In a suburban alley, I learn how much of an artistic coward I've been...
Our gifted class is on a field trip. Our teacher happily explains we're going to wreck a freeway,
tying up traffic for months, to protest crappy gifted programs...
CAUTION: SLOWEST DREAM INTERPRETATION EVER
My intuition led me to a panel discussion of women artists, just to hear one single sentence...
Johns dreamt he was painting an American flag. He woke, and did--
mixing pigment and beeswax, coating newspaper strips...
On an alien world I meet a judge from the newly discovered
galaxy of Antlia, and learn distance can lend objectivity...
Ariana's a brilliant young writer, but how she plans to escape her family is alarming...
CAUTION: TEEN PREGNANCY, SKIN MAGS, HORRIBLE CAREER PLANNING
While building the World Dream Bank, I dream a hacker says
"certain remarkable sites get free fast access; you should apply..."
A whale-spirit marries a poker-player. But her sonar sees too much. Whale-spirits prefer blackjack...
Lily & Wayan have simultaneous dreams of bizarre quarrels over seating bankers at picnic tables...
A black beetle insists I'm not needed or at home in the human world; my lifework is elsewhere...
Should Anna quit hiding her psychic dreams? She dreams a cat eats her bird & burglars loot an open house.
Maybe keep hiding?
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
On the beach, seated at The Piano, director Jane Campion warns
"Avoid Hollywood, they'll snip away at your vision..."
To help the King of Italy, I become a baker in Baluchistan--
learning Norwegian, levitating, meeting quaggas, riding landslides...
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...
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...
I live in a cupola atop a Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury, but that's not the City out my windows...
The Cultural Revolution denies me the Himalayas--the spiritual heights.
So I flutter around the base of the Stairway to Heaven...
Dinosaurs and tigers fill my music club. Not that it takes many to fill it. So spiky!
A dino bard croons. A tigress leaps onstage & snuggles up! Music hath charms...
We were on a train headed for a crash. No one was in the engine. Rather than jump, my friend insisted we try...
I project I'll make a lot more money soon. Good, now I can support all my lazy friends! Wait...
An experimental helmet knocks me out. I'm groggy, miserable, till I learn what it did to others...
Egbert decides to go convert the Germans. A brother monk dreams twice that God wants Egbert in Scotland, but he
sails--and nearly drowns. At last he gives in. Another monk sails to Germany. Two years later he returns defeated...
CAUTION: STUBBORN MONK, DEITY, AND GERMANS
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...
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"...
I find a long, narrow table. I have a table, but a fairy friend
perches on this one and urges "Take it home! You'll do better art!"
My lesbian twin, who lives in the unemployment line, falls in love with a pushy moose from Brooklyn...
CAUTION: INEPT SEX
The terror of Navy breakfast, the joy of filterfeeding,
how to marry pudding, and a sniper lunch with kisses...
I'm jogging in Yosemite. A man tells me I'm possessed. There IS something in my shoe...
I dream my Doors of Perception have four layered screens to keep out mosquitoes, when one is plenty...
I'm one of four mediocrities: all our efforts come to nought. Mum says "You're netted, but you can fray the ropes...
DREAM: I hike up my Career Path into the hills. On a snowfield,
a bird and a fox create the eye of God, who banishes all evil!
NEXT DAY: I read a novel full of images out of the dream...
Shipwrecked and claimed as salvage on Crete, Ed the writer became
a dishwashing slave! In contrast, Marie the musician...
A friend claims literary "personalities"--humorist, craftsman, kook, lowbrow--are really just marketing
niches. So write as you like! If readers like you, industry will make a niche for you, almost arbitrarily...
CAUTION: FOR WRITERS ONLY. OR IS IT?
My parents pray for my success, and arrange a great learning opportunity for me. Really.
Peter draws painstaking realism til his tense hand turns into a horn!
An anima urges him to walk into a blue light.
He & Sybelle struggle against a crowd walking the wrong way...
I dream it's after a great war; I hear the music I must write, and meet the girl I must marry...
I was held hostage in India by courteous revolutionaries who avoided spelling out that we were soon to die...
I get a scholarship to Shaman U. Some of my classmates are Terran, but I still don't fit in, because...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
A single dad loves his daughter, but is so pathologically cheap he's teaching her an unintended lesson...
CAUTION: CHILD NEGLECT
1: In a theater I meet weird big-eyed ballerinas, & realize I'll choreograph for them soon...
2: A sorcery student & her powerful future self flying back through time meet & fuse...
3: A squirrel-mage meets his future self too. He gives us a mild fever to protect us against a deadly plague...
CAUTION: NOT FOR TOTAL SKEPTICS ABOUT PREDICTIVE DREAMS
I'm a lab animal who discovers voice software and creates a personal zine, testifying for our rights...
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!'...
An Arabian prince kidnaps my girlfriend and me. We eventually escape his flying palace, but she gets trapped in
Victorian underwear, while I escape feuding politicians by turning myself into a truck tire. NOT a smart move...
CAUTION: BOGUS VICTORIAN SEX-EUPHEMISMS
Among aliens, humans are jokes. Fragile and blind, we can't fly starships. Unless we build our own...
From the neck up I was me; from the neck down, Woodrow Wilson in his old age, paralyzed.
My presidential aides divided up my duties, and ignored me...
I started to get up from my chair, but I couldn't move. I looked down at my legs
and saw they were manacled to the chair with a heavy chain...
I was trapped in a river, trying to swim to shore. But I was in a powerful eddy. No matter which way I swam...
I find myself in astral China. The Empress is banished, the Jester rules. Wisdom is lost.
We need an Imperial Dragon...
To investigate a criminal couple, I have to lie. And that's hard, since all my lies turn true...
CAUTION: NEW AGE AND FILM NOIR DON'T MIX
Out of a Campbell's soup can poured life force: someone's last breath...
After finding marine geologists in my chocolate pudding, I'd rather be a Frenchman and insult my wife...
CAUTION: DECADENCE
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
I meet a shapeshifting mentor who warns of coming war (9/11?). Then a sentient book, "The Art of War," gets intimately involved...
CAUTION: ELECTRODES, LIBROPHILIA
I'm a shaggy primitive whose tribe's outgrown our caves. We migrate, and meet two new species of people...
The smog of Portland is so bad it hides the dream-towers! Only one thing will heal it: making music...
At first no one seems interested in my mural-design for the inside of the City Hall dome, but...
Renewing one's life has its costs. What if you can't pay the price? A dreamlet of warning and shame...
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...
At a family picnic, my sisters and I fish for scholarships and grants. They put down my art, my website...
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 slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
Ann had inflamed ovaries and faced surgery. She asked her dreams for a second opinion. She dreamt of voices and images saying
"there's plenty of time for all this." She bathed peacefully in a river, meditated, gave easy birth to an infant, climbed a ladder to
her law degree. She woke cured. Her next doctor said "you must've been misdiagnosed; you just thought you were in pain."
CAUTION: SEXIST GASLIGHTING
My last two businesses went bust. So I let a giant parrot talk me into interviewing
her people, who've been settling all those alien ruins in Amazonia. Great career move...
DREAM: Surgeons cut off both my breasts--without my consent! I feel resigned, but the staff is upset...
DAY: I'm interviewing for a job offering $2,000 less than I make now. Told myself it's OK, but...
CAUTION: MALPRACTICE, MUTILATION
I forgot how to play my pianobed, so I just thrash around in it. And thus thrash music is born (sorry)...
A wizard into spots and dots invites me into his beach house, hungry for advice on his peculiar fears...
On a cloud in space I met an ape molding a model of Earth, glancing at the original far below. We were much alike...
My lover's turned into a tiny living pull-toy, trapped ankle-deep in a wheeled platform. Can I free her?
A living camera edits us all: the dappled hawk-man, the slutty candidate, the blue businessmen
who give such bad advice when you pull the thorns from their feet. And my sweet sad hell-hound...
I'm working alone in the lab at night, when the lab gear wakes up and tries to kill me...
by Jenny Badger Sultan, 1999/5/15, 6/12 & 7/14, a painting based on 3 dreams
I'm in the Hypogeum, an ancient Maltese dream-temple. I join some women
staging a ritual; a little girl draped in a web plays the role of an insect...
1: My dad can't see my world. Literally can't see my world...
2: The House of Busyness is unlivable--busy, crowded, noisy...
3: Achievement takes twelve factors; any one can block you...
Trapped in elementary school, Julie is forced to study the alphabet
until she declares "I'm a professional cartoonist, goddammit!"...
THAT DAY: My bandmates want to record crowd-pleasing songs. I want to record our strangest ones...
THAT NIGHT: In a woman's art studio, I'm struck by a low, feline, muscular unicorn mare, carved
out of a giant ruby. I ask, and she says "Oh, that's not mine. I found it in the trash"...
I'm trapped in a post-apocalypse pulp story! Fun for my readers, but not for me! How to escape?
As a boy, my family urged me to aim low and follow our trade: stonecarving. I dreamt two strong women fought
over me, a grubby sculptor and an elegant writer. I sided with the writer, and she let me ride in her flying chariot...
Sharp seams between realities cross Silicon Valley; I end up in the Dark Castle of the Oracle. When I wake...
Should I try to keep Janine out of jail? But outside, she'd gotten back on drugs. That night I dreamed
a huge beautiful snake bit my writing hand, and said "Don't go to court. Stay home and write"...
CAUTION: JUNKIE, RESCUER
A man adopts two orphaned, talented musical griffins. But their previous guardians were
so traditionalist & stifling that the cubs want to BURN all their instruments...
Ours is a mixed-race family, and my sister takes after the horse side. No hands, but can she sing!...
Sledding at night, I approached the speed of light, and the stars turned colors I'd never seen...
After Shaw's Arms and the Man eclipsed my own play The Land of Heart's Desire, I dreamt I was haunted by...
I'm a peace terrorist trapped in Squaw Valley, herded like a mare by a huge stallion made of snow...
And then the dream shifts. I blurt out the truth behind our idiotic waking world! And wake believing it...
CAUTION: MERMAID AND HORSE NUDITY
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..."
Wang dreamt a man cut his belly open and implanted a big mirror inscribed with stars. It hurt,
even when he woke. For a month! But his belly now had a hunger to learn about astronomy...
To avoid being stabbed, I flee the Psychodrama Circus. Wisely--the place explodes!
But it's the filling of the sushi roll that really upsets me...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MAKI
I'm co-teaching a class on ESP. My specialty's sending warnings to my own past self to change the present...
(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...
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...
Our band's touring Titan. Road trip blues: diners, feuds, romances. Have I been chasing the wrong girl?
I'm half Anglo, half Kwakiutl. My uncle the shaman died,
but he still wants to teach me his medicine...
A "friend" gives me her TV. No wonder! Turns out it's haunted
by a small-minded devil who cheats on all his deals...
A telepathic unicorn gives me some subtle advice. I wake, and tell a friend, who easily proves my account
is distorted by my own biases. Telepathy's confusing! Wake again. Her correction was part of the dream...
My family home's invaded by ancient Egyptian architects. So
I put on my unicorn mask and eavesdrop on their plans...
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...
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 dream ESP isn't just for oneself.
A romance between a wolf singer & a deer guitarist.
I'm furry too, and better accept it!
The real pursuit of happiness: she pursues me, and I run in shame and hide! But she's persistent...
At age 90, the first female high-rise steelworker tells me
why she did it--and why she regrets it now...
I'm stranded on an alternate Earth under strict rationing--of wishes!
But you need to wish a few times a year to keep the system greased...
CAUTION: INSULTS BOTH CAPITALISM AND ASCETICISM
I dreamt the world itself hired me, at a generous salary, to report its great affairs exactly as they happen...
I'm at a family dinner. Killer Grampa, kid-hating Ma, larcenous Dad. Then a bum offers some advice...
DAY: My dad's sick; my mom nags me to visit, though hospitals endanger me (weak immune system).
DREAM: My parents say "You're insane. We must take control of your life." So I divorce my family...
CAUTION: UGLY FAMILY VALUES