Agassiz, faced with a fossil he had to crack open, was unsure where to strike.
But for three nights he dreamed...
Are dreams really so ephemeral? Lewis Carroll, who built the Alice books from dream-shards, wasn't so sure...
A witch & I duel with blades of spiral horn. But we both just want
to create an utterly truthful oracle. Can't we find a way not to fight?
by Wayan; 2002/5/29 - 2004/5/11, a diagnostic, predictive dream-series; Bleeding Heart as comix
A tree-girl moves to Hollywood to make film deals, but jealousy stabs her...
CAUTION: BLOODY ASSAULT, GAY DRYADS, MUTANT NUDITY
The top of my skull pops off, exposing my vulnerable brain. But I replace it. Later, I crush a spider...
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 know I'm a murderer; what isn't so clear is what I killed and why...
CAUTION: DISMEMBERMENT, GUILT, DREAD
I search for family skeletons, but then a talking plant on TV inspires me to seek the sun and fly free.
But certain velociraptors and barbarian swordswomen object...
CAUTION: DUELS, FISH ABUSE, THE F-WORD
I realize a bone is protruding between my left armpit and breast. I put Maria's hand on my breast and
ask her to feel the bone. But no one grasps what it really is--something sticking out from my heart...
That day I read Hilde Bruch's "Conversations with Anorexics" and face the fact I am one.
That night, in the land where anorexic horses heal, I enter the Kiva of Shamanic Pamphlets, and...
In the far future, I relive Odysseus' tale. To save my life I must give up realistic hope, and focus on...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MONSTERS
I cross a hostile continent to a magic commune, fall in love with a flying girl who slaps a
soul-spark into my head, and follow an alien goddess leading the Dance of the Sun...
I'm trying to prevent a race war, but can I kill someone I admire? And if so, can I live with it?
CAUTION: RACISM, VIOLENCE, INTENSE GUILT
I was big as the world, so whole cars fit in my vagina. But men were selling women
to supermarkets, to be cooked & resold. So I crossed the Atlantic sea-floor on foot...
CAUTION: CAR SEX. NO, NOT SEX IN CARS...
I die young, to get it over with, like chickenpox. As I slowly revive, I face bias against the dead. So..
The dinner went badly. Power outages, alarming transformations, murderous
minions. Still, I'm here to tell you! So Death is weakening...
I'm turned into a small dinosaur and treated as a guard dog. But I meet a dino girl. We have fun,
once we see it's a movie--they won't kill off the love interests. Hollywood rules make us invulnerable...
A serial killer stalks our office, but our bosses deny it and do nothing.
I kill him. He revives--over and over! A robot I have to disassemble...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
Dr Who kills his best friend, a huge white tern, on a whim. Furious, I demand a rewrite...
CAUTION: WANTON MURDER
A ghost complains Herdis's grandma bothers her. Herdis wakes, tells Grandma, and they dig up the floor to find...
I'm dancing on stage, in behavioral space. But right in the middle of the stage, erupt these... teeth?
It's not easy to get a California driver's license, ever since the Dept. of Motor Vehicles went Jungian...
Lights on the moon! Future cities shine. Gotta fix that time-slip. But in
shaman-space, the moon's a deerskull up a tree! I take it down, pocket its
jewel-city-eyes and try to stew the moon. I'm Coyote, so my cookery goes wrong...
I'm the Incredible Hulk, forced to do emergency brain surgery. For the patient's burning from within...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND UNLICENSED MEDICINE
I meet a man who's lived centuries on an all-cannibal diet. He has ethics, though: he sticks to roadkill! Except...
CAUTION: EEEUUGH!
A bug with a horse-skull face reappears all through this nightmare of betrayal. I only know I feared it...
A man dies--his body's chopped up. He ends in Hell. But he's a stubborn guy; he wants his body back. So...
I meet the new improved giraffe people with hydraulic chrome skeletons--
such light, powerful jaws and stretchable necks. Wow, Lamarckianism is back!
CAUTION: ANTICREATIONISM--THAT IS, ACTUAL SCIENCE
I was having dinner with friends when I saw on the wall a huge skullbone
spider. But I lost the word for spider, and my friends seemed not to see it...
I'm a priestess standing on a stone terrace, holding a ritual axe. Before me kneels a sacrifice to the Goddess...
Both my friends can become birds and soar; but all I can manage
is angel wings--barely enough to hold up solid-boned me...
Hedgehog and White Rabbit stick together, through the snipers on Broadway,
through the dogs of winter, through cannibal soup...
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
I was a sheltered girl till I entered my family's secret ancestral vault. I didn't expect to meet...
My home seemed antiquated but pleasant. I found a stair down to a darker, medieval floor.
A dark stair led down to a Roman cellar. A trapdoor led down to a cave with ancient skulls...
I'm a kid imprisoned in an empty stone castle. Squeeze through a stone slit, and prepare to drop ten feet
down the face of a great stone gate. But I go lucid, and my dream and waking body-senses conflict...
Suddenly, out of the clouds, a man came shooting down, head first, at a terrific pace. He landed on his head with a sickening...
CAUTION: GRISLY
How the Supreme Court gave my brother antlers, and where his soul went: where I'll go, now that I know...
A horror film and Rick Veitch's dream-comix provoke a nightmare
warning me that guilt about my dad is wrecking my life...
The 'toon actors from My Little Pony gleefully volunteer to die horribly in a TV documentary on the
impact in Yucatan that killed off the... dinosaurs? No! Unicorns, griffins, pegasi and dragons! As I
draw the dream, I get an email from the maker of a TV documentary on climate catastrophe...
I go lucid and drive my bed to the Nevada desert where I see my next million years. And so far, it's been true...
No work, no friends, no lover. People power-drill their own skulls. My uncle's going insane. And when I call 911...
CAUTION: BLEAK
I'm shown corn plants growing from skulls, and it seems like I must plant some skull-corn myself...
Calmly, I watch a girl trapped in a lab try to escape, and die; and watch a man lose his head to a hungry thing...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
A horde of demented dwarves invades Market Street, jumping up & down, shaking the skyscrapers...
DREAMS: 1: I can't afford language classes. 2: A beautyqueen rigs a stargate; I kill monsters & sell their bones...
NEXT DAY: I'm asked "Why don't you get a language degree?" I can't afford it! I go home & watch Dr Who...
A stunning girl fixes a spacetime portal. Smugglers kill alien monsters & sell their ashes as a drug...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND CREEPY DISPOSAL OF BODIES
I was in the grave. Worse, a living skeleton was trying to crush my ribs. Though terrified, I fought back, and...
One day, in the ruins of an American city whose name was lost, I met a Ringman under an oak...
CAUTION: GROSS WORK, IF YOU CAN GET IT
I 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
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...
For years the Sea-Wolf enslaved me. He said I had to fight him and win to be free. I'm ready at last...
Jung and a little brown man shoot down Siegfried the German Hero, riding his chariot of bones. Wait... his what?
CAUTION: GRIM
Infected glass-cuts scar the vegan alligators in the park. As part of a cleanup, I'm told to EAT one...
In my drawing class it was antlers and bones and skulls, death death death till I was tired of MY bones...
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
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
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
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
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
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...
I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones...
CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
I wander a valley where unicorns love cyborgs but fear giant ants, who love unicorns but
fear cyborgs, who love ants but fear unicorns! And while the Three Tribes squabble, cave-monsters
sculpt them all. I set up peace talks between these four aspects of my tetrahedral soul...
CAUTION: SWEARING, DRUNK LIONS, CYBORG SURGERY, AND GOGGLE-BARFING
In our cult, we lie in vats of goo till we grow wings. But we're feared more than we knew...
CAUTION: SPECIST LYNCH MOB, NUDE IN SCHOOL, LESBIAN FEELINGS, OBSCENE CARROT
A fiddler has recurring dreams warning he'll be run over with his violin. Reluctantly,
He sells it to a friend, and jams with him only in the woods, away from cars. But...
I'm in suburbia for the End of the World. A Vortex eats the block, licks at me. So I click some icons:
CAUTION: CRUDE LANGUAGE. OH, AND THE APOCALYPSE, TOO. I FORGOT.
I'm a girljock waiting to see a movie when a weredog in line involuntarily shifts
from dog to human, and a Berkeley radical takes offense at the symbolism...
CAUTION: SNIPPY ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
On a long steamboat voyage, a living skeleton swaps a warning for my watch; when the whistle
sounds, the boiler will blow. As it does, I dive in the river and wake to discover a real whistle...
CAUTION: UNCANNY SYNCHRONIZATION?
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...