DEBBIE: I dream of my friend G's new girlfriend C (who I've never met) and tell her "you'll never fill my shoes."
C: I dreamed I met Debbie. She wore green shoes, and said "See these shoes, you could never fit into them"...
CAUTION: WILL ANNOY E.S.P. DENIERS
I dream of my best friend, but she's in an unfamiliar house. I notice its address.
On impulse, when I wake, I go to that address and ask the woman living there...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.
DREAM: I meet a woman with a bun hairdo, black skirt, black & white striped blouse. I think she's a spy!
TWO DAYS LATER: I meet that woman--bun, skirt, blouse. And all the hotel guests here say she's a spy...
Mrs C. dreamed she was the ascetic preacher Savonarola, who wanted to burn all vanities.
In her audience she saw... Mrs C! So she, Savonarola, aimed her barbs at all of C's flaws...
Caedmon can't sing. But he dreams an angel makes him try. Soon he's the first great English poet and singer...
Plutarch says Caesar dreamt of sex with his mother; it was interpreted as "you'll take the motherland". So he crossed the Rubicon...
But Suetonius says he dreamed it way earlier, at age 33, after seeing a shrine to Alexander (who died at 33); Julius felt inferior...
CAUTION: INCEST; DREAM USED FOR PROPAGANDA
The night before Caesar's assassination, he dreamed he flew above the clouds and met Jupiter;
his wife Calpurnia dreamed he'd be stabbed, and begged him not to go out, but politics...
I dream I'm at a center for bull fighting, teaching the structure of the brain, but
they believe the brain is a structureless gelatin and the soul is all...
I dream I'm ranting about the structure of the mind, postulating four layers--odd, since
I think dreams are meaningless--just neurons getting some exercise! So whence this theory?
CAUTION: JARGON
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
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
There is a war between liberals and reactionaries, but the dream makes no
sense: friends claim to be hit, to be wounded, but I see no bodies, no blood...
CAUTION: ANTICIPATES THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
I looked into a narrow stream that was quite clear yet inky black. It made no sense at the time...
(by a California model, pre-1961, and by a Texas maid, 1945; two predictive dreams compared)
Predictive dreams rarely hint how far they've peered ahead; they just place you in their foreseen future...
I smelled scorching paint; my heater was about to burn the house. But I'd moved--my old house was six blocks away...
The night before Caesar's assassination, he dreamed he flew above the clouds and met Jupiter;
his wife Calpurnia dreamed he'd be stabbed, and begged him not to go out, but politics...
Examples of inexplicable moods that appear (after the fact) to be reactions to future events...
I was in a small room with a single bare lightbulb and an old man at a desk writing. The phone rang.
He answered--said, 'Yes, Emma, one pound onions, a dozen oranges." Two days later...
I dreamed a tornado loosened our showroom sign; it swung down to smash the window. I told my husband, and...
A bounty hunter stalks me through a jungle, but lucidity turns a potential nightmare to joy...
1521: I ask a talking ape how long I'll live. "Four years" he says. "No longer?" "No."
26 years later, I'm still hoping to get truth from dream-figures--two dead guys tell me...
CAUTION: JUNGIANS BEHAVING BADLY
A mage turns his daughter into an ugly dragon. She pines for a sailor, but
though they make beautiful music with magic crystals, he rejects her...
A sad, frail, very pregnant woman with dark brown hair told me she was my boyfriend's wife. The next day...
Are dreams really so ephemeral? Lewis Carroll, who built the Alice books from dream-shards, wasn't so sure...
With no sense of incongruity, I planned to take the child Polly
with me to the theatre, to see the grown-up Polly act...
Walking around my brother's farm, I met this goat with a human head. He'd been playing with matches...
All her life, Cartwright dreamed of a figure disguised in a harlequin costume; she never saw his face.
He always drove her to self-sabotage. But near her death, she dreamt she gave a lecture, and he...
My friend Catherine dreamed she was a flying mare with golden hooves. But in real life, she lost them...
I dream of an airplane with a born-again pilot. I challenge him:
"just because you're rich doesn't mean you can run things"...
I dreamt I walked barefoot on newly fallen snow...
I dreamt Bob was a tree-god enthroned in ivy. I said...
Dreamed of a cat who turned into a man. when you rubbed...
I challenged my dreams to hit me with their worst. And they did...
old Frisco gone, high-rise condos obscure the view: hives for techie...
How did my bondage dream turn into a slot-machine jackpot? And what kind of change is pouring out?...
CAUTION: (CON)SENSUAL BONDAGE
Dreamt of locked room, door-knob fell off in my hand when I...
For a week the same dream-figures and settings have been recurring:
shapeshifters and sea monsters. What are they hiding? Or guarding...
My day life as an artist and explorer of the San Francisco underground scene
gets regularly commented on by my dreamlife...
CAUTION: SEX, BONDAGE
I dream of snowdrifts too deep to get back home, even though...
I dreamed my stepmother moved in with my dead grandparents...
I dreamt the royal coach got stuck in an arch on the coronation route. Awake, I checked the heights of coach & arch...
Two of us meditation students dreamed one night that we were ice skating in Holland, helping each other...
CECY: In a desert, a thirsty dog jumps out of a tree--the first known dog suicide...
WAYAN: I'm a talking dog. Our owner denies us enough water, so we protest...
Wayan: A sleazy brother calls the cops, blaming us for a fire he set...
Cecy: A sleazy brother calls in a fire while not even trying to put it out...
My boyfriend's a student in an exotic monastery. But under his robe, he's gotten a bit exotic himself...
CAUTION: SEXUAL DREAM
I cut off my own head! But I grew a new one. Only what to do with the old one? It's starting to rot...
CAUTION: SELF-DISMEMBERMENT
A woman rides draped over a giant rabbit
who somersaults through the night sky...
There was a tall man wearing a mask standing at the door.
At least I think it was a mask...
There was this giant creature in the water along with a bunch of sharks.
The creature turned out to be nice though, much nicer than the sharks...
I was working at a farm with a two-headed dragon creature as my companion. One head
was very loyal and the other head absolutely hated me. I always forget which is which...
I had a dream I was climbing up a bunch of tiny shanty buildings and I got stuck. There was a wall full of
giant Koi Betta fish I couldn't climb across, and when I looked down, I could only see the top of the sky...
I had to prepare the house for a party, but the basement was flooded. I thought I could
decorate it with some floating flowers anyway, but they kept dissolving or sinking...
First I met an assassin girl who could raise dust storms; then a monster-hunted named Rho;
then I was the hunter, with a futuristic hovercycle and low-tech bow and arrows...
I was at the edge of a cliff and I had to jump to some pillar-like rocks.
I was very hesitant though because the ocean waves were so violent...
A blind girl had trained for years to get revenge against a winter god named Lük or Lock, who took the form of an ice wolf.
By defeating the god, she would get her sight back, but she didn't know she'd also send the world into an endless winter...
Had sleep paralysis early one morning while trying to wake up, and "saw" this creature or woman looming over me.
She had two spider legs (if more, I couldn't see) and was smiling--with no face. Terrifying. Amazing...
We were trying to catch this "harpy", who looked like a 1980s
angel, but she teleported away. It was freaking weird...
I dreamed I saw this statue of a woman wearing a round hat or bowl that covered her entire head.
When I got closer, a bunch of arms sprouted from under the hat/bowl, moving like spider legs...
I had a dream I was exploring ruins in a forest, where
I encountered this feral girl with a porcupine head....
I dreamed a tired soldier visited an oracle or priestess,
who hummed a simple tune and provided refuge...
I had a dream that everyone was sinking, drowning, but still alive. No one
could move, and it was just getting darker and darker with bodies. Lovely...
We found an injured girl with wings. We took her to the hospital and
I warned them she might be dangerous, but no one listened to me...
In this dream, everyone had wings but me. I tried.
making my own cloth wings but it didn't work...
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...
Chapman dreams he must walk 100 miles to London Bridge; on the bridge, a stranger says
"dreams are nonsense! Why, I dreamt of buried treasure 100 miles away, in some town called..."
King Charles loses a new hawk. But a winged deer lands, bows to him,
and offers him a wild ride across France after his bird...
I dream I'm reading an amazing comic about a bright red geometric dog named Question,
floating through surreal landscapes. I'm envious--until I wake in relief that it's just a dream!
Trump wackos bomb the World Trade Center. I flee New York. Morticia Addams puts us up. Inside the
dream, I fall asleep. When I wake I ask "was the attack a dream?" Morticia says it was smaller. I try to
write it all down on my bedsheet, but the ink spreads. I wake again, sure I need to wash the sheet...
I'm in a restaurant at a round table. Waiters wrap me in hot towels. I laugh "If I were
chilled, I'd love this--but I'm NOT!" I wake to find I am too hot--too many blankets...
I dream I go to my NY dentist, but the novocaine sends me into a dream of having dentistry in Tel Aviv!
I 'wake' and my NY dentist explains he can't do me today: sore hands from doing Henry Kissinger...
My kid and I have mere nubbins where our fingers should be,
but I realize it's a dream--I can grow fingers or absorb them
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
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"...
Turns out you can float in deep space without a helmet.
But there's this weird disturbing smell, like an electrical fire...
The lights go out, the world's ending. Roz tries to make party snacks and keep folks calm. At last
she notices lights out the window. Other buildings seem fine. Is it really the Apocalypse? Or...
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
Four apparently psychic dreamlets of a gun in a desk, a guy needing to hide,
a canyon with woodpiles & a locked gate, and a blonde girl named Cathy...
CAUTION: SMALL DREAMS, LARGE IMPLICATIONS FOR E.S.P.
I dreamed I built a palace, but for fifteen years I kept silent, ashamed. Then
I tripped over a beautiful stone. I took it home. Next day I collected more...
In vain I struggle with my father, with his strong arms and wary eyes... I give up... agonizing quests down darkened
streets... long shadows on columns and porticos... a crowd gathers; my father may be in danger... I want to flee...
Our archivist had had a stroke. When an engine failed, my boss said
"Find its records if it takes two weeks!" Five minutes later...
Gunmen held me hostage in a grand hall; at last they shot me. Next day: the Moscow Theater hostages...
After I flew from New York to Hawaii, a surreal dream of a floating man reeled in like a kite...
2004? to March 2008; repeated meetings with a guardian--in dreams & out!
For five years now I've been dreaming of this guy. Many dreams, same guy...
Dream-skeptic Cicero dreamed a youth descended from heaven on a golden chain.
The next day he first met Octavius, and exclaimed "but there is the actual boy I dreamed of!"
The boy became Augustus Caesar, presiding over Rome's golden age...
General De Gaulle gives me a ride in his armchair with the plexiglass
roof. Alarming--since he drives backward at full speed...
A woman is giving birth and there is no doctor or midwife around.
Though reluctant, I have at least assisted at births, so...
My little brother catches and rides a fairy goose down steep mountain slopes, demanding it grant his wishes...
I'm in my papa's waiting room. I beg him to take a break from his patients now that he's dead, and walk with me...
In a dream, a dead friend told Mrs. Cl. how to cure her daughter's chronic illness: the yew tree. But yew is toxic...
I will a clay cat to come to life, then start healing real cats and dogs and...
All day I expected a terrible scream, but had no idea why until I heard it. A woman in flames came out of her house...
CAUTION: GRUESOME DEATH
Mrs Claughton moved into a house known as haunted. She dreamt multiple ghosts asked her for help.
She crossed England to pass messages to heirs, containing private details Claughton couldn't have known...
CAUTION: ENOUGH CORROBORATION TO MAKE SKEPTICS UNEASY
I met a deer-man in the woods. I go lucid, then wake up... to find I'm still dreaming. And wake again, and wake, and wake...
I realized I was dreaming, and flew. My friends were skeptical and held me down a while, but
soon I had them flying too. At a party in Valhalla, I made love with a mer-angel named Ealswa...
I'm chased by spaghetti, snared, sprinkled with parmesan.
My hungry classmates loom, and my best friend says...
Ebon Ebon Thalud, a woman blended with darkness, tries to gouge out my right eye. I wake screaming. My right eyelid...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree (at least till that visitor from Porlock barged in)
CAUTION: POET ON PAIN MEDS
Colette flies, sees a birdheaded turtle, wrestles a great playful cat, debates a snake, holds hands with a shy dog...
My grandma came in from gathering eggs and showed me one was triple-sized and very long...
DREAMS: I'm arguing with a worker on our oil rig when a huge piece of steel falls, crushing me instantly.
MONTHS LATER: that very worker gets in an argument with me. I recall my dreams, step back, and...
Night. Rain. A hansom cab. The horse slips on the wet pavement, toppling the cab with my husband inside.
I woke sure it happened. Next morning a postman tried to tell me of the crash, but I told him...
I dreamed my husband told me he'd been in a car crash and was in a frozen ditch not visible
from the road near our house. I woke and called 911 who found him just twenty minutes later...
I hung the dream-net over my bed. It worked. A blue-winged man with a leg of silver came to me,
drummed, danced, offered to teach me secrets. Awake, I found a blue feather caught in that net...
I go back 3000 years to the Judgment of Paris, then at Babylon's height see King Nebuchadnezzar,
then the doomed lovers Antony & Cleopatra, then Triton and the Nereids celebrating a divine birth...
CAUTION: DENSE CLASSICAL REFERENCES
Wayan dreams of petting an adorable cat-dog. The same night...
Cory dreams of meeting an adorable dog-cat. Later that day...
At the beach, Cory meets a woman with a dog named... Oh. You guessed.
My friend Cory's sore back is healed by a dream. So I ask for the same, and get this dream of incest...
CAUTION: KARMA, SEX/NUDITY, INCEST ISSUES
CORY: I'm in a government complex. Tired, but guards harass me. At last they let me nap on a floor pad.
WAYAN: I'm in the Student Union. Need to study, but guards harass me. Yet they let my friend sleep on a...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.
a dream of flying, shapeshifting and spiritual advice.
When a flood traps me in my cabin, I dream I meet
an old man who warns me "Let your butterflies go"...
I've had premonitory dreams of friends' deaths, but never ones clear enough to spur action...
You get 26 dice with letters on every face. Roll them all. Your haiku must use every letter. Go!
A farmer dreamt his new cow grew wings and flew away. Next day, he sold that cow at a heavy loss. Walking
home with the cash, he found a tame falcon, and tied its leg to his moneybag. One guess what the bird did...
"I dreamed you were in the water, Daddy. You kept trying to come out of the water to me..."
I saw a man riding across the face of a lake. Bullets and arrows flew at him, but all missed.
He reached the shore. Men who looked like him rose from the ground, and pulled him down...
CAUTION: GENOCIDE DIRECT, GENOCIDE BY PROXY
I'm at a long table. So many stews, so much rice! Soon we're stuffed. But some people
yell for more! I ask the woman next to me "How could they still be hungry?" She says...
Croesus dreamt his heir Atys was slain by an iron blade; he locked them all in the armory. But Atys went
hunting; his guard Adrastus's spear went astray. Did Fate kill Atys, or superstition rattling poor Adrastus?
Night. Heads shaved, in loose-fitting gray robes, the young men swing from eave to eave. Two lose their grips.
Hard fall. Blood. Assistants call ambulances. Others swing on, house to house, before dawn...
Joseph as a teen dreams sheaves of his brothers' grain bow to his; then the sun, moon & stars bow to him.
Eleven years later, in prison, Joseph interprets two cellmates' dreams as premonitory, and gets both right.
Two years later, he interprets two bizarre dreams troubling the Pharaoh, thus saving Egypt from famine...
CAUTION: BRONZE AGE FUN! NEAR-FRATRICIDE, SLAVERY, EXECUTION, FORCED MARRIAGE...
How'd that spider, dragon and T. rex get in my soup? I skip lunch.
Dig in the garden, but scaly heads pop out to nip at me. Persistent!
"D" wants to renovate her house. A powerplant with twin stacks is ugly, but will power
the tools to get the job done. But her new therapist interprets the dream very strangely...
CAUTION: NEO-FREUDIAN PSYCHOBABBLE
As a mob of Hollywood stars beats me up, I ask for autographs--and get them.
I sell the autographs to fund a statue of the beating--but with me smiling...
DAY: I'm an experimental subject given a drug in hopes it'll induce ESP. I just babble stupidly. Humiliation!
DREAM: my vacuum cleaner comes alive to attack my terrier & me. I flee, but there's an explosion...
TWO DAYS LATER: at the movies, a cartoon: a vacuum cleaner comes alive to attack a terrier. Then, BOOM...
CAUTION: WILL REALLY BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
by Gala Dalí 1943? painted by Salvador Dalí 1944; a supposedly instantaneous dream.
Dalí's wife Gala naps, but a bee wakes her--and her dream instantly magnifies
bee into tigers! After all, both have fur, sharp bits, black & gold stripes...
CAUTION: BREASTS; BAD DREAM THEORIES.
He saw a vehicle coming toward him at great speed. The light was so bright it blinded him. He screamed...
While painting a tribute to my hero/mentor Caravaggio, I dream we meet. He talks of his art
as we walk a dark space full of living chiaroscuro scenes we can circle, see from all angles...
PEACHES: after painting a peach all day, I find I AM one, reclining on a mound of cottage cheese...
CHERRIES: after a day in Reno, I find I'm a wheel in a slot machine, whirling, coming up cherries...
In my home town there were tales of coal-eaters. I dreamed of a miner who
transformed the mine-owner into a canary--at a price. He became coal himself...
CAUTION: GRIM MINE, HARSH SACRIFICE
Two days before 9/11, I dream I'm a child at ground zero, mourning the devastation--and witnessing rebirth.
AL repeatedly drew a bizarre, recurring dream-guide named Kolchec; years later he met
SARA, who'd painted her dream-guide, a distinctive spook named--oh, take a guess...
CAUTION: WILL DISTURB ESP SKEPTICS
At around one year old, Al dreamed, while in hospital, that he was a merboy
leaping from the sea, trying to figure out how to swim in the air, too...
At thirteen, I dreamed a van crashed right at the spot where my best friend always met me after school.
The next day we went to see what'd happen. I suggested we stand across the road just to be safe...
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
While going through a painful breakup, I kept having sexy, lucid, psychic dreams...
My friend Dawn dreamed she crawled into a dumpster to live, and at last felt at home, secure...
Wayan dreams of surprising Dawn on the toilet. She dreams that flushing away evidence of Foul Play won't work...
The wife of Admiral Richard Deane dreamt how he died two days before the news arrived...
De Bray dreamed a speeding car nearly hit him; a month later, he abruptly recognized the street from his dream and paused...
I hung the dream-net over my bed. It worked. A blue-winged man with a leg of silver came to me,
drummed, danced, offered to teach me secrets. Awake, I found a blue feather caught in that net...
The foremost wizard of Shakespeare's age dreams he's dead. They're burning his books, but that doesn't bother him...
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
I'm in the cellar, petting a tiger-cat. She speaks inside my head: "I'm tired of living on bread. I need meat."
I make excuses--it's pricy--then see big hanging quarters of meat. I hide them! She says "Call me Mistress
Touttmouss"--well, something like that--I know it's English, but can't make it out til I wake, when I see...
The book's first two pages showed an ant's awareness, then a human's wider grasp--both mere freckles on reality...
My only chance of life and freedom is to leap. He raises the gun and fires.
I'm flooded with a soundless explosion of light...
I held the strangest and most entrancing object I have ever seen: the very citadel of life itself!...
Age 7 to 11, I often dreamt I inhabited a consistent geography of mountains & deserts. I was an adult of dark
complexion in non-European clothes; I spoke a tongue (and read a script) that I didn't recognize when awake...
CAUTION: ADULT DRUG EXPERIMENT; PAST LIFE MEMORY?
I dreamt the Goddess of Spring paraded by my house. I woke and leapt to my bedroom window, and there she was...
The dream land was beautiful, but seemed empty 'til I heard piping voices.
An elven band! I gazed in wonder. But they could not (would not?) see me...
I had to negotiate a salary for hosting a radio show. I'd never done such a thing. I asked my dreams.
I was shown a land of ruthless warriors with a bushido code. So I went in tough, stayed tough, and...
My fiancé and I got along impossibly well. I asked my dreams "Can this last?"
I dreamed we were two redwoods, happy next to one another for centuries...
I had to face the Dark Lord. But my inexperienced therapist was unprepared for the battle--he hadn't even put his
shoes on! I told him the dream; he got defensive. I switched to a veteran therapist and got much better feedback...
I dreamt I was out of my body. My friend John was too, so I slipped into his to see how it felt. Big lungs,
big muscles! When I woke, John told me he'd had a great out-of-body dream and was reluctant to wake...
Why does my passport have color photos of me ice skating? I haven't in years. Your
passport must show your true face. Should I change it, or do they know me better than...
CAUTION: SHAMANIC SYNCHRONICITY
I DREAM I'm in the mansion of my favorite film producer, Otto Preminger. Then I learn it's my home!
I WAKE realizing I'm the producer of my dreams--not some impersonal, instinctive Unconscious...
On a trip, lonely, I induced dreams about my fiancé Steve, hoping I could visit him
out-of-body. On the one night I succeeded, he abruptly felt my presence while awake...
I face the Quickstep, the final test for high-level ice dancing. I do well, yet the judges fail me--for trivia. Then I realize
I passed this test years ago! These judges are my nitpicking inner critics. I ignore them, and joyfully soar, spin and fly...
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...
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...
Delboeuf, ignorant of botany, dreams of feeding lizards a fern called Asplenium ruta muralis;
years later he finds both lizards and fern in books he read and forgot years before the dream...
Erica dreams that during a protest she's caught in a radioactive flood...
Michael dreams a nuclear forcefield makes his fingertips explode and congeal into weird knobs...
Joanne dreams she meets nuclear mutants with curling black nails great for peeling potatoes...
Scott dreams the world goes silent and white, bleaching out. His hands dissolve...
A few years ago I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, though I knew they were carcinogenic.
I dreamed I had terminal cancer; my denial of the evidence had killed me. I woke, and quit...
I went into her room one morning before she awoke and saw her eyes moving. Suddenly she said,
"Pick me! Pick me!" I woke her and she immediately said, "Oh, Daddy, I was a flower." ...
In one night Descartes had three dreams convincing him he had to change the course of his life...
As a child in Orléans, M. Deschamps got his first taste of plum-cake from a M. Fortgibu.
As a man in Paris, Deschamps saw plum cake again--but not to eat. M. Fortgibu had beaten him to it.
Many years later, Deschamps was given plum-cake. He said "All that's missing is M. Fortgibu!"...
CAUTION: TRULY POINTLESS AND THAT'S THE POINT
I fondle the noses of two masked girls in red leotards--parodying part of a Clockwork Orange...
I'm excited to see Last Year at Marienbad, but either the actors mumble or the sound is bad...
Night. I fly, as in Fellini's 8½, but out of control. The wind takes me, I'm terrified...
My grandmother attacks me with her crab-claw, then retreats, chanting the film title Shoeshine!
As a man on shore patrol in Manila is attacked, he and his mother simultaneously see and hear each other...
I couldn't find Mrs. B and feared she was suicidal. But I heard my late mother say "She's in that hotel..."
I dream I meet a lady in red named Miss Napier. I know no such person. Senseless! Next evening,
after I read onstage, friends enter my dresssing room to introduce me to the lady in red--Miss...
A gentleman clad but in a sheet notified me that an old friend had died of a terrible disease. What disease? Well...
Emily Dickinson ties up a worm she mistrusts. Bad move! It grows into a talking snake with a score to settle...
The day after my mom outed me to my dad, I dream a great storm has passed and everything's just glowing...
A friend scoffed at Biblical talk of the apocalypse, but as we spoke, the evening star came down and burned all our
cities. I knew it was no ordinary dream. Next day came the news: the Russians had burned the city of Sevastopol...
CAUTION: WAR CRIME
My hunting license won't let me legally shoot a giraffe or ibex, but I do bag a prime Macy's salesman...
CAUTION: LICENSE TO KILL
The stranger seemed to know me. He said "Tell her about the little dogs, it will comfort her." Two weeks later...
DREAM: a man tries to break into my house. I call for help; the operator says "Oh, that's Nisrock."
DAYS LATER: I open a book on the unconscious. It says Nisrock was a Babylonian god of dreams...
CAUTION: BAD MYTHOGRAPHY
I'm lost in a labyrinth, trying to get to an appointment. What time is it? My watch is gone, and when
I ask a watchman he sneers. But clock faces glare down from every wall, saying 4:10. I wake. It's...
CAUTION: HOW DID I KNOW?
Wading a river at night, I fall in. I'm drowning! But my friend Edward pulls
me out. "But Eddie, you're dead!" "No" he says. "You'll grow out of that!"...
Donne, in Paris, was alarmed by a vision of his wife holding a dead baby. At that hour, in England, his wife...
In our marshlands, tides, birds, dogs come and go; but must our friends and lovers, too?
CAUTION: AIDS DEATHS
Dou dreams he marries Lily; when a monstrous snake attacks her huge family, he reluctantly hosts
them all... when he wakes, they turn out to be bees driven from their hive by a (very real) snake...
At the airport, a new automatic photo booth shoots your memories!
Julie can't resist... and emerges, excited, to find that...
I meet a dancer who plays a stick figure on stage. She smokes
a cigar. I ask her how many a day she smokes, and she answers...
Looking in a mirror, Julie goes lucid. She changes herself into a man
and pulls her mirror-image through the glass...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY
Mom gave me cookies for my three-year solo spaceflight. Special cookies for both ends of me...
CAUTION: NUDITY, BAD SEX ADVICE
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!"...
It was Hitler. He had a pig face, and he was taking notes. He said
'I want to understand the uses and implications of this amazing technology'...
I dreamt a grey filly won the Derby. My friend, a fan, said no fillies were racing this year; but he forgot one named...
I was pregnant with a child not my husband's. I wanted to leave him, but not to join my lover;
I was done defining myself through men. Nor did I want the child. I got a knitting needle, and...
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
In psychodrama, my sister/lover did a happy childhood scene--till the actors took her
down a trap door into the underworld. And I knew I'd have to go down after her...
Lucid, I summon a sexy literary character. But he tries to take over my personality and make it his lucid dream...
CAUTION: VAMPIRE-SLAYING
A killer tornado traps us in the cellar. I bite my finger. It's boneless--I'm dreaming! I summon...
I've always been scared of tornadoes, until I went lucid and became one...
CAUTION: HORNY TORNADO
I'm lucid but paralyzed. A weird child spies on me; is she controlling me?
Then I'm having sex--but if I come, I'll wake up! Then some thugs jump me.
I make sure they won't bother me again, but... is everyone in this dream out to distract me?
CAUTION: SEX, MUGGER-STOMPING
My best friend and I qualify for new bodies. The new me is taller, but poor Ken may take years adjusting to his new...
Dumuzid dreams raptors prey on his flock, his hearth fire's doused, his churns knocked over; he lies dead.
His sister Jestinana interprets it: "Manhunters will kill you; you must flee." He does, across the known world...
Dunne dreamt of a fire with smoke so toxic it killed people on
a balcony in open air! Then came the evening newspaper...
Just north of the Firth of Forth in Scotland, a train fell from the track to a grassy park where small groups of people
wandered. I sensed it was one of those odd dreams of mine & tried to get the date--next spring. On April 14, 1914,
the "Flying Scotsman" jumped the parapet 15 miles north of the Forth Bridge and fell to the golf links below...
I say it's 4:30 PM; the waiter says 4:30 AM! I wake in the night to find
my watch says 4:30, but it's stopped! I wind it, and next morning...
DREAM 1: On green grass, a red & blue boat with a net draped atop. Predictive.
DREAM 2: Climbing a ladder with square rungs in a space w/o walls. Predictive.
DREAM 3: A small boy with a toy boat. A sail's laid out flat for washing. Predictive...
I was on an island about to explode like Krakatoa. I warned the French colonial authorities "4,000
people will die if we don't get them out!" but no one listened. I woke. The paper came. "Mont
Pelée erupts, kills 40,000". I had missed a zero! But 40,000 turned out to be wrong too, implying...
NIGHTMARE: a huge horse goes wild, leaps a fence and chases me.
NEXT DAY: a horse does just that--yet every detail's different...
As a child I read Jules Verne's Clipper of the Clouds--a metal craft with many propellers on spars, not wings.
Soon I dreamt I designed & flew quite a different craft, like a small boat of canvas on a wood frame.
20 years later, I was test-flying a new aeroplane with a boatlike cockpit of white canvas on a wood...
DREAM: I meet a woman with a bun hairdo, black skirt, black & white striped blouse. I think she's a spy!
TWO DAYS LATER: I meet that woman--bun, skirt, blouse. And all the hotel guests here say she's a spy...
The first drop struck about four miles away, with terrific force and thunder, breaking and drowning the land...
Bear lady, bare lady,
in (or out of) a bear suit...
The whole village welcomed in the Mothers of Rain. An aged deer had visions.
A young mother gave birth. All the creatures and spirits danced...
In the field, a huge dog whose markings form the image of
a running horse. So who am I dreaming of? Horse or hound?
Wei Linggong was an autocrat heeding only one minister. A dwarf bravely told him "I dreamt
you were no imperial sun warming all, just a stove, and your crony hogs all your warmth..."
A monstrous empty eggshell, cracked open and roughly
propped up, makes an excellent skateboard park
People ride inside two levitating arms that shake hands
above a desert. Do the insiders know what the deal is?
Tiny people ride a herd of levitating ladders--badly.
One seems to have gotten bucked loose...
King Ethelfrid bribes Redwald to turn over his guest, Edwin. Edwin dreams an angel warns him, swearing to save him if
he'll convert. Redwald's wife tells him "Don't betray a guest." Once Edwin's king, that dream-angel demands his fealty...
CAUTION: SHODDY SPIRITUAL BARGAINING
I knew I was dreaming but the world looked quite realistic. I struck a wineglass with all my strength--a risky act,
if I were awake. It didn't shatter. But when I looked again, it lay broken! Like an actor who'd missed its cue...
My grandma couldn't drive, but after she died, I dreamt she drove my brother Bill and me
around--speeding, in fact. When I told him the dream, he filled in details--he'd dreamt it too!
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...
Sledding at night, I approached the speed of light, and the stars turned colors I'd never seen...
DREAM: My husband was slipping a gold necklace onto a slim, dark girl I'd never met. I woke and sketched it...
AFTER: He was having an affair with the girl, and gave her the necklace the night of my dream--her birthday...
I fled a demon into a shadowy construction zone where an even worse telepathic lion-devil
lured me in with soothing flattery. I woke shaking--and then things in my room began to move...
CAUTION: DEMONS, POLTERGEIST PHENOMENA
The moment I find the Key, I'm possessed! I wake to find it's just a nightmare. Only who's broken into my house?...
CAUTION: DEMONIC POSSESSION & EVERYDAY PSYCHOPATHS
I don't even notice the car until it's hit me and I'm dead. Now I have to lie here
forever, even though I know it's a dream. But if you die in a dream, you die...
An albatross with beautiful eyes transformed into a woman. But her nose remained a beak! She asked...
Pa warns me to protect my paws. Then gilt wounds my sole. Then
a lioness eats a tasty drumstick. Then a bus crashes on our corner--for real!
A young woman and I swing one another into the air. I asked her to swing me more slowly and regularly...
A woman models an elegant gown baring her breasts. All five of them. Wait, those aren't breasts, they're...
A doctor tells Ellis to try "selvdrolla", but he's so focused on the strange name he forgets the prescription...
I was in a strange house. I met Mr Hall, a preacher from Alert Bay. He said he was different now, in the
world above. I woke and told the dream. Two months later a letter came saying he died February 27...
In my dream, I flew upward. It was as though I was going to the place where stars are, for the stars
were showing in the daytime. I saw all around our world. Then I wished in vain to go down again...
Will you walk in the fields, love? / Let us be gone.
The tall grass will wave to thee / Fairest one...
I was floating in the Ether, not far from this world, which seemed small as an apple.
An angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, 'This must thou eat'...
Sunset. Walking home from work. A smiling, creepy American offers a ride. I back away until I'm against a tree.
I don't give away the Arab hiding in its branches. I have a knife, and I know I will kill this American...
CAUTION: FIGHT TO THE DEATH BREWING
EMRICH: I'm in a conference center in "Pondecherry", even though it feels nothing like India...
THOMAS: A woman picks fruit off a tree by a pond and calls them "pondicherries--with an 'i'"...
CAUTION: WILL ANNOY E.S.P. DENIERS
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...
A large dog was chasing me, but somehow we got turned around and began racing.
As I caught up with the dog, any bit I passed went invisible--but the rest of the dog ran on
unfazed. When I won the dog vanished entirely. Awake, I animated the dog running, then...
Every good party leaves a corpse or two. Cleaning up, I behead this one and drag it across the street to the
empty lot where we leave them. But its throat forms a toothless mouth and starts biting--well, gumming me...
As Joey's infant daughter Jesse died, her father-in-law woke up 500 miles away and announced, "The baby..."
After Myrna’s husband died, one night she felt him behind her in bed, and he whispered...
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...
I dreamed I was riding a lion. A few days later, when my husband suddenly left me, I recalled the dream and...
I had to sell my horse Shadow, but I missed him so much I painted him. As I finished, a strange impulse led me...
I'm a mouse trapped and tortured in a maze/machine who gets killed four different ways at once...
CAUTION: OW, OW, OW, OW
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...
I wished I could kiss my son farewell. That week, Ethel called. "I dreamed Ned kissed you, not me!
I was hurt. He laughed like anything and kissed me too..."
My new editor starts rejecting my poems. My new new editor rewrites them for me. I feel lucky not to be arrested...
I dream of three colonies in the deep future. We outlived the universe itself, but can we survive each other?
CAUTION: WAR, GENOCIDE, POLITICAL ALLEGORY
DREAM: I'm in a restaurant offering just one dish: wild boar, for $12. Excessive. I say no.
NEXT DAY: I tackle a book review I must write. The book costs $12. Excessive. Oh! It's a...
DREAM: I'm in the Arctic facing a hostile mob. I insist "I'm dreaming; you can't hurt me." They try!
I look down at my body, stuck full of hatchets, and say "See?" They slink off, looking sheepish...
TWO DAYS LATER: I'm in northern England. A reporter snaps "Dreams won't help the miners..."
DREAM 1: A man wearing long white underwear shoots me down with a machine gun.
DAY: Long John Nebel interviews me; his Freudian friend calls me a penis-envying woman.
DREAM 2: Long John and his buddy umpire a rough baseball game. Definitely not cricket...
CAUTION: SEXISM, FREUDIANS, PUNS
In nightmares I was stalked by a big ugly bruiser. At last, I faced him, asking "What do you want?"
He asked for my hand. His animal energy attracted me, and despite my doubts I said yes...
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...
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
I'm the director of an airport. A mysterious Mongolian traveler lands. Let him in
or not? I try to avoid the decision by lying--say "I'm not the director!"...
I flew over a forest. I noted the trees were all the same, and told myself to remember this...
The beauty parlor on the edge of the canyon crawls with rattlesnakes.
I float in the air above, but even up here, knots of levitating snakes...
I was at a dream conference and brought up a recurrent theme
that others hadn't mentioned: multiple antlerlike branchings...
I asked my dreams "What's my truest purpose?"
I dreamed my body was a tree, and a voice said "Chart the growth"...
Dinner with Dracula goes well, considering, except for the mayonnaise. But suddenly I'm drowning!
No one sees or hears me. Am I a ghost, am I dead or alive? And how would anyone notice?
A crowd watches from shore as a great glowing meteor descends into the sea. I fear a tsunami, but...
I’m falling into endless darkness. I feel like screaming, but then I remind
myself I’m dreaming. “What is for me here?” I demand. “SHOW ME!” I begin
rising toward the stars. Huge metal discs with alien writing rise with me...
Previous dreamwork had made it clear my mother had betrayed me; I asked
my dreams how to protect myself from those who do not love me...
I dreamed I was a whale swimming against a Christian ebb tide,
trying to lead humans to a cleaner spiritual current...
CAUTION: HARD ON AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY
Four teens dream their moms are monsters: Patricia sees hers as a demonic doll, Fiona finds
her mom's a wolf, Lenore's is a grinning vampire, and Helen's is a bossy, punitive octopus...
I dream we canoe down a river. You say it's barren because this was once the ocean's floor. You're
protective but not longing. I wake on a beach, puzzled why I still feel for you a year later...
In bed asleep, the dreamer discovers this seemingly empty room hosts a
fairy ball, full of luminous half-seen beings serenaded by a monstrous band...
I'm in a jungle, making love with various well-endowed spirits...
CAUTION: JUNGLE STEREOTYPES, OVERSIZED ERECTIONS
After a summer apart I dream my friend John and I fly hand in hand. Bliss! Strange, he has long hair and no beard...
CAUTION: OFFSTAGE MURDER
My friend Carol and I are carrots. We crawl out of our vegetable bed
through the kitchen window, and end up happily hot-tubbing in soup...
After an article suggests we roam the multiverse in sleep, I dream of three strange names. Awake, I google them...
My father-in-law looked me in the eye and said, 'Florence, the Lord is my shepherd and we go in peace'...
Indiana: Father's favorite clock, a cuckoo clock, stopped at exactly the time he died...
Florida: an old clock silent for years started up at 10:20, the time of my husband's death the day before...
My husband was standing against a wall with both arms around this woman's waist, and they were laughing...
"There is going to be an explosion of two or three million gallons of oil or gasoline..."
From age six on, Simon nightly climbs mountains and faces roaring floods in a sort of naptime bootcamp...
A woman urged her friend to give her daughter a musical education. Without hearing this, the child went hunting for...
My brother-in-law Eddy was out hunting with a boy whose shotgun had its safety off. Suddenly Eddy...
CAUTION: VIOLENT, PREVENTABLE DEATH
by "Veronica Franco"; 2006/8/19, a dream of penned creatures and those who love them.
Alpine deer-hamsters, pigs, birds, children, even fundamentalists' daughters grow up and want to fly free...
Laurel and Frank each dream the gardenia in their bedroom went
neglected & unwatered, but with care is now blooming again...
A friend in Heaven promises Helen a lost ring would return to her. Three days later it did; but its path had been strange...
I was a South Asian teenage girl. Strange men throw rocks at our house,
then explode into fire. I don't trust my dad to get my little brother out...
Frederick dreams a monk writes words on the door of Wittenburg’s church
with a pen so big it pokes the Pope. The next day...
I was in a gang, but I quit. They stoned me--and the green heron, the green color I called "Sharonne".
The setting (Israel), the green (Islam), and the name (Ariel Sharon?) all hint the dream's political...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, POLITICS
I slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
Fursa the preacher, sick, dreams flaming devils & angels are trying his case; one
failure to coax a deathbed repentance gets him scorched. He wakes with burns...
CAUTION: DREAM HAS PHYSICAL EFFECTS