange name, and demand I repay a loan I never borrowed...
I go home. Our cat is there. And a small, striped new cat. Then I step on a third, much bigger cat.
This is just one cat too many! "This cat's not real!" I say...
The nonexistent cat leaps up and scratches my face.
I dream I'm teaching my students that those willing to let evidence change their minds are rare.
Climbers seek fame and status, while iconoclasts seek to upset order without regard for truth...
CAUTION: SOBERING FROM A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
I dreamed I checked my neighbor's flat for prowlers; I got shot and fell out a window. The same night
my neighbor dreamt she asked me to check her flat, I got shot and fell out a window; the same night
her best friend dreamt she came by and saw from street level the gunmen and my fall out the window...
CAUTION: VIOLENT ATTACK FROM THREE VIEWPOINTS
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
Three dreams set on Abenaki holy ground, of weird shamans--one ashen, one pumpkin-headed, the
third goofy-faced--lead me to visit the site. Where I find the river's washed up that third shaman's face...
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
A 'toon liberation dream. I cartooned a new self and slowly she grew realer, until she ran Disney...
CAUTION: FRANK SINATRA SWEARS
1: I ask how to fly. "Breathe air from high levels; its light and purity will wash away earth's heaviness..."
2: To join a flying game, you must cut off your own head! Players acquire new heads and can work miracles...
3: I float up to reach a book in a shop. People call the police but I defiantly soar--over Paris, up to the stars...
Dream-inspired landscape with herons and wild horses in a vaguely Japanese style...
I dream I play 7 and win three times at Monte Carlo. I wake and head for the casino with witnesses...
I was shown what veils the God in us: Blood (violence), Idols (dogmatism), and the Curse of Eve (sexism)...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALISTS (OF ANY FAITH) WILL SEE RED
I'm shown pictures of three different magical ways to fly. But the third
shows no actual flight--just someone giving away the magical means...
Intimidated by stylish friends, I split in three--myself, and a small child
nursing at the breast of an earth-mother priestess--or Earth herself...
I was barren. I asked Asklepios, God of Healing, to make me pregnant. Soon I was--for 3 years, until...
THROATS: Men put babies into giant throats inset in a funhouse wall;
SLOT MACHINE: I see a slot machine generating random art-speak phrases...
A trusted college advisor says "Slip through cracks in the classroom walls!"
There's no direct route. Yoga to taekwondo to ballet to... a sex workshop!
CAUTION: ABOUT SEX
I meet some alien wolves, and see the social scene as they do--pack, status issues. But then...
I cross a pasture & slip thru a barbwire fence, as I explain cows, wires & organic life to an energy-being...
DREAM: a car crash; my parents both die, though my sister & I are thrown free, unhurt.
DAYS LATER: Aunt & uncle invite me on a car trip; my dad says no, I have to study.
TWO WEEKS LATER: Aunt & uncle die in a head-on; their kids are thrown free...
Worldwide, hands have gone soft and pliable. I meet
some animals evolving into people and advise them....
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
I'm overcharged at a grocery store--the checker confused my food with someone else's.
I grab him, fly high up and drop him, splat. I chant "Thus be: Splat! Squashed flat..."
CAUTION: DEATH PENALTY SEEMS A BIT MUCH
In 1985 I was flooded with nightmares about heads and necks. They had an unparalleled intensity...
That day: I read of a young healer in rural Indonesia harassed by the local mullah.
That night: I dream she leads a revolution on a starship against her elders...
A woman in Tibet disassembles herself! A local god hires her spirit,
but she uses the office equipment to backup her memories and...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
What the world looks like when you have environmental illness, like me...
At the beach, a biology teacher shows me how bottles smashed on the rocks by jerks lead to
slow death for the tidepool creatures. I'm afraid the warning is both personal AND planetary...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC TOWARD RECKLESS G.O.P. CUTS
1: Crystal-skulled wizards, dino & lionfolk parade by. 2: I curl up with three skittish beasts. Patience!
3: My friend Mark tries to rape me. I tie him up, seek a restraining order. Will the cops believe me?
CAUTION: RAPE ATTEMPT
A Bengal tiger slips into my room. Others panic and want to call the police, but I feel protective...
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....
DAY: I hear Angela Duckworth (writer of Grit) talk on positive thinking. She thinks we're our own worst enemies.
DREAM: I test my grit an African savanna--and outbluff lions! Unfortunately, that Siberian tiger won't be bluffed...
CAUTION: TROUBLING ASSESSMENT OF... PUTIN? BULLIES IN GENERAL?
An alien tiger and his human girlfriend herd me to their house
and show me a cube of raw flesh... but why?
When I overwork, neglecting my body's wants, I dream of an angry tiger. Over
time, I've learned (mostly) to feed my tiger, and sometimes he's an ally now...
I buy a charming ruin in the woods. Newlywed tigers prowl! The tiger bride
tells me "He expects predictability. But I'll show him what a tiger really is..."
The stage curtain opens. Tigers sit on podiums. In the center is a huge one with a bloody mouth. A few days later...
I'm a tiger from Planet Cat, visiting Earth to run in San Francisco's "Bay to Breakers" race.
I knew racial tensions were high, but why is William S. Burroughs out to kill me? Oh. Because...
A tiger-couple on an ice floe must choose: swim for land, or
ride the current full circle back home, risking starvation?
I was raised in the redwoods in the nest of a black tiger.
Only a foster child, but emotionally, I'm tigerish...
I dreamed of this tree growing out of a cave-mouth. Years later, in Guatemala, I
was shocked to encounter my dream. That tree and that cave were all too surreal...
I'm walking down a tiger's throat, but it's not what you think. Diagnosis!
My friend suddenly couldn't roar. She's here too, exploring her own trachea....
I'm a spirit flying over the dead, blessing them. They're in mass graves, sorted & grouped
only by their life-stages--kids, adults, elders. Wait... is this how to structure my book?
I drilled new poles in my globe and tilted the Earth. Ice Age or Carboniferous? Flood or drought?
Come visit tropical Antarctica, the Thai Desert, the Hawaiian glaciers, the jungles of France!
1987/8/15, 1990/3/31 & 6/10, 1993/8/10, four dreams prompting Planetocopia
I dreamed I took a globe off its stand, drilled new poles, and put it back on tilted, so that
most continents are greener; Tokyo, Alaska and Tierra del Fuego are now all tropical...
Over a decade later, dreams forgotten, I start what I think is a nondream art project, by tilting...
In a city crawling across a marshy world, I find a detonating bomb frozen in a time-ball.
Why not detonate it somewhere harmless, why carry this around?
I'm a cat person, grooming. But not MY fur--it's a woolly mass of timelines!
We cats travel time, smoothing out snarls... Then I wake, go to a party, and...
Golfing in the basement with Giselle! But her ball goes through a Stargate
to land on a world where the water hazards are hazards...
I'm a modern girl facing pirates from the 17th Century Caribbean. Outgunned, but I
have something intimidating to bluff with: perfect teeth...
In the steampunk world of the Parasol Protectorate, I'm on a swing, fondling four friends
who I'm in love with--all four! I won't give any up. Yet it's time to quit swinging...
CAUTION: SEX ED CLASS, POLYFIDELITY
A timewarp started to swallow my house. It looked normal outside, but everyone inside was in a trance...
She was a girl playing in the woods when she found the dying silver fox.
His body transformed into a fox-mask. His spirit said "When you come of age..."
A toy's delivered, unasked. A jumping jack. It tries to eat me! I defeat it but then peer in the box to be sure...
I'm mortal, yet I'm offered a residency in the Commune of the Gods,
along with Xena the Amazon Warrior and... Little Red Riding Hood?
In my dream I worry I'm going to wake up late, so I ask what time it is. Immediately, white digits
form in the air saying 10:00. I wake, but can't read my clock until I put on my glasses. It says...
I provoke a shooting! Wandering through time, I forget how much some cultures fear witches...
I dreamed my husband's ship headed for India, but a 'tin fish'
sank it with just one casualty--him. I rushed down to the dock...
In a world where speech is in Mayan glyphs, comedian Tina Fey (dressed for prom night)
climbs a Tibetan peak to learn levitation. But the flying monks are scared of women...
CAUTION: COOTIES; ROWDY JESUS; MAY FLUNK THE BECHDEL TEST
I experienced a delicious tembling throughout my being, sweeping up
from my toes to my head. It shook me to the marrow of my bones...
Four lines of comic nonsense composed in a dream...
14 years before the Titanic sailed, Robertson wrote of a great liner, the Titan,
with 3000 people aboard, that strikes an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic...
Our band's touring Titan. Road trip blues: diners, feuds, romances. Have I been chasing the wrong girl?
Clarence the sappy angel from It's A Wonderful Life and Milton's Lucifer land on Earth, offering treaties.
Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're fine as is, but the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures
like me and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full palette of feelings. Like the feeling she's fake...
I ask how my relationship with Scott was going. That night he asks me to sail on the Titanic. I say
"That ship will sink!" but he won't listen. I see a skeleton-baby and know I have even more to lose...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE, UNFIT DAD, ABORTION
One image has remained with me for more than sixty years:
a man in oilskins bent double under the blow of a great wave...
I saw the Titanic go down and people struggling frantically in the water. After my second nightmare I told my wife...
My mom had to climb a ladder down the side of the Empire State Building; I'm told she fell and died...
I loyally served a demon who punished me until at last he sent me to hell. And STILL I didn't rebel...
CAUTION: BLOODY ABUSE
My German friend resolved to commit suicide, so I agreed to poison myself to keep him company...
Worldwide drought. I have a mutation making me produce lots of saliva, so to keep
people alive, I drool into their open mouths. Gross, but it's take my drool or die...
CAUTION: UGH
I loved the feel of the green snake, and reassured my friends it wasn't poisonous, but really...
I'm in Houston, gawking at giant starfishy towers looming through the smog. Their shapes are familiar...
How the world was really created. God said "Let it be well done" and it was well done.
CAUTION: TECHNOLOGICAL BLASPHEMY
A gentleman clad but in a sheet notified me that an old friend had died of a terrible disease. What disease? Well...
As a toddler I repeatedly dreamed I was a married adult with a daughter
of my own, but the dreams always ended with my husband shooting me...
CAUTION: RECURRENT MURDER
My foot is a torso and my toes sprout conflicting personalities...
CAUTION: NUDE CARTOON
A voice tells me I have 100 months to live. I vow it'll be enough to finish my work here...
CAUTION: THAT VOICE WAS WRONG
I walk in a vast graveyard full of history's most famous
people and treasures. But it's all fake, built to test your...
It's Thanksgiving but my brother won't come in; he's digging up red earth. In our family he always digs up...
I dreamed that huge nouveau-riche polar bears invaded San Francisco, evicting us locals...
CAUTION: CORRUPTION, URSACIDE, MATH!
A hero has solved all Earth's problems. Now what? A trucker friend invites him on a road trip to Mars...
Psychics give me an incomprehensible reading. A book from the tree-library gives only Victorian dating advice.
At last a madman gives me a treasure-box holding a tooth that unfolds into slices carved in unreadable symbols...
The government quietly ends all taxes and services in a small town just to see what'll happen...
They call it the information highway because we're all supposed to march in formation...
Hecuba dreams she gives birth, not to a child but a flaming torch! But she lets Paris live...
CAUTION: MORAL NO-WIN SITUATION
I'm a rabbit girl living in New Orleans. Humid summer. My roses all died;
a rot that needs to be disinfected. So I light a torch and burn them back...
CAUTION: HARSH POLITICAL INTERPRETATION
A killer tornado traps us in the cellar. I bite my finger. It's boneless--I'm dreaming! I summon...
We escape tornadoes by fading out and rematerializing in a future dream...
But one of the tornadoes manages to follow us from the old dream to new...
I dreamed a tornado loosened our showroom sign; it swung down to smash the window. I told my husband, and...
I've always been scared of tornadoes, until I went lucid and became one...
CAUTION: HORNY TORNADO
Asparagus, wings, an unhinged hand, a boxed ghost, butter, sister incest, tomato-pincushions,
secret volcanoes, one-eyed integers, chickenleg dresses, mirrors and bananapeel beds...
Why's Mexico City built where it is? And why is corn called "ears"? It turns out these questions are linked...
I was enjoying an evening with this generic guy. Although there were two cats
as big as bobcats in the room, I let Poodle, my tortoiseshell, in...
CAUTION: GRUESOME CATFIGHT
In a prison cell, two robed figures with horned hoods like the heads of
black owls question a limp figure who looks far beyond answers...
CAUTION: IMPLIED TORTURE
A free-lance torturer chooses me for his victim. He has the right. I bluster, but when I fall asleep at last...
CAUTION: NO PAIN, BUT GORE
I finally find a way to safely indulge in heavy petting
as well as puns) with a playful but scratchy cat...
A lobe-by-lobe musical tour of your brain with Buddha as your tourguide...
I bike up a Hawaiian hill toward a lava fountain. A house catches fire, but it's blocks ahead.
I go a bit closer. Then a heat-shimmer shows deadly gas has crept ahead of the flames...
CAUTION: FATAL MISJUDGMENT
I kept seeing the image of a creature like someone in a Tove Jansson book...
Simultaneous dreams sharing mood & theme not images.
Yeats sees but cannot touch the waterfall he loved so in childhood;
Georgie, the magical white stag in King Arthur...
Climbing a mountain on Mars, I reach a hall where I'm transformed into a cryophilic being.
Then I feast on methane soup with the heroic Martian dead...
Cities are fun when you're a bird--all those updrafts and perches and nests with great views...
Long ago he cut a deal with the cops. But town's grown, and one victim fights back. Our thief is outraged...
My sisters want to see Trading Places in the nearest theater. I ask to go to a more distant theater
but can't explain why. We arrive to find the showtime had a typo. Gotta wait an hour. At last we file in,
the lights go down...and out. Totally out. Power failure! They can't fix it. I never did see that movie...
A trail toward Freedom has extra markers, for it's three trails, superimposed! Not all the cues are for us...
I dreamed I was a blond guy tracking down an elf who lived in a trailer park. She'd gone mad; elves trapped
in the human world mostly do. Awake, I sketched her, then saw she's a lot like my younger self! Disturbing...
A couple slips in and out of sleep, dreams, one another's bodies and dreamworlds, trying to connect...
CAUTION: FREUDIAN SYMBOLISM, LITERATE WRITING
Silicon Valley goes enthusiastically fascist. I hide in a berry patch. They build a shining world, and then...
I've never done railway work, but here I am signaling a train to approach a station at dawn. A second train hits it head-on...
CAUTION: EIGHT DEATHS
I dreamt of the Du Pont lab where I'd work, and my neighbor's future coffin,
and the hospital where my sister-in-law would get a transfusion...
A dog implausibly large, with fur the color of rose-quartz, wanted me to follow her...
Arboreal marsupials with megaphones narrate a Polynesian documentary, while
the rare translucent lobster sings its death song, sacrificing itself for lunch
CAUTION: WILL CAUSE VEGETARIANISM
The stranger seemed to know me. He said "Tell her about the little dogs, it will comfort her." Two weeks later...
I was walking on an endless plain, upright and tense, walking beside you,
hurrying. What were we doing on the burning plain? What war...
I'm on a trip to who knows where, with my young-again mom, my dead dad, and--who's that guy?
Daniel thrice dreamt of money hidden under a great stone in a nearby field. He dug and found a surprise...
CAUTION: IRISH HUMOR
The cosmic egg nests in the branches of the tree of life, glowing with
Muspel-fire. But the tree must periodically burn to regenerate life...
I climbed a tree with a beautiful view, but climbing down I fell, and woke. I visited the people under the
river. A beautiful ayocora bird danced for me. But so did the moon spirit, baring its fangs. Terrifying!
In an oneirophobic society, it's easy to forget that when you do dreamwork, you're doing basic science.
No funding, no team, no lab coat? Can't be science! Unless they mistaught us what science is...
I try to protect the kitten from being strangled and girl geniuses from the depth charges; ...
I'm flying around a half-built house when I'm cornered by three
scary archangels in trenchcoats. But they want my help...
My girlfriend and I find ourselves naked in my neighbor's yard! A second neighbor spots us, and
knowing my house is empty, she breaks in! The first neighbor, seeing her home's empty, breaks into
hers. We go home, stomping loud so our burglar flees back home, driving her burglar out, and...
CAUTION: UNINTENTIONAL NUDE PICNIC
A maneless lion-boy wins his people's respect. While training, he sees weird trespassers
who seem to be from someone else's dream... and ten years later, he finds that dreamer.
Nearly abstract but not quite. The snake, the quill pen, the secretary bird, and the rose.
Stuck in a horror movie, I get to meet the triceratops-headed monster
who scriptwrites all my nightmares. But he's open to suggestions...
Three men follow me. But they're not men; they fly. They shapeshift into teenage archeologists...
then into pure energy-beings! "We don't care about you; we're watching another entity
you let into your dreams." Wait--I've got FOUR foreign entities stalking through my psyche?
CAUTION: ALARMING, IF TRUE
In an idle moment I held a pencil and asked the air who'd win the Derby.
'Trigo' meant nothing to me, but was listed at 32 to 1, so...
I meet a woman named "2-0-1-0", realize that pronunciation means it's not base ten, but
mistake it for binary. Not with a 2 in it! It's trinary, and hides a diagnostic message...
We were inseparable: the tiger, the fox, and the wolf.
Together our magic lit up the darkness around us, until...
Everyone squishing away contentedly but me... watching curled up in the corner as usual...
CAUTION: EXPLICIT SEX, BESTIALITY
Only up close do I see that the map of these mysterious continents is made of moths. I wake
in Polynesia. By the bed, in a jar, floats one of my hands. For no reason, I begin to cry...
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'm an exchange student at the Solar System's best university for
the magic arts; my classmates are methane-breathing foxtaurs...
Improv singing with my friend Mark, this bizarre songlet popped out:
"It's my understanding you shouldn't make love to a tuuubaaaa."
Silly, but when I woke, I realized I sorta had been...
I'm carried off by a crane to meet birdfish, singing sheep, fell-spirits, mad shopkeepers and devil-bulls...
I'm on an alien world inside the minds of two women and a child struggling with moral choices in a civil war...
CAUTION: DEATH, LOSS
The manhunt is on for Donald Trump, rich sociopath. But he too is pursuing something: happiness...
In the border-mountains, there is a Trumpeter. His clear, triadic melodies break out through the frosty air,
or through the swirling mists. No one knows whether the Trumpeter is theirs or ours...
Donald Trump is Satan. I'm just a low-level devil, under his thumb.
I feel helpless to stop his businesslike plans for the Apocalypse...
CAUTION: POLITICAL RAGE; PREDICTS COVID'S LATER WAVES
I ride a magical self-guiding canoe, seeking the right beach and cove for me.
Even when the boat climbs hills so I can explore inland, I expect it to fail...
Evicted. Lawsuit. I dream a lawyer sends me a letter full of fox-girls! In East Asia, foxes
mean trouble, but these are friendly--good news is coming! I wake to find we've won a home...
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...
We flee a tsunami. Inland. Up a hill. Onto a roof. One by one, the flood plucks us away.
Long past hope, I climb a flagpole. As I cling to the very top and the mud rises to my lips...
CAUTION: GRIM PREDICTION
Changelings invade our orbital station, selling drugs, kidnapping teachers--but Constable
Odo can handle that. What's weird are the beans pouring out of that kid's tuba...
Tuba Man plays from the top of a tower, even when Loveless Man opens fire; for music is life to him...
The innkeeper insisted I try a strange-looking liqueur, a house specialty called "Tuccotine"...
I get painful menstrual cramps, and with them come nightmares of birth. Not always child birth;
once it was five kittens. Most recently the baby was human but encased in a Butterball turkey...
A night-fiend strove to open the door I held shut between us--
until I realized I too was terrible, and opened it to find a great...
CAUTION: THE DREADED PROSE OF HENRY JAMES
After my mother died, I dreamed I was a girl living after the Apocalypse. I rode my elk
past cars full of corpses, saw friends die, and never could find a single fertile mate...
Turn a globe upside down. All Earth's winds and currents reverse;
wet coasts turn dry, dry turn wet; ice caps shift, sea levels change...
A man mocks a turtle he caught, calling it "inept"--he knows adept turtles, then?
I distract this fisherman-ranter while the turtle quietly tiptoes...
I'm half Anglo, half Kwakiutl. My uncle the shaman died,
but he still wants to teach me his medicine...
I read Barbara Tuchman's history of the American Revolution and had to paint this portrait of George...
CAUTION: TRANSVESTITE PRESIDENTIAL ICONOGRAPHY
A "friend" gives me her TV. No wonder! Turns out it's haunted
by a small-minded devil who cheats on all his deals...
My brother Henry lay in a metal casket. He wore a suit of mine. On his breast were white roses, with
one red at the centre. A few days later, the boilers of the riverboat Henry worked on exploded...
I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones...
CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
Alchemy demands I kill ten swallows. I refuse! Instead, twelve birds and I fuse and fly over a magic wood...
Twenty-four panels of improvised comics in unerasable ink,
letting the shapes and themes in each panel suggest the next...
I possessed ubiquity: twenty of me, and each possessed by my same soul, so I could not say who I inhabited...
You get 26 dice with letters on every face. Roll them all. Your haiku must use every letter. Go!
I dreamed of a unicorn rearing in the desert. I wanted to sculpt it and applied to Burning Man
but was rejected. So I sculpted the unicorn anyway, out of playa mud. It was a hit...
1: I failed to save a magic tree. It fell and killed someone. I'm racked with guilt...
2: A giant pinball game on a tilted oval relief-map. But you can only win as a team of six friends...
3: A Caribbean girl with a weird aura tries to align two magic crystals to heal herself...
CAUTION: BREASTS, MY LITTLE PONY AS ROLEMODEL
DREAM: at a dreamgroup, I tell a predictive dream that my artist friend's front tooth will get infected. Then
we all chant "Loga-Shana!" THREE WEEKS LATER: my artist friend's front tooth gets a serious abcess...
CAUTION: WILL TROUBLE E.S.P. SKEPTICS
I twirled pinups into surreal not-quite-abstracts, to see just how twisted sex could get...
CAUTION: NAKED PRETZELS
My mind and my soul both apply for a job in Stanford Cathedral. Their rivalry grows to a shamanic duel...
Yesterday, Hitler marched into town. I was born before the Industrial Revolution, and am now about 200 years old...
As a child sick in bed, Max had a fever dream that the shapes in the knots and grain in a
wooden panel were children terrorized by a bird. Adult, he assembled a sort-of-painting...
Khodasevich (1939): I dreamt a call announced my friend was dead. Really he was still alive--but not for long...
Sergey (1945): My brother died in January but the news took months to reach us. Just before it did, I dreamed...
A tribute to Hokusai's sketches. A crane and a fairy were out drinking, and now can't fly home...
I'm shown a mysterious two-faced carving;
I shush loud people disturbing my therapy;
I'm told of a documentary on the archetypal mother...
I see two gorillas in the field. One waves at me and approaches. I feel excited but a little scared...
Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed...
I dream my daughter's selling two unused guitars. They seemed symbolic until I told her the dream and...
In Castle Frankenstein, will Mary Shelley wed Elmer Fudd? His two-headed monster has marital advice...
Two Inuit talk of sun and moon and birds and little ghosts who sneak up on you...
I saw a vast transparent plane inscribed with pictograms and symbols. Through it, at an unknown distance,
lay a second plane of less clear shapes and colors, but with great mass, depth, and unknown currents...
An assassination plot using two planes triggers an invasion of our kingdom. Flee? Fight?
I'm a peaceful hobbit who'd rather be playing Frisbee with the dryads...
With no sense of incongruity, I planned to take the child Polly
with me to the theatre, to see the grown-up Polly act...
A TAILOR'S APPRENTICE: I become her to fight back against his abuse...
DAMSEL ON THE PYRE: I become a girl being burned alive, but get
so distracted by my beautiful body I forget to escape until it's too...
Two photographic developing tanks disappear. I assumed theft
until I dreamt they were in a room I'd never seen, in locker FJA 39...
Two witches, maiden and crone, ride a flying monster made of two magically fused trolls.
But I know somehow that the two are really just aspects of a single powerful sorceress...
I dreamed my mouth was full of typewriter keys and a typewriter ribbon issued from the back of my head. Joan
was hanging out the window by the ribbon. I reached for her, but my hands kept hitting the space bar, and down...
In our plot to kill the Tyrant, we used his wife. Or... did she use us? She goes mad, but--she's HAPPY...