How did my bondage dream turn into a slot-machine jackpot? And what kind of change is pouring out?...
CAUTION: (CON)SENSUAL BONDAGE
I'm slipping dimes into a boulder of jade: a vending machine that fills every order wrong. Why feed it? Well...
Why is Captain Janeway doing the tango with another woman, in a creek, wearing a mermaid tail?
A library shows me surrealist Jean Arp's sketchbook. One Eschery sketch with repeated focal points is hypnotic.
But they also show me his lunch, and I try to eat it! I fail. Head & gut disagree. Stuck Arp-way...
CAUTION: NEVER EAT 12-YEAR-OLD SUSHI
The State tests my art. I worry they'll stereotype me as another Crumb.
So I tell an absurd lie about our governor. But my joke kinda makes sense...
In a museum I see huge Jesus heads with inset saints and figures in pain;
then, in our old back yard, huge coffee cups half-sunk in the grass...
Our black cat Purr and our new blonde kitten fly around as if jet-propelled
dive-bombing the roof. Alarming, but their cat-reactions aren't like mine--
fast as a test pilot! For me it'd be suicide; for them, just playing...
Lucid, I summon a sexy literary character. But he tries to take over my personality and make it his lucid dream...
CAUTION: VAMPIRE-SLAYING
The tale of a fawn named Fawn and her mom, a bank-robbing hippopotamus...
CAUTION: GLAMORIZES THIS ALARMING TREND
When the school district goes bankrupt, students flee creditors into a hell-cave.
But Joe Cool can skateboard even on lava in the Pit...
My shortcut in a marathon bogs down in a maze full of psychoanalysts! So I climb the walls and...
A bewildering dream of a boy's borrowed bath, absconding renters' furniture and fly-eating turns real a few weeks later...
The will named a strange executor: a kangaroo. Turns out there's some logic to it:
executors need burglar-skills, and few quadrupeds can climb in bedroom windows...
I win a free game of Kick the President. But what if everyone can see your kick-ass Prez but you?
CAUTION: THIS DREAM IS MONITORED BY THE SECRET SERVICE
I dream a Chinese fable: how the poet Li Po was abucted by the gods, till they face heavenly justice...
CAUTION: ABDUCTION, DRUNKS, EVIL PUN
My dad has a time machine, so he generously invites the King of Persia over. And offers him MY room...
I have to kiss a mess of cats. Fishy, but I'm not chicken. My real beef is with the humans watching...
Huge gold construction cranes loom over medieval castles. Not rebuilding, but
hoisting knights to the heights. I get a ride up, and see a wide timescape...
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
R.D. Laing gives two examples of dream-spillage suggesting it's not passive but playful...
In a general store on a High Plains rez, I find two surreal collaged postcards. If only
this were a dream they'd qualify for the World Dream Bank, but sadly, it isn't. Right?
CAUTION: STUPID, STUPID CONSCIOUS!
I'm caught in a surreal traffic jam--balky horses, teeny cop cars. Get so stressed that I split
into a big creature guarding a small human sleeper. But even sleep is now a crime...
CAUTION: PREDICTIVE?
I'm in an America where witches are burned & abused women grow on trees. Yet three of us heal...
CAUTION: CREEPY PARALLEL WORLD
I'm pushing a safe off a roof in Berkeley so it won't be pushed off the roof
(yep, you read that right) but it pulls me with it! Either die, or go lucid and fly...
Two jealous women symbolize Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump. Trump wants me to KILL Clinton. I lie to avoid...
CAUTION: SLEAZE? OR A SLY WAY TO PROTECT VICTIM?
A man I meet leads half a dozen consistent dreamlives--an experience
so splintered that it's hard to figure out which life is his waking one...
Deep in the caves, a Voice announces I've gone as far as the human mind can stand. But ahead, I see...
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
Lions trap me in an African cave with only coffee, paper and pens! Is this what it takes to get me to write?
At the zoo, Archer's friend found the tigers caged but the lions roaming free. The reason? Lions fear hell, but tigers...
A dream haiku of little devils dancing the conga. What's it mean? Well, check the date...
Little Nemo's bed gets restless and takes him for a wild ride through town and up onto roofs...
One of my first recorded dreams--how I foolishly turned away from Lobster Love...
CAUTION: CHITINOUS SEX
The Dating Fairy, built on lonely evenings waiting for her to call me back--whoever "her" was that week...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEXUAL THEMES
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
After fighting off an electrified Orson Welles, I meet the twelve
vulture-pine-politicians climbing Mt Sinai, looking for librium...
The Lord Chancelor can't sleep, and when at last he does, he drifts through nightmares full of baby lawyers
and potted tradesmen sprouting fruit, and cutthroat corporate scheming. But that's Victorian dreaming!
Always ask permission to throw rocks at your date. No, not those big ones! Where's the nearest hospital?
CAUTION: SURREAL DATE ABUSE
My dentist (a Haitian Mafia leader) sends a message to my dad (also a Mafia don) by dental cruelty....
Morocco. Horseback mercenaries attack a town. A boy says "Take their lifestyle, and you must remove their brains."
A protective Hand of Fatima dissolves, leaving a finger, a feather, a... vagina. "What a slit!" We burst into laughter...
Linda Evans of Dynasty survives a shapeshifters' war, though her mansion's wrecked.
She meets a caped superhero--and superdog, and supercat, squirrel, hamster, mouse!
These micro-heroes make me see I too have been minimizing my own bravery...
I'm a fight promoter. But my biggest deal ever is growing out of my control.
Mammoth versus Rex, sure. But now it's a four-way bout--schoolbus, whale...
CAUTION: CRASS ACT
After finding marine geologists in my chocolate pudding, I'd rather be a Frenchman and insult my wife...
CAUTION: DECADENCE
My friend Mark and I climb the Path of Righteousness to the summit where he finds a big red watermelon.
He rolls it down the Path of Righteousness, knocking businessmen aside like bowling pins! Why? Well...
Martian robots pester me. I flee through the Asteroids, leaving chaos, cratering Earth.
Years later on my farm, a bot shows up disguised as Freud. I start mudslinging...
An early piece about Matisse, and his models, and quilting, and disembodied heads...
An elegy to a great paper-cutter, and three (or was it four?) sado-humorists who still scare me a little...
I'm inside a magical novel by Patricia McKillip, amid tricksters, cosplayers, spooks, sex changes, levitation and (sigh) cops...
CAUTION: COYOTE SEX
A priestess guarding a Thai temple in the forest has a strange problem:
her breasts rebel, escape and scurry round like hamsters
under her skin; they don't like that Buddhist restraint...
CAUTION: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION
I sink into a book on a murderer who rationalizes away all guilt, but pull out thinking "How morbid!"...
I'm offered a spy-mission to Macedonia, and recall I dreamt this last night--a prophetic dream! Then wake...
Tibetan prayers for good weather are answered too well. Heat wave! Tourists fly in, but planes can't land--
melting glaciers flood the airstrips. So tourists eager to sunbathe in Tibet strap on parachutes, prepare to jump...
The flood sickens my fuchsia bush. My mom says my fuchsia is hopeless,
but I make up a treatment. When it works, well... read the title.
CAUTION: PUNS, EXPLODING MOM
Dinner with the Lightbulb Heads. When we leave, the Mood Elevators welcome us...
but won't let us out! And in the struggle to escape, heads will roll--and shatter...
CAUTION: HARSH WORDS ON WESTERN MEDICINE
I'm scheduled to fly the first antigravity ship to the moon--if I can just get to the pad on time...
A dream explaining why everyone with any moral vision gets filtered out of politics now...
I'm a giant wolf with a human girlfriend. A formula says I must shrink until my paws are 128 times
the volume of her feet. But I'll still be way too big for sex! Eight seems more like the right volume...
CAUTION: HORNY WOLF, MATH, CLIMACTIC PUN
We save a mouse from a man who claims he eats them. Later I dream I am the mouse...
A shop sells coffee cups covered in tales & creatures begging to be drawn...
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...
At last, I get shown in the museum! Sort of. Homeless people sell my art from carts in the lobby. Stolen!...
An actor-manager type is putting on Hamlet, and he offers me a role;
I'm breathless, my chance has come at last! He'd like me to play...
I dreamed I was trapped in the maze of my pacifist vegetarian feminist anarchist eco-conscience...
At the airport, I'm told I can't take my flight; I must finish my education first. Decades have passed,
and I still dream of borders and officials who won't let me go until they decide I've finished my...
A woman with two teenagers breaks in and says she's my ex-wife and they're my kids.
I'm in my twenties; I CAN'T have teenage kids. And I have no ex-wife! Just my girlfriend Cassandra.
Forty years later it all makes sense. It's not about me then, but John now...
CAUTION: ADULT THEMES--TRULY STUPID ADULT THEMES. E.S.P., TOO.
This woman shows me a book of my art. I'm not sure I want to see them--some pieces are from my future...
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...
At the library, my boss says we're restructuring, modernizing. My new job is to...
Renewing one's life has its costs. What if you can't pay the price? A dreamlet of warning and shame...
Aliens take me to meet my soul. It's on a pedestal in a quasi-Roman villa. I'm ashamed to
see my soul's just a tribble. But it sings soulfully, and when happy, it purrs...
DAY: I write, exploring my jealousy toward my wife, though I know she's not cheating on me.
DREAM: Doctors remove my spleen and wake it up! Now my spleen is out to do me in...
Giant worms put me on trial for wearing a nameless hat, but I like their punishment so I taunt the judge...
Two friends send energy through me, transforming me. Now that
my legs are detachable, I can sit comfortably on my eggs...
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..."
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...
I met Nic as he steppd out of the elevator. We were both spooked. Nic asked if I believed in
mermaids and unicorns. I said “yes.” I asked Nic if he believed in dreamers, and after a pause...
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...
After a class in nonverbal communication, I meet
Richard Nixon under embarrassing circumstances...
I want to catch a crescent moon home--our transit system's been buying up
old moons and running them across town--but tourists reserved all the seats...
Two boys dream robed figures climb in the window to cut their hair--and find, awake, someone has. While Pliny...
The world was ending. Volcanoes, floods. Refugees trudged by in the mud, carrying their belongings
on their backs. I think I better get dressed to go. But I can't find anything appropriate to wear...
A vast galactic fleet hovers around Earth, demanding Rain. Whaaat?
I fight an alien leader, and find out what their long drought has been...
CAUTION: UFO SEX
After an impatient bookseller puts me down, I dream I'm licking a girl who nothing pleases...
I visited my friend Chris Wayan's workshop and found him building
a dance troupe of joyfully obscene centaurs out of Barbie dolls...
Mom gave me cookies for my three-year solo spaceflight. Special cookies for both ends of me...
CAUTION: NUDITY, BAD SEX ADVICE
After seeing an Einstein biography I find myself in the bathrooms of Thought-Experiment High, and...
CAUTION: DARK SIDE OF AN ICON
A man's stalking me and my friends. We try to escape but a circus is in the way.
My friends shrink to babies, so I pop them in a stroller and flee over steep hills,
bouncing down stone stairs! "OW!" the babies howl! Hey... why do I feel deja vu?
CAUTION: INTERPRETATION INSULTS BOTH RUSSIA AND NATO
I meet the original Adam. He complains Eve neglects him, but he hopes to meet one of his cleverer descendants...
The Goddess gave birth in my workplace. Her fever-dreams become real around us...
CAUTION: BIRTH SCENE, LIBRARIANS' ORGY
The older sorceress I'm in bed with plans to marry me off to a younger woman, but I distract her with my tongue...
CAUTION: BEDROOM HUMOR
My day life as an artist and explorer of the San Francisco underground scene
gets regularly commented on by my dreamlife...
CAUTION: SEX, BONDAGE
A coy, giggling giant orange bounces onto a man's bed, trying to seduce him, and...
I'm trying to get a moontan when my mom appears.
My astral body starts orbiting her like a moon. Uh-oh...
I show an Ohio friend the latest California sport. But
we haven't quite worked out how to land just yet...
I'm in a movie version of prehistoric Baja California, mining nuggets that howl,
when pterodactyl-worshiping pirates glide in trying to snatch our ore...
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
I stumble into a bar where the TV stars from my childhood are
drunkenly arguing metaphysics--Howdy Doody, Beany & Cecil, Flipper...
I pray for love and promptly meet Blue, whose mom treats her like a kid. We change that, but it's messy...
God issued me a paper bag to go over my head & protect my eyes
when facing him--at first. But as I advanced spiritually, I tore...
We're stuck in an empty town whose streetnames are all emotions. And they change.
Rage becomes Giggle. Tedium, Terror! Devious town...
Talking animals flood my bedroom. Well, they'll talk to me--but they're cliquish.
Hippos snub cats snub bears snub deer, and no one talks to penguins, for...
My parents host a dinner party, but squeeze us all onto a piano stool. I plink away nervously.
The guests flee. My sister blames me, but I suspect it's my dad's pet crocodiles! Next day...
I forgot how to play my pianobed, so I just thrash around in it. And thus thrash music is born (sorry)...
I'm shyly making love with a classmate, Cynthia. Classmates gawk & point, through
the pie-hole in the ceiling. But our perspective reveals that under our critics' skirts...
CAUTION: UPSKIRT NUDITY
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 peeking at Pike's Peak with Gregory Peck, as we seek my dream-journals in the Hawaiian jungles...
CAUTION: STUPID PSYCHIC PUNS
I'm in heaven. But... what can you do up here? And it's so small. Where is everyone?...
CAUTION: WE FIND OUT
I love the Twins. They love intrigue. So when a hired crocodile sabotages our Egyptian treasure-hunt...
CAUTION: BAD GIRLS
Janet's obsessed with a creepy guy till her pixy friend Kay decides to "knock some sense into her cunt"--literally...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, NASTY LOVE SPELL, PIXIE NUDITY
On a cloud in space I met an ape molding a model of Earth, glancing at the original far below. We were much alike...
I'm building a planetary model a kilometer across, inset in Bernal Hill like an eye in a socket.
My intern Silky kicks the globe, scuffing a caravan trail in a desert. Needs to be crookeder...
CAUTION: FATSHAMING? OR CALLING OUT SKINNYSHAMING?
I'm in a play. Fear, then joyful sex, then ranching, then silly hats, as a man drones on about
class struggle. Weird chairs, pingpong, coffee, impossible double utterances. At last
I tell friends my dream--backwards. Then I write the dream down on slices of cheese...
CAUTION: SEX ONSTAGE
Plums float through the autumn air, sending us airmail kisses. If we'll accept delivery...
A stopped-up mystical toilet gets cleared by an unexpectedly colorful tool;
but then, you never anticipate what'll unplug your, um, "head"...
I'm detective Hercule Poirot, but I'm losing my case and my brain--
because my story isn't by Agatha Christie, it's a knockoff...
CAUTION: PINK DILDO HATS
Swedenborg's in bed with a woman, but she has teeth down there. Oh, now and she's not a woman, but
his political buddy Johan! Well, maybe it means not to get involved with women, or men, or... politics?
CAUTION: JUST WEIRD
I meet the terrible Power Behind the Gods. I don't like it. So I get my squirtgun & shoot its butt.
The enraged Power chases me as blindly as I hoped! I jump into a secular universe, and...
CAUTION: SACRILEGE
I'm pregnant with the Antichrist. This is going to ruin my vacation! Why do I think this is all about money?
I get stuck with a one-year mandatory gig as President of the
World, just as Saudi Arabia collapses, and fools rush in...
I botched President Clinton's taco. And on the way home, I fell in the river.
Luckily, Jesse Jackson happened by and pulled me out, restoring my faith in...
A bunch of primitives try to trick their way into the Federation, slipping around the Prime Directive...
Our neighbors keep dropping by with gifts and favors for our cat.
Why? He'd gained magical powers by amassing 10,000 dead mice...
My sister's avoiding our nosy parents, but I sense they'll run into her soon. I just didn't know HOW soon...
I was on a steamer run amok, in a boiling yellow incredible sea out of which great pylons rose...
Protestors occupy the Transamerica Pyramid and install a cow as CEO... a Cash Cow?
My friend Chris gets tied up at the office--that's his job, looking martyred! But when the boss is away...
CAUTION: NUDITY
My parents invite me out to dinner, but there's a rattlesnake under the table,
and my mom chases it up my leg. I wake to find two holes in my knee...
My girlfriend Raven dreams I keep poking her awake,
while I dream that a giant raven gives me weird advice...
A raven summons a levitating mirror that shows her face as a human, and
tries out moods & expressions based on Tarot cards plucked from a tree...
Trapped in elementary school, Julie is forced to study the alphabet
until she declares "I'm a professional cartoonist, goddammit!"...
Famine. Our Tibetan monastery's prayers are answered. A caravan of yaks comes over the pass, bearing...
Wilkins visits his parents in a dream. Only they think he's a ghost, and panic--in the real world...
I'm an abused girl turning tricks to survive. But this is San Francisco: I join a prostitutes' co-op, and meet...
CAUTION: PROSTITUTES WITH SELF-RESPECT, OH NO!
I dream I’m telling a tall tale about a cat-funeral with hung-over mice pulling the hearse. But it all turns a bit too real...
Lounging in the sun, I do a magical make-over--molding my bones to give myself more room for
intuition, judgment, nerve--all the while feeling shallow & indulgent for self-improving!...
Turns out you can float in deep space without a helmet.
But there's this weird disturbing smell, like an electrical fire...
A movie version of heaven. Souls line up for rejuvenation from a great
fountain. But fat old rich guys crash the line, demanding to be first...
CAUTION: UGLY NUDITY, UGLY BEHAVIOR, POLITICALLY PREDICTIVE
A friend's tragic accident confines him to disco roller skates for life! Worse yet, he's in a Rocky Relationship...
CAUTION: "ROCKY HORROR" REFS, SEX
My mom and sister take me to see a bondage film. But the movie steals my pants! I should have known...
CAUTION: WORSE THAN PEEWEE HERMAN
New moons appear. I try to mash them into a spare Earth, but botch the orbits.
So now, runaway moons rumble down a steep San Francisco hill...
CAUTION: ALWAYS SET PARKING BRAKE
DAY: on the radio Carl Sagan calls those who've experienced ESP or UFOs "proto-fascists"...
DREAM: a flying pewter teapot orbits a round blue vase--like a starship round the Earth...
NEXT WEEK: My mom calls. She's selling that pewter pot after a century in the family...
CAUTION: DISSES SAGAN
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...
In San Diego, I fly around disrupting the UFO games in the junkyard,
till I reconnect with a centaur friend
I find myself sitting on toy trains and fake snow as I'm told a fable:
how a herd of department-store Santas got tragically lost in a blizzard...
A hard-hitting rap on Satan's dumbest disguise. Yet he's gotten away with it! The shocking truth...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE! SACRILEGE! MUCILAGE! (FOR THE BIG WHITE BEARD)
A Buddhist student, troubled by a corporation marketing a product called
"Satori", summons the ghost of her beloved mentor for advice...
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...
Stranded on an island where a marching band drowned, I escape
by paddling across the Pacific using a rusty, er, cymbal...
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...
Aliens, hypnotherapy, dancing molars, riots, witches, flying pianos, lettuce... yet there is a point.
I give plastic sandwich bags to people in Tibet. They go wild for them.
Shortage! An air shipment from Delhi breaks open; Tibetans with butterfly nets...
I'm in Santa Cruz with my friend, a shocking-pink stuffed toy cow
with sewed-on accessories: big red lips, a floral wig, and a third eye. I wake,
draw the dreamcow--and my sister calls from Santa Cruz to sing me a song about...
One night as I slept over a cheese shop, I dreamt I was trapped in a huge cheese, as a rat-horde gnawed...
CAUTION: YOU ARE LUNCH
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
I'm in a crowd as a man lectures about sharks. He points at me and asks "Shall I throw him in with...?"
A sudden image of a woman whose other lips not only talked, they wouldn't shut up. Worse yet, they...
CAUTION: NUDITY
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
a dream exposing what my brain's up to when I forget my dreams!
I wander the galaxy in my dreams, finding and testing crowds to see if anyone reacts
to the sound of shouted English or Chinese. One in a thousand does! This implies...
CAUTION: SCIENCE AND SHAMANISM DON'T MIX (or do they?)
I’m the only one who can stop the plot to kill the Pope--but if he keeps shrinking like that, will it matter?
CAUTION: RECOVERING CATHOLIC
I wake in a strange frozen bedroom. Oh. My bed is Siberia! That means
there are tigers. Clearly the way to defend myself is with giant stuffed toys...
I'm a trade rep for Terra, on a new world. But an old rival, a rep from another world, arrives, and...
My friend sleeps with an alien. He's ugly, but I don't care. What bothers me is, he eats bits of himself...
CAUTION: SEX, RECREATIONAL CANNIBALISM, PROSTITUTION, THE KITCHEN SINK
1: Purple squid saboteurs flood our cliffhouse. 2: My oyster-ranching girlfriend has a snobby aunt.
3: I wake in a stranger's bondage fantasy--ugh! 4: Shepherds on the sea-floor watch for gliderwolves...
CAUTION: EMBARRASSING BONDAGE DREAM
(a poem answering Wallace Stevens's 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird)
As the beast in question (and recalling the fable Six Blind Men and the Elephant)
I don't mind letting six half-blind humans have their say--as long as I get my own...
CAUTION: UNICORNS
When I see two scary men on the trail, naturally, I swallow my skunk! I really don't recommend...
While watching two rooftop actors (one a chicken) I noticed the icebergs in the sky were melting at last...
I'm at a physics conference. A new force has been discovered that may just
allow travel faster than light. Strange, how'd the Vikings know?...
A man who wants to love and respect all life has unwanted kitchen guests: a wave of slugs...
After Shaw's Arms and the Man eclipsed my own play The Land of Heart's Desire, I dreamt I was haunted by...
Samuel Pepys dreamt of kidneystones, pee, come, & snot--or did he? Thomas Macauley dreams his niece confesses...
My sexual orientation shifts arbitrarily, turned on one second, off the next. Who's at the controls?
CAUTION: SEXUAL CONFUSION
A demigoddess and a wizard meddle with humans. But do even THEY know what they're assembling?
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...
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
I dreamt a sparrowhawk perched on my shoulder. Next day a friend was given a stuffed sparrowhawk. He...
A dead fern in my backyard starts sending me messages in some strange language...
Our physics project is top secret, but a stranger strolls into a meeting and opens a can of green light...
I love Splinter, but her mom insists I got BOTH of them pregnant. Then I notice I'm pregnant too...
CAUTION: SEX, NAGGING
Lost in a dark maze of machine-shops, I follow Mr. Spock, who's drunk, and talks to tree-spirits...
CAUTION: ALCOHOL AS INSPIRATION?
I spy on a girl learning magic in a quilted ditch. She lets me join her telekinesis lesson! Can my mind move a balloon?
Then I tour a witch-world where normality's shameful. One kid's not witch or normal--he keeps turning into Donald Duck!
CAUTION: DISNEY = DISABILITY?
I want to drink the elixir, but negative 20 spoons block me! Can I remove them? With warped teacup logic & reciprocals…
I'm in a department store trying on clothes when I notice there's a large zucchini growing from my crotch...
CAUTION: SQUASHY PENIS, ICKY RECIPE
Squirrel Girl and I try to find a private room, but Hal the mad computer in 2001
spies on us and our spaceship captain orders us to clean the ion tubes...
CAUTION: SQUIRREL NUDITY
I'm slow to catch on that this skunk's slidetalk isn't a business pitch; it's about seduction...
CAUTION: ABSURD LOVE TRIANGLE, KINKY SKUNK
I went to bed with a stuffed wolf, and found myself in a hot tub with a
cute wolf guy, only now I seemed to be the plush one...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
DAY: a stranger screams "BITCH! Plant a TREE!" Thinks I'm female and wants to fight over an old bumper sticker?
DREAM: I'm a horse detective. In shades, lipstick, & high heels I try to pass as a mare. Absurd! A stallion in drag...
CAUTION: HORSE NUDITY. OH WAIT, THAT'S NORMAL.
As the steamroller flattened me I became quite a lovely stained-glass window...
My unconscious sabotages a lunch date with my friend Stephanie. The tricks get weirder, till...
I envy and resent a rich family's mansion so much I break in and sabotage their giant meat freezer...
CAUTION: HOSTILITY, ENVY, WASTE OF BAD FOOD
I dream the actors auditioning for George Bernard Shaw’s play are blends of human, avian, and lion.
Next morning I find a card from Shaw asking if I'd fancy playing a lion in his...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
Nerds built the blues. Rick Moranis, famous blues-nerd, makes a groupie suck his ice cream cone...
CAUTION: MOCKS MUSIC, RACE, VANILLA ICE (CREAM)...
Two nude women (drawn Wally Wood style) dance ritually in a
forest, summoning a worm-snake-dragon with a ring of fangs...
CAUTION: NUDITY
I hijack a Lacewing Chopper to install a new rubber-band engine, but the motor becomes a talkative penis, and...
CAUTION: ONE WEIRD WEENIE
I dreamed I drew our dog and me mating, then found the drawing on a gallery wall for all to see...
CAUTION: CARTOON BESTIALITY
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..."
An ancient pictograph inspires me to try a meditative technique: shrinking and letting myself be eaten...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
I was late for something, so I opened my pocket watch and swallowed a bunch of numbers...
I pull my mom's sweater onto my legs but get tangled (and bits of anatomy dangle).
Worse, I'm emulating Jesus. Is this any way to get a date?
CAUTION: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, GENDER MALFUNCTION, MOM MALFUNCTION
I'm Sybil Sue, a hard-boiled shapeshifting shamus, on the track
of the most wanted bankrobbers in LA: the Bad Girls...
CAUTION: IN BETWEEN GUNSHOTS, THE BAD GIRLS SWEAR
My sister and I are playing cards in the air high over Lake Tahoe.
The stakes? The world. But we both cheat...
Illusionist Penn Jillette pulls a large-scale prank with an ending not even I see coming...
Humor's one of the big emotions--laughter's as loud and uncontrollable as crying or orgasm...
I get speared by Irish warriors, slipped an LSD dose, chased by giant spiders, torpedoed--hey, I'm not bored!
The Conference on Love has two sexy speakers. One says
"my teacher's stalking me" but she clings to him. Love? Hate? Both?
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM--but what are these two exhibiting?
I dreamed a sphinx artist visited humanity and drew the crazy natives. I copied her sketchbook...
CAUTION: NUDITY, PAGANISM, SLACKERISM, ACTUAL IDEAS
Inside a Renaissance reliquary, I see a dried-up head--but is it St. Sixtus really? Weeks later...
I dream I'm in a cafe joking with my mom's ghost. I say "If you meet a guy called St. Sixtus, tell him..."
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE
I'm at a Robert Bly camp for men only. But I'm no man--not even human--some faun or satyr-like species...
CAUTION: THIS 'TEMENOS' IS A SACRED PHALLIC IMAGE
Hand-puppets, a devil and a witch, have sex, and implant a lunar ghost embryo
into Lois Lane; now Lois & Clarkes, ten clones each, pretend to be puppets...
CAUTION: PUPPET SEX; EVERYONE A FAKE
After reading 170 capsule biographies of famous people I conclude life-plans are
a joke. But I do deduce ten negative rules--ten universal don'ts--that may be of use...
CAUTION: CYNICAL, BUT 170 OBITUARIES WILL DO THAT
(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...
I'm biking on a crowded, steep San Francisco hill, but at the same time
an inexplicably terrifying office meeting gets superimposed. And
the AI feeding me the virtual office gets all snarky about my fear...
I dreamed I had to take a bewildering test on who is allowed in the military. I flunked. So will you...
CAUTION: MOCKS HOMOPHOBES
On the run I meet a lycan, a pirate, and a mermaid. She causes a flood, and something floats by I just have to grab...
CAUTION: INTERRUPTED SEX
Nightmares can warn. But when awake, what warning can you get from nonstop ill-luck?
In therapy, I'm wrestling with sex. But workmen invade--hammer & hang pictures. MY pictures!
And my therapist keeps confusing me and her, and our sexual orientations! She means well, but...
CAUTION: NUDE PORTRAIT
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
An article claimed smell is rare to absent in dreams. My dreams felt insulted and sent me a stinky one!
But why THAT stink? Well... next morning on my way to work...
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)
I live in a beehive. We must mate with dogs. I'm assigned a bitch. But I'm allergic to gods! Oops, I mean...
CAUTION: SEXUAL THEME, DOGGESS WORSHIP
I was barren. I asked Asklepios, God of Healing, to make me pregnant. Soon I was--for 3 years, until...
THROATS: Men put babies into giant throats inset in a funhouse wall;
SLOT MACHINE: I see a slot machine generating random art-speak phrases...
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
I'm overcharged at a grocery store--the checker confused my food with someone else's.
I grab him, fly high up and drop him, splat. I chant "Thus be: Splat! Squashed flat..."
CAUTION: DEATH PENALTY SEEMS A BIT MUCH
I buy a charming ruin in the woods. Newlywed tigers prowl! The tiger bride
tells me "He expects predictability. But I'll show him what a tiger really is..."
Golfing in the basement with Giselle! But her ball goes through a Stargate
to land on a world where the water hazards are hazards...
In the steampunk world of the Parasol Protectorate, I'm on a swing, fondling four friends
who I'm in love with--all four! I won't give any up. Yet it's time to quit swinging...
CAUTION: SEX ED CLASS, POLYFIDELITY
In a world where speech is in Mayan glyphs, comedian Tina Fey (dressed for prom night)
climbs a Tibetan peak to learn levitation. But the flying monks are scared of women...
CAUTION: COOTIES; ROWDY JESUS; MAY FLUNK THE BECHDEL TEST
Four lines of comic nonsense composed in a dream...
My German friend resolved to commit suicide, so I agreed to poison myself to keep him company...
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
I'm in Houston, gawking at giant starfishy towers looming through the smog. Their shapes are familiar...
A gentleman clad but in a sheet notified me that an old friend had died of a terrible disease. What disease? Well...
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...
Asparagus, wings, an unhinged hand, a boxed ghost, butter, sister incest, tomato-pincushions,
secret volcanoes, one-eyed integers, chickenleg dresses, mirrors and bananapeel beds...
Why's Mexico City built where it is? And why is corn called "ears"? It turns out these questions are linked...
A lobe-by-lobe musical tour of your brain with Buddha as your tourguide...
Arboreal marsupials with megaphones narrate a Polynesian documentary, while
the rare translucent lobster sings its death song, sacrificing itself for lunch
CAUTION: WILL CAUSE VEGETARIANISM
My girlfriend and I find ourselves naked in my neighbor's yard! A second neighbor spots us, and
knowing my house is empty, she breaks in! The first neighbor, seeing her home's empty, breaks into
hers. We go home, stomping loud so our burglar flees back home, driving her burglar out, and...
CAUTION: UNINTENTIONAL NUDE PICNIC
Stuck in a horror movie, I get to meet the triceratops-headed monster
who scriptwrites all my nightmares. But he's open to suggestions...
Improv singing with my friend Mark, this bizarre songlet popped out:
"It's my understanding you shouldn't make love to a tuuubaaaa."
Silly, but when I woke, I realized I sorta had been...
I'm carried off by a crane to meet birdfish, singing sheep, fell-spirits, mad shopkeepers and devil-bulls...
The manhunt is on for Donald Trump, rich sociopath. But he too is pursuing something: happiness...
A "friend" gives me her TV. No wonder! Turns out it's haunted
by a small-minded devil who cheats on all his deals...
You get 26 dice with letters on every face. Roll them all. Your haiku must use every letter. Go!
DREAM: I'm a Soviet Potato Fest. Reds, grannies, food. A girl's told a life-and-death lie about a canine...
NEXT DAY: I read a version of Red Riding Hood, and the dream's weird elements suddenly make sense.
CAUTION: SOVIET CLICHÉS, E.S.P. SPECULATION
The All-American Family visits the fabulous Un-American Fantasy Store, where Mom is in for a shock...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY, LANGUAGE
My uncle is Jupiter. Not the god, the planet. All my relatives are planets. So am I. And I'm invaded...
I dream we're on a miserable camping trip. So why, when I wake,
do I think it's a diagnostic dream? It's that triple pun...
I meet a giant squirrel. But a Committee condemns the squirrel for such long periods
of unproductive hibernation. The squirrel points out a teensy flaw...
In my dreams, a co-worker tells me HER dreams. Their
focus is so unlike mine! Dream goals really differ...
You're in a subway station. You put coins in a coffee machine.
Down drops the Holy Grail. And begins to fill with blood...
In my nightmare, TV ads push new, supposedly eco-friendly uses for pigs, until this alarming ad...
1: A nature spirit's physics experiment proves that time forks. But how much? How dense is the multiverse?
2: I sculpt a model of this multiverse. A physicist likes it; the nature spirit likes it more. So she swipes it...
3: A 'friend' offers refugees my bedroom, crowding me and my work into a corner. I wake. The phone rings...
Trapped in a blend of Joan of Arcadia and The Tempest Tales, I'm tired of being the pratfall sidekick...
Blondie Wiggle builds a Video Igloo. But I'm allergic--TV kills me! A BAD omen for our video project...
CAUTION: TV KILLS (BUT YOU KNEW THAT)
I dreamt Anacreon the poet reeled with drink and lust--and I am wild and wanton like to him...
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...
In my sister's house I saw a magazine cover showing that famous
national monument in the Black Hills: Mt Walrushmore...
Huge balloons labeled "Waymo" in bad Chinese are taking over San Francisco.
But the sexy balloonists seem to be more into masturbation than conquest...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM OR OBJECTIFICATION?
After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream
Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
I visit a tribe into simplicity, proud of the fact they limit themselves to 99 concepts.
I point out their limit is a concept, so they really have 100. They are not amused...
God's my boss, but like a bratty little brother, he's Not Speaking To Me. It's slowing down our office...
CAUTION: CHRISTIANS WON'T WANT TO KNOW
The real pursuit of happiness: she pursues me, and I run in shame and hide! But she's persistent...
A friend who's a sorceror's apprentice shows me his Dark Master's tower. And
his Dark Master's bed strewn with all his stuffed animals! I just can't resist...
I dreamt I could clearly see the sun's corona, like a lion-mane of fire. But the
corona dwindled; then the very sun dimmed, shrank, and went out. I thought...
CAUTION: POLITICAL?
I'm stuck on a runaway bus. So we decide to picture the axle falling off, and
it obeys! But the bus zooms on, carried by a horde of little animals...
CAUTION: ESP SKEPTICS WILL LOATHE THE AFTERWORD (true story, though)
In a jungle river, I fish for giant kite-bass, then relax and have a drink. A lot of very drunk
porpoises dance on the bar. I worry their skin will dry out. Alcohol is so dehydrating!
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
I'm a hardboiled detective wincing as I grill a meek little psychic
(probably me) about squish-softboiled topics like unicorns and love...
CAUTION: SMUTTY UNICORN MAKES EVEN COPS BLUSH
I get so mad at some gaybashing cops and gangsters
that I become the sea itself and chase them...
CAUTION: UNCHARITABLE REPRESENTATION OF OUR SAINTS IN BLUE
I'm an elephant working in a diner. In the bathroom, I inadvertently summon the Genie of the Urinal...
CAUTION: PISSED PACHYDERM
I dreamt the world itself hired me, at a generous salary, to report its great affairs exactly as they happen...
I'm in a college class studying a bizarre alternate Earth where
anarchist co-ops never evolved and (of all things) money rules all...
CAUTION: SCORNS CAPITALISM
Sharks unicorns and moonbeams / Lost loves and karma chocolate I-beams
Raw telepathic bundles of beans / Write a little dream with me...
A man dreamed he was the River Xanthus at Troy. I interpreted it to mean he'd bleed for years, but not die of it...
I'm at a family dinner. Killer Grampa, kid-hating Ma, larcenous Dad. Then a bum offers some advice...
Restrain yourself! Or you too may end up on a giraffe
rollerskating down the freeway singing perverted popsongs...
Chips are faster than brains these days, so everyone's upgrading--everyone but me...
I'm in line to meet a shockingly accurate psychic. But she's running late, so as I frame my question...
CAUTION: I'M NOT GAY BUT I SURE AM QUEER
I was nineteen again, riding my horse down a bad road in Virginia. After three hours, my horse spoke up...
A yuppie idealist discovers her boyfriend's a cheerful opportunist, and they disentangle their lives...
CAUTION: SEX IN REVERSE
My Zen master keeps asking me koans. But every riddle is about insurance
forms. I always reply "I am thirsty." He asks another. It goes on forever...
It's true: after death, angels advise you where to go next.
But what if you get an over-eager travel agent?