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ECOLOGY

Ecological dreams. This list below is a bit skewed--I have lots of eco-dreams full of ideas leading to political, scientific, or personal insights... but without vivid characters, plots, or drama, they usually aren't entertaining enough to make the editorial cut and get posted! What you see are the oddball dreams that mix weird passions with ecological ideas.

That's what happens to the environment all the time, isn't it? The human dramas get all our attention! The species in supporting roles are as expendable as crewmen on Star Trek. And the poor old bacterial stagehands, doing all that work unseen... hell, the poor old stage...

I included a few non-dream virtual planets focused on the same theme: how land and climate shape life and culture. In real life, the actors have no script... but the scenery prompts us more than we know.

RELATED TOPICS: a set of virtual worlds foregrounding ecology: Planetocopia - climate change - energy - population and ecological crashes - evolution - animal rights - economics - capitalism - world's end: apocalyptic dreams - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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BALLOONS: by Stan Brakhage; 1975/5/7, an epic, apocalyptic flying dream after a bad plane flight
I'm a schoolkid again, fleeing an eruption of sewage. We escape in a balloon.
Earth is beautiful, but I know this flood of shit will drown the whole world...
BEETLE: by Daniel Quinn; spring 1941; a life-defining shamanic dream
A black beetle insists I'm not needed or at home in the human world; my lifework is elsewhere...
BERNAL ISLET IN 2250: by Wayan; 2007/4/2, an epic undream painting
My neighborhood becomes a Huck Finn Eden after global warming turns it into a tropical island...
CAUTION: NUDITY, AMBITOPIA
BETRAY MY ANIMAL FRIENDS: by Wayan; 1999/11/12, a dream of brainwashing.
As humans settle infospace, will we cheat other species trying to evolve into people?
Are we already doing it? Admiring & documenting creatures we've written off as doomed?
CAUTION: NUDE CREATURES; DISTURBING PREMISE
BIOFRACTAL: by Deirdre Barrett, c.2016; an ecological dreamlet
I was in a jungle, seeing birth, growth and death--the entire web of life at once...
THE BIOSPHERE VARIATIONS: by Wayan; 2004-, sculpture-photo-drawing-travelog-webtours:
Tour bizarre worlds most exobiologists would dismiss as hopeless for life--and meet the natives...
CAUTION: SEXY ALIENS, WEIRD CUSTOMS, EVOLUTION
BUFFALO PERSON: by Plenty Coups, summer 1857; a child's time-traveling, tribe-saving dream
I was led into the future, where all the buffalo disappeared, to meet a frail old man by a ranch house...
BUTTERFLY HABITAT: by Wayan; 2000/3/3, a dream on the price of memory.
'You always hurt the one you love', but this girl seems unaware she's proving it's true for ecology too...
THE CHANGED RIVER: by E.M. Martin; 1914/11/25, the quietest apocalyptic dream on record
Humanity improves a river to death, so the river just disappears. Ominous since it’s the river of nature, time and God...
COEURL: by Wayan; 1980/2/26, a dream of surprise transcendence
I'm trapped in an alien hotel, my true love has gone radioactive,
and the only way out is to turn into a giant, scary...
CAUTION: CLOSET LESBIAN. LITERAL CLOSET.
THE COST OF ECO-REGULATIONS: by Wayan; 1997/2/14, a dream edict.
I dream an economist admits not only that eco-regs pay off, but that economic theory is faulty. Dream on!
CRITTERS OF THE MONTANA FRONT: by Wayan, 2022/5/31, a watercolor warning dream
DAY: I admire Hannah Hinchman's watercolors of Montana and Vad Yakovlev's digital art of Equestria.
DREAM: I meet & sketch a coyote girl, a whack-a-mole mare, and a leering herder of shadowsheep...
CUTE-STUPIDS: by Wayan; 1974/1/15, nightmare-poem about a Tragedy of the Commons
Happy beer drinkers from the Now invade the Tower of the Future.
Eggheads find idiots as lovable as kittens, and just can't eject them...
CAUTION: ELITIST; DISSES TRUMPISM
DESERT EYES: by Wayan; 1984/3/4, a dream of portals.
We desert-hobbits break through to a world of jungle giants who
see differently from us. Will they believe us about the UFOs?
DEVILMENT: by Wayan, 2017/8/13, two dreams on Queen Bee syndrome, fusing Milton & Milton Friedman
A Queen Bee devil kidnaps my grandniece; I kill her to free the child. Turns out even Hell's leaders are relieved.
She returns as a satanic housing developer. Slicker this time, but just as crooked. Must I kill her again?
CAUTION: DEVILS, VIOLENCE (NONGRAPHIC)
THE DIADEM RATIO: by Wayan; 1994/8/14, an absurdist dream.
I stumble into the middle of a dream conversation--on ghosts, tiaras and pigs--
and struggle to figure out what what on earth we were already talking about...
DONNA'S FALLOUT: by Wayan, 1972/2/6, 2/26, 2/29 & 3/4: sonnets & watercolors of 4 sex dreams.
When I was 17, an older girl pushed booze at me and came on to me... in front of my parents and teachers!
For months, I had ambivalent sex dreams trying to process what Donna taught me--not all of it negative...
CAUTION: WEIRD SEX; ADULTS BEHAVE BADLY
DRAGON BANNERS: by Wayan; 1987/3/19, a dream on the value of inner emptiness.
A dragon's daughter seeking her inheritance defies a sneaky dragon-realtor out to own the world...
DUBIA: by Wayan; summer 2003, a nondream sculpture/prophecy/travelog.
What Earth will look like 1000 years from now, with doubled CO2, flooded coasts and melted poles...
CAUTION: CALLS GEORGE W. BUSH A BIG FAT LIAR
EAR TO THE, UH, WALL: by Wayan; dreamed 1983/10/10
Granny's magic nipple helps me foil the yuppies dumping toxic
waste. But does it count if I did it just to save my own...
CAUTION: CRUDE TALK; STETHESCOPIC NIPPLE
EARTH'S BEING MURDERED: by Wayan; 1996/7/13, a nightmare.
Mute, paired images, contrasting life with the death we're spreading. And then finally the dream speaks:
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE AND GO SABOTAGE SOMETHING!
AN ELECTORAL DRAGON: by Wayan; 1998/10/21, a virtual-reality-campaign-ad dream
In a world of hideous haircuts (flagging your politics) I meet a dragon
running for office. But is this real or a dream? Both/neither! It's...
ELF RANGERS? NO WAY!: by Wayan; 1995/3/25, a dream on repression.
A logging war in the northern forests is confused by subjective realities. Am I sure what I see is real?
THE EUCALYPTUS WARNING: by Wayan; 1993/8/6, a punning health-advice dream.
Bad puns link an ecological dream of a forest being murdered by inches, and a dental exam...
THE EXPOSURE OF HUMANITY TO THE VACUUM OF SPACE; 1999/6/5 by Anonymous #37; a brief apocalyptic nightmare
One patch of the night sky had a huge number of stars compared to the rest; there was no atmosphere in that portion of the sky...
EXTINCTION VISIBLE: by Wayan, 2022/4/25, an ecological warning dream
A woman--Gaia?--leads me up Mt Diablo. Nature preserves--grass, oak, pine. But... all silent. The animals are gone...
CAUTION: ECO-RAGE
FIGURE AND FIELD: by Wayan; May 1990, a poem on the dark side of a human ability
We see patterns everywhere... but that also means we relegate nonpatterns to the background...
FIREBOWL: by Wayan; 2013/9/14; a diagnostic/climatological/futurological dream
I'm in the High Plains, at a huge powwow on climate change. This could become, not a new
dustbowl, but a firebowl. As I wake, I find I'm running a fever! And the dream hints what caused it...
FISHERGIRLS: by Wayan; 2.6M, 42 illus.; 1996/7/15; a sexy dream epic.
I had an epic dream lasting subjective weeks--a true other life. It wasn't Earth and we weren't human.
I was a teenage lemur, sailing with two friends into unknown waters--a rite of passage. One night,
my friends curled round me, I saw I didn't WANT to pass the test, be declared a woman, marry, and have pups.
I loved my girl friends. In a world lacking the very word, I was groping toward queerdom.
Sailing into unknown waters! "Here be dragons," the old maps say. And they were right...
2600K loads slowly? Try it in parts: 1: HOME, 650K, 2: VOYAGE, 1200K, 3: BACK 750K.
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, QUEER TEEN ANGST, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
FLYING BED, TALKING BIRDS: by Wayan; 2015/1/6, a one-word shamanic advisory dream
My bed floats high over southwest Morocco. Giant birds come fly lazily with me,
croaking "Faster, faster!" But I'm busy with anti-desert eco-planning...
FORGET THE FLEURS DU MAL: by Wayan; 1983/1/1?, a poem on nightmares.
In the richest regions of the sea, dead stuff wells up to meet the light. Do we have similar zones?
FUTURES: by Wayan; 2003/9/22, a nondream ecological sculpture series
A set of travelogs (with orbital photos) of Earth, Mars and Venus on the same day--as they are 1000 years from now...
GREEN ANGELS: by Wayan; 1985/9/2, a dream-idyll seething with politics.
I stalk a platoon of levitating surf-bunnies who may be out to bomb a Greenpeace submarine...
GUIDE IN THE RUINS: by Wayan; 1996/11/20, a hopeful dream of ruin.
Through vast Soviet ruins to the modest rooms where the new Russia lives. As I fall in love with my guide...
THE HERONS' TANK: by Wayan, 2020/11/12, a sonnet telling an astral-plane dreamlet
I climb a small-town water tower. The tank holds a reedy marsh where sentient herons live! They say
the Heartland below them is a nest reserved for greedy, screechy, flightless, half-grown souls like us...
CAUTION: DISSES SMALL-TOWN VALUES
HILLBILLY ECO-REVOLT: by Wayan; 1985/6/12, a diagnostic eco-dream.
A poor planet with one city. Urban technocrats and hick ecologists have conflicting development models...
CAUTION: TOO REAL TO BE FUN
HORSE-DOG: by Wayan, 1982/2/1, a rambling, scattered but predictive dream
I cross the Mushroom Desert, meet a blue-tailed squirrel & a horse-size dog, then zombie-vampire suburbanites.
NEXT DAY: an artist sends me a flyer with a new dream painting--a huge dog whose fur-patterns depict a horse...
CAUTION: SYNCHRONICITY
I TURNED OFF JESUS: by Chris Baker; 2011/2/18; an "oops!" dream
Playing Mario Kart, I stray into a darkness where Earth floats, burning.
And then Jesus speaks up! But I carelessly hit the OFF button...
IN THE BIG BURN: by Wayan; 1997/7/22, a postnuclear dream.
I love a girl who wants to settle in a radioactive jungle, a scar from an ancient war. Stay or go?
INDUSTRY'S SHORE: by Wayan; 2008/9/24, a dream poem; Dreamverse #30
In the hills above a polluted shore, I find hidden valleys with huge rare trees, and realize it's my choice...
JAREDIA: by Wayan; 770K, 26 illus, early 2003, a nondream sculpture/photoessay/travelog.
I tilted the Earth to create a tropical supercontinent from Bali to Tierra
del Fuego. What will evolve there--and on the new tropical Antarctica?
THE LEAD HAZARD OF WITCHES: by Wayan; 2008/11/21; an alternate-world dream
I'm in an America where witches are burned & abused women grow on trees. Yet three of us heal...
CAUTION: CREEPY PARALLEL WORLD
LET'S PLEASE THE RICH: by Wayan; 1998/6/24, a disgusting proposal
The rich block reform. So let's offer the rich what they really want: ranking and attention...
CAUTION: CHIMPONOMICS
LUNAR WEDDING: by Wayan; 1987/2/5, a poem of a surreal futuristic dream
I'm at a fancy wedding on Mars, I think, but slowly realize
the black sky and huge blue ball mean this lawn is on...
...the Moon. In the open. What are we breathing? Well... old money, I think.
LYR: by Wayan; 7MB, 2005, 80 pages w/200+ drawings and maps; a virtual planet
A vast sea-world with 7 times Earth's mass, whose isles are home to at least 19 intelligent species...
CAUTION: CUTE ALIENS, WEIRD SEX CUSTOMS, GODLESS EVOLUTION!
MARY MCBRIDE AND THE SPIRITUAL EARTH MOVEMENT: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2011/11/26, dream of a kindred artist
I met a woman whose art (and her love for the Earth) inspired me to start a series of paintings with creatures hidden in landscapes...
MOVING IN THE LANDSCAPES OF MY DREAMS:
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN: by Wayan; 1992/9/5-6, a literary/diagnostic dream.
I'm in a tribe of post-Crash kids with psychic powers, trying to keep nukes from rising again...
CAUTION: CHILD SOLDIERS
MITHRAN'S LAKE: by Wayan; 1988/1/17, a predictive dream justifying personal reserve.
DREAM: Gay boys, underage girls & my own sister all mock me, sure I want their forbidden sexual fruit
at a beach where grotesque trees make their own precipitation and salt-dunes spill into saturated, toxic brine...
NEXT DAY: I read Margaret Atwood's The Salt Garden--sex, guilt, and grotesque trees in saturated, toxic brine.
CAUTION: SEXUAL GUILT, EXHIBITIONIST TWEENS, APPARENT E.S.P.
MORAL FIBER: by Wayan; 1997/11/10, a dream of trouble in Ecotopia.
We hippies won, but now we're backward and isolated; it's time we joined the rest of our alternate Earth...
MUIR ON MARS: by Wayan; 1994/5/14, a dreamtale.
I'm John Muir reborn on Mars, supporting Mars First against tree-cutters, who poison their enemies...
MY TREE: by Wayan; 170K, 12/12/2007, 2-page comic of a persistent delusion.
I keep feeling I'm a reincarnated rainforest creature just passing for human. When all I want is...
CAUTION: TOBACCO
OISIN: by Wayan; 2005-2013, 32 maps and images; a nondream virtual world
A model of a moon, half-Europa, half-Mars, with (intelligent?) life in seas under a skin of ice...
PEGASIA: by Wayan; 10MB mini-site (200 maps & images), spring 2006 to present (ongoing); tours of an alien moon.
A contest! Here's a wide, fertile world full of empty ecological niches for intelligent creatures. Design one!
PLANETOCOPIA: by Wayan; 2002- (ongoing Sisyphean project)
19 nondream imaginary worlds rendered in text, art, & sculpture. Most teem with intelligent life--alien Edens!
CAUTION: ANARCHISM, NUDITY, MATH, SOCIALISM, EVOLUTION
THE PLANETOCOPIA INTERVIEW: David Cole of "Whose Fault is That?" questions Wayan; 2009/5/6.
The roots and reasons and back-stories for the nineteen virtual worlds making up Planetocopia...
PRAYER (WE SHALL BE REBORN): by Wayan; 1997-2000 digital picture-poem.
Be a web junkie. Instead of driving around in a gas-hog, you'll save the planet by staying in, passive...
CAUTION: NUDITY; MOCKS GOD, CARS, AND WEB-PORN--IS NOTHING SACRED?
PRECAMBRIAN SLEUTH, or, MURDER BY ATMOSPHERE: by Wayan; 2013/6/2, a warning dream-poem.
I'm a detective sent to a research station two billion years ago. The ancient atmosphere isn't just anoxic, but deadly...
THE PRIMEVAL ANIMAL and the Survival of the Earth: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 1999/4/28; an epic dream
A huge spiral nautilus needs healing; its coils are coming undone, and if it dies, all on earth may die with it...
WHAT THE PTEROS TELL: by Wayan; 1995/9/11, an archeometeorological rant.
The size of ancient flying creatures implies that Earth may lose more atmosphere over time than we think...
RINGSHADOWS: by Wayan; 1985/3/6, an otherworldly ecodream with subtle advice.
Earth has rainbow rings. They're braided like Saturn's, so their shadows create tinted microclimates...
THE RINGMAN'S SQUIRREL: by Wayan; 1982/9/17, a dream of a time after us.
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
ROBOT AND UNICORN: by Wayan, 2022/11/23, a dream of building a rebellion
After too much TV, I dream I'm plotting against a regime of suave, treacherous magical beings. But
a unicorn sorceress suggests I enlist the robots. She's right--they find plutocratic thaumocracy ugly...
CAUTION: ANTI-CAPITALIST
THE ROSA PARKS EFFECT: by Wayan; 1997/7/21, a political dream.
The mayor declares war on bikers, blames us for gridlock! I dream of Rosa Parks' influence and realize...
RUSTY UNDERWORLD: by Wayan, 2023/9/23, a chthonic news-dream
I'm in a vast cavern full of skyscrapers--sucked into the underworld. Rusty steel plates cover
their now-useless windows. In the shadows, horned, fanged businessdevils scurry by...
SATURN BEACH: by Wayan; 1990/4/18, a playful advisory dream
Sunbathing on Saturn's rings with a girl who's preparing for reincarnation--like me.
She's cute, but she chucks litter in the Bay of Rebirth. Maybe not Ms. Right, then...
SAUCER THROUGH THE RUINS: by Wayan, 2023/9/23; a happy flying dream I hope isn't predictive
I meet two witch sisters. Little sister and I magically power a flying saucer. She gives me a tour
of this vast, ruined city. My life here is happy, but it doesn't look good for civilization as a whole...
SENSORIA: by Wayan; 2023/1/6, a dream doing science
A book about the psychology of creatures with different sensory arrays
persuades me that all of us creatures build models of one shared world,
for understanding your neighbors vastly ups your odds of survival...
SERRANA: by Wayan; Oct-Dec 2004, a sculpture/webtour; 60 maps, photos & sketches
A dry little world with many small seas, Serrana has at least six intelligent species
and an anarchist culture. It's a tribute to Ursula Le Guin's anarchist utopia,
"The Dispossessed", and Kropotkin's theories of biological cooperation...
CAUTION: ANARCHIST POLITICS, ALIEN NUDITY
SHASTA STANDARDS: by Wayan; 1998/9/19, a dream of social change.
In a future where we gengineer ourselves instead of others, we no longer have to choose lesser evils...
SIPHONIA: by Wayan; 30 p, 2006-14, a nondream virtual world, in progress; maps, tours
First, suck up 90% of Earth's seas. Now wait 90,000 years for life to adapt. The continents are now
Tibetan plateaus above steamy new Deeps, ruled by giant parrots, ravens and otters...
SOCK PUPPETS OF THE GODS: by Dee and Wayan; 1994/4/14. Parallel shamanic dreams!
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
SOULS IN THE MUD: by Wayan; 1981/1/14, a thoughtful dream.
I'm being hunted in Reincarnation Swamp, as I worry--the human population boom
means experienced souls are scarce. Are most folks you meet really dogs, cats... rats?
CAUTION: MYSTIC ELITISM
THE STAGMAN: by Wayan; 2000/4/7, waking landscape with dream figure.
A slightly surrealized San Francisco landscape--not that it needed much help...
CAUTION: PINK PAGAN TOES
STANDING UP CITY: by Wayan; 1970, childhood imaginary world
As a kid, my Ecotopian fantasy city was hollowed out of living rock, with hanging gardens and terraces...
THE SUPERCELLS; 2005/3/4 by Anonymous #37; nightmare of a pointless eco-coverup
Multiple tornadoes touched down in the fields, but the farmer's wife sewed
in a rocking chair, oblivious. I moved to warn her but my lieutenant said...
THARN: by Wayan; 2006, 45 p, 200+ ill., a nondream virtual world: maps, photos, portraits, tours
Tour a rugged, scenic moon with air and water in deep canyons sheltering a dozen intelligent species
CAUTION: ANARCHISM, NUDITY, SCIENCE
THEA'S HOUSE: by Wayan; 1987/3/23, a life-changing dream.
I dreamed the Earth Goddess invited me to live with her. She was lonely to be seen for who she was...
THREE DREAMS: by Robley Wilson; July 4, 1975?; a dream-poem
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
TIDEPOOL DECLINE, or, DEATH BY 1000 SHARDS: by Wayan, 2019/8/10, an eco-warning dream
At the beach, a biology teacher shows me how bottles smashed on the rocks by jerks lead to
slow death for the tidepool creatures. I'm afraid the warning is both personal AND planetary...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC TOWARD RECKLESS G.O.P. CUTS
TILT!: by Wayan; 2002-3, a nondream study of four alternate Earths
I drilled new poles in my globe and tilted the Earth. Ice Age or Carboniferous? Flood or drought?
Come visit tropical Antarctica, the Thai Desert, the Hawaiian glaciers, the jungles of France!
TIME-BUBBLE: by Wayan; 2008/9/1, a dream-poem, Dreamverse #19
In a city crawling across a marshy world, I find a detonating bomb frozen in a time-ball.
Why not detonate it somewhere harmless, why carry this around?
UFOLUTION: by Wayan; 1997/12/19, a comic science rant
Okay, say evolution is driven by things (I don't care what) besides natural selection. How could you tell?
UNICORN MENTALITY: by Wayan; dreamed 2008/7/16, a dream of unicorn art spilling over into reality
Dreamworkers gawk at sexy unicorn drawings all over my bed. One friend's part unicorn. The other? I wonder...
Ten years later, having learned I have a rare mutation making me not too human, the dream feels half-predictive...
CAUTION: UNIPORN?
VENUS UNVEILED: by Wayan, 2004/8/30; a virtual world with c.200 photos, maps, portraits.
Tour Venus as it will be in 1000 years, after terraforming: paradise for dozens of intelligent species!
WALLACE'S FEVERDREAM: by Alfred Russel Wallace, Feb. 1858, an insight-dream
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...
WELLS'S QUEST: by Wayan; 1992/7/14, a benevolent dream.
I'm on a world inhabited by hobbits when H.G. Wells shows up, looking for a Ring of Power...
WERE-TROUT: by Wayan; 1997/8/2, a dating-advisory dream.
I'm a one-legged hopping hermit in the ruins of LA, and my only hope
for love is to conjure up a girl out of a trout and a puppy...
WINGS by Nancy Price; 1948, two bird-people dreams, one psychic
I have a long chat with two songbirds. Next I'm a parrot, living in rainforest. Then the mail comes...
XANADU: by Wayan; 2006/6/6, a nondream virtual world
An alternate Titan, Titan as it should have been, with ethane seas full of life...
YEATS: by Wayan; 1990/1/1, a nondream poem wrestling with Yeats's dreams & visions
Our dilemma is, now that we have the power to get what we want... what exactly was it we wanted?


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