A cart came by, drawn by a white horse, on its way to the hospital. In that cart was my husband....
CAUTION: ANGUISH, DEFEAT, PREDESTINATION
I dreamed that in four days a plague would hit our reservation and people would start dying.
Four days later it happened just as I was warned---the 1918 flu. And my dream caused it...
CAUTION: NOT JUST SURVIVOR'S GUILT, SEER'S GUILT
I saw my mother standing on the tip of one wing of our plane. She was
dressed in white flowing robes and calling my name, warning me of danger...
A man in a blue coat on a white horse delivered papers from a nearby wrecked ship, signed Stephenson and...
A crane came and spoke to me, reassuring me "I'll be back" even as a great fire burned it. It returned
as a white butterfly. Next morning, as we played hide and go seek, I shut my eyes and counted to...
CAUTION: CIVILIANS MASSACRED
The moon invites me to go flying, but I get tired of magic and just want to go shopping...
A monster's out to eat my dog--and maybe me. We get cornered in the barn...
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...
I sold my soul to the Devil. On an impulse, I handed him my fiddle. To my
wonder, he played a sonata of exquisite beauty. When I woke I retained only echoes...
A English carpenter named Taylor demolishes Netley Abbey despite
dreams warning he'll be crushed by stones falling from a window...
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
Each time, I'm a young Elizabethan man in a grand, new-built country house. In the main room,
I find a man in black by the fire. He comes at me, and as he shoots me point-blank, I wake...
I'm at my favorite opera, The Magic Flute. When I hear the line 'That is the devil certainly,' I think
of Hitler. The Gestapo have a device that reads my thought, and come for me. Bystanders spit on me...
CAUTION: NATIONAL NIGHTMARE
After my father died he attacked me in recurring nightmares. I fought and beat him, but he always came back.
When he showed up as a tiger, I negotiated, agreeing to make some changes. He's left me in peace ever since.
As it was revealed that the pianist in Truro Cathedral was T.S. Eliot's illegitimate daughter, her
wretched playing suddenly became beautiful. I knew the dream meant "cleave to the illegitimate"...
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
Thordhr dreams a pack of wolves attack him in a trade-booth! He wakes sure the trade-fair will be trouble...
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)
Four childhood dreams predicting Gudrun's life; plus a predictive dream by her husband Thorkell Eyjolfson
Gudrun dreams of four treasures: a hood, a bracelet, a ring, a jeweled helm. Her cousin sees them as four marriages...
Two snakes fight as centipedes emerge from under rocks. I tell my friend. Next day her co-worker tells her the same...
Before his daughter's even born, Thorstein dreams two eagles in love with a swan kill one another in rivalry over her...
CAUTION: PATRIARCHAL BARBARIANS
Thutmoses napped in the shade under the Great Sphinx--then buried to the neck in sand.
The resident sun-god complained of the sand; "the throne is yours if you'll clear it off..."
ALYSE dreams Tim drives a motorcycle-book up a hill, but she doesn't LIKE riding so fast...
TIM dreams a wise woman tested him, but found him unqualified to play teacher to Alyse...
"What about their dreams? What if they've all been partly dreaming us, and
lacking them, our world becomes as trivial and narrow as our dreams?"...
Alli/Tip could only imagine loving the strange, intense, and unavailable--and Bronte was all three..
Alli/Tip is lured/tricked into a pen full of women, and tries to get out by repeating this ambiguous plea...
I work in a witness protection program. We hide the Muppet on the bottom
of an empty swimming pool, hand him a long straw, and fill it with...
Qu'lad, dying of flu in the pandemic, dreamt a wolf told him cold-water baths would save him. He staggered to the river. He lived. He told others.
They lived. The shaman Togumalis dreamt his spirit helper, a squirrel, prescribed the same. A century later, hospital records show why it worked...
CAUTION: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SHOWN AS SUPERIOR
High-voltage traces of our lust and love flowed through our mattress nightly...
until one night when the power surged and overflowed. Then I felt you...
I'm in a small pond. A monster goldfish stalks me. I seem trapped in place, and
wake in panic, sheets drenched--to find my pet goldfish gasping on the floor...
Towers, before he was killed, argued Terman was wrong: geniuses are often isolated and maladjusted...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
A woman dreams of her boyfriend recently killed in a car crash. Unremarkable so far. But he
also haunts his ex-babysitter, two thousand miles away, who had no idea he'd died...
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...
Tubman woke ecstatic, unable to eat. "My people are free!" Her host said "My grandchildren may see it; but we will be gone."
"No! I tell you, sir, you'll see it, and you'll see it soon. My people are free! My people are free!" Three years later...
I dreamed of flying like a bird over beautiful meadows to a border or river I couldn't cross. But ladies in white
helped pull me over. After I did escape, I met some of those ladies and knew by their faces who I could trust...
I saw a chariot fly south then return with the cold body of my friend. I ran into town to warn them
"Miss Fanny's dead!" As I reached town, the news came, confirming her death...
I saw a snake with a white-bearded man's head, and two younger heads alongside. Men attacked the
snake, cutting off the younger heads. The eldest looked at me, mournful, and they cut off his head too.
Soon after, I met John Brown; I knew it was him. But only on the day of Harper's Ferry did I understand...
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...
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...
A young Tibetan boy approached me with his arms full of the shapes I had been working on for
the past week. To my delight I found the material, textures and colors I had been searching for...
Saigon, 1973. Lost in a fabric maze. I find, wearing Buddhist robes, the skeleton of a dog.
Years later I write of Buddhist monks burning themselves, and build an ominous maze...
CAUTION: SUICIDES BY FIRE
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...
Mark Twain dreams we're cells inside God, and writes of Huck Finn among the microbes.
A century later, unaware of Twain's dreams, Robert Moss...
We went to visit a well-known psychic. As an afterthought I asked about an upcoming race. The answer was firm: "Marco to win..."
We made a lot off her tip. But when I thanked her later, we were shocked to learn she'd never heard me! Then who had spoken?...
CAUTION: WEIRD EVEN FOR SPIRITUALISTS
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
PATIENT: I dreamt of a dangerous cat and a mixture of cream and booze called 'appealing nausea'...
THERAPIST: I heard a lecture on feeding alcohol to cats til they choose milk laced with booze...
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
Zebra emerge from the lake. They glide as if swimming, and the air has an odd shimmer; did they bring the depths
along? They seem to be having great fun ducking branches and vaulting brambles. Such agility and grace!
He said "Oh, Mom, I had a terrible dream. A car ran me down."
I said we could not live by dreams or we live a life of horror...
The "Amazement Park", as I dubbed it, was a building long as a football field and three floors high; you fly,
suspended, round an oval track, through a galaxy of images teaching that "sharing" is what matters...
I was on a spiral stair. The walls had scrawled messages, not sprayed,
carved or painted but living tissue--and getting fresher as I descended. Whatever was growing them was still below me, and still writing...
I free a friend unjustly imprisoned. On the run, we encounter our Life Paintings. Mine is a beautiful pegasus flying. But on its back is a monkey in a red suit...
I meet a man in a box. A mob wants to attack him. But five white horses defend him! Well, one's really a unicorn. I know each horse is a talent, but only recall one when I wake: clairvoyance...
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...
I dreamed a big black bird shared our house, and whenever I walked a certain street, I had flashes of raising a corvid. On day,
on that street, I saved a jackdaw hit by a car. Her broken wing has healed; now she flies in and out of our house as she pleases...
I meet my personal demon, and discover it has a personal demon: me! Am I worse than my Shadow?
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, NUDE MONSTERS
WAYAN: I wake deep in the night. From the black square of a curtainless window, eyes are peering in at me...
MARK: I wake to find a black square trapdoor in my bedroom ceiling. From the dark above, eyes peer in at me...
At an amusement park, big 3D letters appeared in the air, saying
"I WANT YOUR DREAMS". Terrified, I dived underground...
Always ask permission to throw rocks at your date. No, not those big ones! Where's the nearest hospital?
CAUTION: SURREAL DATE ABUSE
CHRIS: I find what may be a magic potion, if it has a scroll hidden in the liquid...
MARK: I'm underwater. Spirits dance around me, on top of sunken scrolls...
I find myself in a church-like setting. Above me, couples in 18th century dress dance joyfully.
It provides a wonderful, ‘curious’ moment to pause and reflect... before my journey must continue.
A male real estate agent knocked on the door. The house was full of sleeping crocodiles.
She fled through the house, trying not to rouse the attention of either sort of predator...
VAUGHAN'S DREAM: I visit Kurt Vonnegut. Kids all over. He's going on a trip soon. Mentions of 'Jerome' and an island...
VONNEGUT REPLIES: "That night, childrens' author Jerome B visited; we discussed my upcoming trip to England..."
On the bridge between waking and dreaming, a jet plane duels a T. Rex. But
the jet strays into dream space, becoming a pterosaur--and soon, Rex lunch...
Rajiv keeps trying to convince me it's the best hotel in India: the orgy of biters, the
bowls of twitching fingers. But it's only the oracular spirits that really impress me...
CAUTION: CREEPY FINGERS
I'm trying to jam together my dream diary and my first comics. My grandmother's
skeptical. But at last, with an audible 'click', dreams and comics suddenly merge...
A graduation parade has a papier-maché cowboy (hollow ego?), a giant
rampaging stallion (unconscious), and a mama cat who calms him (anima)...
The House of Comics has a shabby annex jammed with self-publishers.
We make a human ladder and climb out a high window, but I don't fit;
as the tenement collapses, I must smash the windowframe to free...
In the paper factory where my dad worked all his life, I find him on
his deathbed. Even as he fades, he's still trying to please his bosses...
Tony works as a courier in Sarajevo till he inadvertently delivers a bomb. Held by
a warlord for months, he dreams within the dream, and draws those dreams...
CAUTION: GRIM
Two kids I grew up with are dead. We carry their still-smoking corpses by the home of George Bush...
CAUTION: BURNT BODIES
I go to work at the factory, clock in, strip naked, and build my... self! Myself as art.
A long slow job, but when my workmates ask, I'm admit I'm happy with me at last...
I panic as statues come alive at the museum, but they're all about energizing a mystical pyramid...
I tell the angel teaching me to fly that I'm not ready to go solo yet--
I'm wobbly, the terrain's unknown. He lets go, and I...
Comics character Doctor Blasphemy, on stilts, bares his secret identity:
poet Allen Ginsberg! But who chopped off his missing fingers?
CAUTION: BLOODY FINGERS
I'm gloomy about the state of the world, but my alter ego cheerfully explains we're dead and in
Hell--as a demon train rolls up with Elvis Costello on the roof singing "This is Hell I suppose"...
Soil turns to air for me; I float in the dark between tree roots
and stones, thinking "If only I could remember my name"...
My bedroom window is choked with dirt. I dig up to the surface
and find a man reading comics. He says 'It is the only way!'...
I'm in World War II, asking a reporter to keep quiet about our secret weapon.
But it's already gone off, melting and distorting the whole cartoon world. It's...
The comics industry degenerates into civil war. We peddle all night to avoid the Marvel...
My "friends" pull me away from the girl of my dreams, push booze & pot at me,
and won't even try to climb the rope to success. But Marvin saves Evel Knievel
from a motorcycle crash. Sounds good--until, ten years later, I hear how Marvin died...
CAUTION: GRIM AFTERMATH
Nazis call my simple architectural drawing a social protest, take it at gunpoint,
and toss it in the ovens. The commander mocks me with its ashes...
Under the surface of my comics panels, a tiny horde is having an orgy. I can't
publish this, it's too embarrassing! Wait a minute. That one is me...
CAUTION: MICRO-ORGY
Bums tap on the diner window. I tell them to buzz off, until I really look at
the latest--a shaman dressed as a huge pigeon. He's no panhandler!...
I'm a Confederate officer. The only way to save my men is to end the war by
pulling the plug at the bottom of the lake! I dive in, fighting a Yankee, who...
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...
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 take my friend Neil Gaiman to a park where we sculpt a giant horned head. Months later
we collaborate on a graphic novel. The course of the project's full of echoes from the dream...
We need to get down to the sea, but Disney Corporation blocks the way. Wait--we're
dreamworkers! We ooze through the walls, and cheer the parade marching in on the tide...
Repeated attempts to move a gigantic, sacred, saucerlike stone all failed; but now,
with the world's biggest cranes, we get it on a truck. It crawls past adoring crowds...
I'm a bike courier. I take a packet of fifty potent dreams
up Dream Street and deliver them to the year 1980...
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
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 grope through fog to the Vague House. Fog inside, too. Find a stone carved with an Eye of
Horus, and know it's my anger. Find a bigger stone scarab, and know it's my REAL anger...
God speaks in surreal images from the sky, and I hurry to write down
what God says. But I find I wrote mere squiggles on the page...
Wayan dreams a jet crashes in dead silence. Meanwhile Vera dreams of being ON a jet that...
I dream my friend Vera's ordered to just study & sleep--no play, no dates. Then I dream
Vera works with gangs as an armed peacekeeper. I tell her; Vera's shocked, since...
I flew over a beautiful park where I taught others how to fly. But there were people who
I didn't want to see me flying. I stood mid-air above them, and they didn't spot me...
I was a child again, sitting on a bench, watching young maidens dance.
But as I grew older, they faded away in the light of adulthood...
Vespasian dreamed he and his family would rise only when Emperor Nero lost his teeth.
The next day, a surgeon happened to show Vespasian a tooth he'd just extracted from...
My husband's sweet, supportive, but not that attractive. It's my brother (meaning creativity) who
gives me oral sex to die for, as my parents quarrel and a chorus chants "Ecstasy, ecstasy"...
CAUTION: INCEST
Viga-Glum dreamt a giantess came to visit. "She is the spirit-guide of my grandfather in Norway. He is dead...
A Gypsy man invites me to dance. But he cuts my arm, deep; then even his touch multiplies
my wounds. Last is a needle through my wrist. But I'm committed to the full dance now...
CAUTION: BLOOD; CURIOUSLY, NOT PAIN
At the beach, a deaf boy with a strong aura asks "Are you here for the coin?"
He buries horse skeletons in the sand; the bones are carved with symbols...
I'm in a restaurant when my dad walks in. He looks great; he has
both legs again. We talk, say "I missed you", we hug lovingly...
The beach. Smoke? No, spray from hundreds of dolphins hunting. I thought
a giant wave was coming in, but it was just a trick of the light through fog...
I'm in a theater waiting for a woman onstage to fart human speech;
but I have to skate away on a tipped-over traffic cone...
Worms rappeled down from my ceiling. My friend says "I've had great talks with those creatures."
They became flying flowers exuding a gas that, if you napped, let you have wonderful conversations...
I was on a London train. An ad had an image from "Jack and the Beanstalk" and I pondered
the tale--the meaning of the golden eggs. A man got on, held out a golden egg, and opened it...
I'm in the army, in line for a prostitute. An earlier dream cut my cock in two. It heals, but my stodgy technique
bores my assigned girl; and the cops break the legs of girls who try to leave. A riot begins--can I even escape?
CAUTION: STARTS SORDID, ENDS BRUTAL
A hummingbird was trapped inside my home. So beautiful. I set it free.
The next Saturday, I found this hummingbird on the patio...
My nonexistent brother is a bank robber about to be arrested; he says
"I never saw Jung die." Meaning not that Jung's alive, but just...
A huge explosion knocked the earth off its orbit; it struck other planets and wrecked the whole
solar system. Where will the souls ready to reincarnate all go? Or do they even need a planet?...
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
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...
The home we were to stay in was on fire. The next had a living room
that was shallow water, wall to wall, where turquoise fish swam...
Chased by the old movie Wolfman, I get tired of fear and turn on the monster. I take on his wolfness!
But in me, wolf-nature manifests differently--as a human body with a calm, happy wolf's head...
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
I was on a plane... It was almost graceful, the plane actually entered the building before everything dissolved into flame...
CAUTION: DEATH. DEATH TWICE.
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...
A dream of body parts--maybe, impossibly, alive--hung up like drying laundry. Von Trotta inserted it in a film
script to foreshadow a suicide, but seems deaf to any personal warning--as if it's not her dream at all...
WAYAN: My housemate Linda shows me her weird navel--and pussy, to compare...
LINDA: At Christmas, I run through snowy streets, naked except for earphones...
CAUTION: NUDITY & AWFUL DREAM-PUN
After fasting for six days, I dreamed of three spirit helpers who aided my village,
guiding hunters toward game and healing others. But I lost so many loved ones...
CAUTION: SPOUSE MURDERED; CAREER BURNOUT
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...
I was one of just three to survive a roller coaster crash. I dreamed of a playful, laughing girl who drove off a cliff.
Dead, she lay on a bier in a surreal cemetery. But she woke and looked at photos of her old self with curiosity...
My scalp had an infection that just wouldn't heal. I tried everything. Then I dreamed I met
a big, black man who advised me to use certain ingredients from Africa...
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
Exploring Indonesia's lesser isles, Wallace fell sick with fever. He dreamed that Malthusian hunger and
population pressure might explain the evolution of the species he found. He wrote to Darwin, and...
I dreamt my son Walter drowned in the creek by a certain tree. I woke in tears, and resolved...
I dreamt that at 4:35 AM the chandelier over our baby's bed fell, crushing the baby to death. I woke and...
After a day of troubling conflicts over race & art, I dream I'm handed a hot, heavy, mossy head--is it art, or alive?
The goddess of Night is in love with me, but I'm married, and tired, and just full of excuses...
I dream over & over of the same place, time, & woman. We fall in love. Strangely, I'm the one who gets pregnant...
I've been drawing a personification of the World Dream Bank.
Nerdy, but most of your readers are nerds...
I'm in the kitchen making a mess--kneading pasta dough on the bookcase. If my mom comes in and sees...
A giant insect chases me around our gym. A girl tells me it's harmless but I'm sure it's a...
Nearly everyone in my family dreams of a mass murder as it happens nearby. But my dad's sure it's his own
evil id, and my mom clams up, and my sister forgets. And me? I doubt the whole thing for ten years, until...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE VIOLENCE
After he died, I dreamed that the phone rang and when I said "Hello"...
All his guilty dead were coming home, begging to be let in...
And then he was on the outside, looking in at the lone living man...
CAUTION: GUILT, GRIEF, THE LIVING DEAD
As I wrote a poem on Caliban, I dreamt I was him: taken to Shakespeare's England,
shown as a freak, I must escape to save Miranda and Prospero from assassins...
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
A rich man dreamt thrice that hidden in St Berner's Well near his house was a golden collar. He reached in and...
CAUTION: OW
Fighting alcoholism, I dream I drink all the booze in a bar, then wake up shaken...
so shaken I reach for the bottles by my bed and drink THEM, then wake up shaken...
and clutch my cat, wondering if I'm still dreaming--will I wake up again?
CAUTION: ALCOHOLIC NIGHTMARE(S)
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
I'm Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island. But the theme song repeats endlessly--not the later version with
my name, but the early one dismissing me and the Professor as and the rest. I wake up screaming...
Demons open a trunk full of the horrors I've faced this year, and lay them out, mocking me... but is that all?
I grope for the name of an island. I dream I crash a car on a bridge; it hangs with one wheel over. I wake & recall a friend who moved to Canada.
Breakfast. That island's on the front page. Inside's a photo of that hanging car. A letter comes--the first from my Canadian friend in years.
Each might be coincidence, but what do we call it when coincidence goes on and on?
At ten, I fasted a long tedious time. I dreamed a bird offered me showy gifts, but I kept to my grandmother's advice: never take the
first offer. At last a big, strange bird from the north, a white loon, offered me long life and health; that I accepted! So now I'm called...
Celia Green, lucid dream expert, claims nearly all lucid dreamers keep their waking
bodies, their self-image. But Whiteman & Wayan both have genderbent lucid dreams...
My heart began beating like a sledge hammer. I couldn't imagine what was happening, and got frightened...
After my husband's death, I dreamed he pointed at a small black bag I hadn't opened. It held insurance policies...
Twice a condemned man's wife dreamt of a key lost in rubble below a wall. The second time she went out to find it...
As the steamroller flattened me I became quite a lovely stained-glass window...
Wilkins visits his parents in a dream. Only they think he's a ghost, and panic--in the real world...
A pig led me off my path to meet a lady. I told her my true name, and felt something shift...
Thrice I saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer shot in the House of Commons. I nearly went to London...
Dusk. A plain. A troop of swordsmen approach me, draw their weapons...
and toss their spinning, shining swords up to the stars...
Hillary Clinton was trying to seduce me, and doing a pretty good job, too...
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...
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
I try to pick a flower in Golden Gate Park. But it fights back--plucks an ear, an eye, my nose.
A half-gardener, half-cop hands me shears. But I turn from the flower at the last minute to cut...
CAUTION: SURREAL VIOLENCE
Night. A London suburb. A UFO big as a city block looms over us. It's seen all over South England. Yet we go blank--
forget! Though not quite--for years after, Steve has recurring dreams. When he tells me one, I recall the same event...
CAUTION: INTENSE UFO EXPERIENCE
He asked abruptly "Did Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Charles have a wreck with a train? I see'd they did..."
I slay the beautiful dragon attacking us, despite my regret.
And then, as I sleep, glowing eyes advance on our keep AGAIN...
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?
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
Night. The Nile; the Pyramids on one bank; minarets and domes on the other.
But if the dream's comparing antiquity to modernity... which does it condemn?
I dream I have just six months to live. I go through a dozen phases and moods, preparing for death...
An Arab shows me a stone he calls a book, and a prophetic shell that warns of a flood rushing toward us...
I wanted to be human, but Mom said "You'll always be just a lousy caterpillar." So I slipped inside
a human girl. After some arguments with her boyfriend, I got born as a human-faced butterfly...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX AND MOM
DREAM: I write a book involving spies and Lord Snow, but give him a cover name: Artie Shaw.
TWO WEEKS LATER: My wife & I go on the Tonight Show; unexpectedly, Artie Shaw shows up!
I tell him the dream. He turns pale, saying "No one knows this--I wrote a book under the name..."
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
DREAM: I'm in the White House. Nixon blows his nose on the curtains! I think "despite his crudity, he reached out to China."
DAY: my wife Ann has a cold--she's Nixon! The dream concedes she has private flaws, but she's pioneered dream research...
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...
The Emperor dreamt a monster hedgehog terrorized his city. On waking, he ordered the slaughter of
every hedgehog in town. People started seeing him as the killer hedgehog! Soon he was deposed...
A mass breakout of baby chicks. They say "Now we know how, so we'll
go where we choose." And maybe it's about more than chickens...
A bear rips open my wall and guides me into a psychedelic space where I learn to see with new eyes...
I met a great blue eagle waiting to get into a library--but not to hunt books...
In the underworld, soldiers chase fundamentalists in underwear, as leopards stare. The
upside-down elephant plugs the exit. We can only escape if we
I met some little hunchbacks in the woods who showed me a newborn baby growing from the moss...
Wayan: a mother mountain lion got quantum-entangled with farm animals, exhausting her...
Xanthe: my dogs hurt this lion and I had to tend and calm it all night, exhausting ME...
I visit the underworld court of the Lizard King, but I can't leave: he makes me Queen...
CAUTION: MARITAL RAPE (NON-GRAPHIC)
An amber stream recurring in my dreams led me to meet a huge, strange being, Slithy...
I'm a dyke playing baseball in Golden Gate Park. Some guys harass us and run into a tunnel. I follow, but...
Xerxes twice dreams a god orders him to attack Greece. So he asks his uncle to dream of the god to confirm...
I was desperately arranging cut flowers for something important; the forces
that acted upon me seemed to say "Your life depends upon this assemblage"...
Rousseau's painting of a woman on a red sofa in a glorious
jungle really was dream-based--just not his dream...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SLACKING
After 18 years of exile, Fariba in a lucid dream visits her old friend Yalda, in an unfamiliar home.
That night, Yalda has a lucid dream in which Fariba visits. On waking, each writes to the other...
I see a shop in Kyoto in the early 1900s. The old woman running it is calm,
with precise movements and sure hands. A voice says "That lady is Igort"...
Crazy Jane watches a dancing couple's passionate games, and envies even their hate; to her, it's part of love...
We were as if brother and sister of old in the desert land;
they sold us in slavery together before this life had begun...
After Shaw's Arms and the Man eclipsed my own play The Land of Heart's Desire, I dreamt I was haunted by...
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...
Liu Bang's mom dreams a spirit is making love to her. Her husband sees the spirit is a dragon! Her baby grows up to found the Han...
Yi Yin's mom dreams a spirit warns "if water pours from your mortar, run!" She does, and survives a flood, to help found the Shang...
CAUTION: LIKELY JUST FOLKLORE
As locusts advanced on his farm district, a magistrate dreamt a Mr. Willow had advice.
He took it. Bearing a gift of rice wine, he sought out the Goddess of the Locusts, and...
The house I'm looking at has unexpected rooms, even a pool, but another buyer beats me out.
An old woman says "Don't worry dear, in time you lose everything." A comfort at first, but then...
I'm half-naked at an arty dinner party, talking to a man I really think I ought to recognize... who is he?
CAUTION: TOPLESS JUNGIAN
Awkward newlyweds. Not a love match! Can they co-operate to save a woman from the Nazis?...
Two medieval women poison one another. One dies in my arms; the other may just survive. Why did they...?
CAUTION: MURDERERS
I wish I could be as body-free as my neighbor Jenna, hiking nude under the full moon...
A voice told me, "Human beings have a spark of the divine"...
My friend's ignorant of our local Congressional race. I loathe Pombo
and like his rival McNerney, but can't pronounce his name right...
I'm to be beheaded. Guards chant "It's important to enjoy what you're doing."
I know my spilled blood will create a work of art...
Preston dreams he's a dragon and his girlfriend Katie drew his portrait from his account
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...
DREAM: a long green dog attacked Zhang from the south. He hid in his bedroom. He woke shaken but did not act.
SOON AFTER: General Gou Zhang (sounds like "Dog Long"), in a long green coat, attacked from the south...
Not long after Jake died, I dreamed he took me on a magic carpet ride. Since then, I've been flying...
The Emperor dreamt he was eating dirt. He feared it was a metaphor for
death. Wrong. No metaphor! Soon after, his enemies suffocated him in dirt...
CAUTION: BRUTAL
Traders were vanishing. Newly installed Viceroy Zhu fasted, focused, and dreamt
the gods sent him a riddling poem. Each line suggested one word--together, they...
CAUTION: BRUTAL ORGANIZED CRIME
I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering about, content with my lot. Suddenly I awoke and was Chuang-tzu again...
DAY: while traveling, Zhuangzi found a skull. Wondering how it had lived and died, he slept on it.
DREAM: the skull answered him! It told of death, which the skull found preferable to mortal life...
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...
A fictional niece acting sexy in a shirt, plus... water balloons? I woke, and a friend told me HER dream...
CAUTION: DREAM INCEST, KIDS WITH GUNS, GENERAL WEIRDNESS
I took my cellphone into the shower. I couldn't find the shampoo, and idly typed SHAMPOO in, and...
CAUTION: NOW YOU KNOW WHO STOLE YOUR ODD SOCKS
I wander a sunken maze, meet a playful woman, find a hidden treasure. Meanwhile, my friend Zooop...