I'm trying to draw a mother deer and her two adolescent fawns, who've stopped
talking to each other, and quit watching for predators. Glued to their phones...
CAUTION: NUDE DEER
Japanese fleets invaded Korea. Admiral Yi dreamt of a giant turtle: no weapon pierced its shell, and
it spouted smoke. Yi built his nightmare turtle, and defeated the invaders in battle after battle...
A wizard's minions trap me in a fishtank. I become a mermaid. They spy on me--
so I turn transparent and keep changing shape. They're pushing me into power...
CAUTION: PARANORMAL INTERPRETATION; GLASS BREASTS
After we moved to Lockerbie, I kept dreaming that on my way to school, the tail of a huge plane fell from the
sky, and no matter how I dodged, it always killed me. 35 years later, a bomb tore Pan Am 103 apart, and...
CAUTION: CHANCE OR PREDICTION? EITHER WAY, GRIM.
Mermaids swim by, on land, using the new bubble-generators. Saba, my friend Karina's sister,
nearly dies in a sailway crash. Recovering, Saba's shunned--her feline relatives call her a zombie...
CAUTION: NUDE CATGIRL
I tell Socrates "All my life, I've dreamed that the Orchestra Pit in the
Phantom Theatre tries to swallow me." Years pass, my daughter grows up--
and she dreams of the Phantom Theatre too! But without that hungry Pit...
I was walking on 42nd Street. On a whim I tried to predict
what was in the window of a shop up the block. I pictured
turkey tracks on red snow. When I came up to the window...
I'm at a party. Mixed teens: humans, cryptids like vampires, catgirls and fae...
and a third group--local mutants who look ultrabutch or ultrafemme...
CAUTION: DISTURBING SOCIOPOLITICAL INTERPRETATION
From the deer's antlers, from each tine, green leaves were growing, as if
from the branches of a tree. Then it turned and vanished. In shyness, perhaps...
I like a vegetarian cloud-leopard girl. So I steal one of her blueberries, then ingratiate
myself into her cat family as their pet human. Wait, these seem strange ways to flirt...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
John's friend, Charles Daniel, a historian, printer and medievalist, died. John dreams he
climbs through a magical castle to find Daniel in a tower-library: his scholarly heaven...
CAUTION: ARCHAISMS
A yuppie idealist discovers her boyfriend's a cheerful, amoral
opportunist. They quarrel, and disentangle their lives...
CAUTION: SEX IN REVERSE?!
I'm a schoolkid in the future who finds an ancient book the censors overlooked...
I find myself in a crowd boarding a jet in a small airfield. But a staffer hands me a manual
and insists I have to fly the jet! I'm not a pilot, but I don't need to be. I'm the plane...
Haunted by a recurring dream of a mysterious affair in Venice, I talked friends
into modeling for a photo shoot, and over two weeks we re-staged my dream...
Our cowboy posse tracks a fugitive to a strange amethyst mine, where we're offered peculiar jobs...
Greene woke shaken. "I dreamt of catastrophe. I hope nothing has happened to one of my family or a close friend."
A few miles away, an airliner had been shot down, killing all. On board was his friend General René Cogny...
In a castle, a white bird lands on the table and becomes a little girl who plays with Jung's kids, hugs him,
then turns back into a bird, explaining "I can become human only for a few hours of the night, when...
God has a night-side, as we do. We evolve, with slips back into darkness,
generations long; and God does too, though perhaps with more pain...
CAUTION: PHILOSOPHY
In the evacuation of Dunkirk, my brother went missing. I dreamt he had a bullet hole in his forehead.
After a letter informed us he'd been shot in the head, I dreamt of him again--alive and happy...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P., ANTI-MATERIALIST CONCLUSION
Georgina woke me. "I had to give a rich acquaintance eight injections in the neck. He left, climbing on high-voltage cables.."
That day, we met a rich friend who had a ski accident. He got a new therapy: eight injections in the neck, then electroshock...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLY SPECIFIC "COINCIDENCE"
I'm a small boy in Renaissance Italy, seeing painted panels that will be mounted in a
coffered ceiling. A few years later, I see that ceiling in Mantova--the Palazzo del Te...
As the Gulf War began, bulletproof Kevlar vests were desperately needed. But Du Pont's production
halted--a vital machine just froze and engineers couldn't see why. Ragsdale dreamed a weird solution...
I was a stone gargoyle, a phoenix, guarding a hospital. But when a boy is unjustly
denied care, I come alive, a golden bird, storming down to reform the system...
I dreamed I was a chubby, happy, boneless creature made of purple towels.
Five snaps held my head on, so if I got a headache I just pulled it off...
Night. Berkeley. Lights cross the sky--missiles? Is the world ending? People run, but
don't organize to evacuate. I feel forced into leading. Am I the only grownup in town?
After the puppet Indian legislature passed the Rowlett Acts (police could jail anyone anytime), Gandhi dreamed
he must call for a nationwide hartal, a day of fasting--a declaration that freedom isn't just political but sacred...
Blake repeatedly dreamed of an angelic art teacher who suggested both
images & techniques. In 1819 Blake sketched his three-eyed tutelary spirit...
Prime Minister Wilson was gushing about urban renewal. He planned to raze the slums
and make the poor camp in public buildings until enough apartments were built...
CAUTION: TECHNOCRATS!
In a dark wood, I find a castle full of all my old teachers, watching an interview of their idol,
philosopher Martin Heidegger. He delivers! Greedy, arrogant, jingoistic, sexist and gleeful...
CAUTION: GENUINE HEIDEGGER, UGH
A jester in love offers a queen his heart and soul. She rejects them. In
despair, he offers her the emblems of his clowning, his cap and bells...
Sampling the food at a party, I spot a mouse doing the same. Meeting Carl Jung, I chant "Mickey Mouse,
ha ha ha!" He replies "For God's sake, quit writing your dreams! Wake up and accept your mouse!"...
A soul-sucking job all day, lucid dreams at night. But not compensatory, full of lucidity's freedom;
replicating exactly the same miserable milieu. I was lucid, yet I couldn't seem to change a thing...
CAUTION: UGH!
I guide a blind man through the People's Palace of Marvels. Vaguely lucid, I create an ice rink.
If I can do that, I can heal the blind, right? Wrong! He's let down--furious. I misunderstood...
An Arabian Nights city--but I'm enslaved. I escape. I'm caught. My sentence? I must sit 33 years atop
a column, watching for Vikings. I get a Walkman, but no music, and a book, but I suddenly can't read...
CAUTION: LUCID YET TOTALLY FRUSTRATED
I know I'm dreaming but it does no good--I'm paralyzed, and spams wrack my body, I fall out of bed.
When I wake, I tingle and shake for minutes. Yet I'm still in bed; the sheets aren't even twisted...
As a kid, I dreamt the Munchkin inquest asked if Dorothy was dead, so she could stay in
As an adult, I dreamt the MGM studio was a death camp where we sang & danced in fear for our lives...
CAUTION: SERIOUS OZIANA
After two years of dating and breaking up with a Canadian girl (because I was sure true love
required suffering) I dreamt we were dancing, white-haired, and happy. I told her that dream...
I woke in bed, hearing voices from a grownup party outside my door. It opened, and
a tall man with deer horns came after me, as my parents leered and urged him on...
Hughes got stuck writing a dreary literary essay. He slept on it. In his dreams,
a fox came into his room, read his essay, and with a touch of his paw, burned it!
Hughes wrote a poem about a fox and left THAT on his desk. That night he dreamt
the fox returned, read the poem, and gave a thumbs-up. Hughes had a new career....
At 13, I dreamt of night and rain--and a poem about them. But when I
woke, it was... still there! Here it is. I knew I'd found my life's work...
I was the youngest writer on a prestigious committee awarding grants--nurturing
our art. I dreamt I looked out the window during a debate. The world was dying...
CAUTION: ECO-APOCALYPSE
MURDOCH'S DREAM: I sat on a terrace. An angel flew by. I asked if God existed. He said "Certainly"...
BYATT'S DREAM: I sat on a terrace with Iris. A whirlwind flew across the lawn, roaring like a power mower.
I said "He's in there. I love him." She said "So he is. So do I." As I woke, I knew he was Death, the Mower...
CAUTION: SPIRITUALITY AND PUNS
Brown dreamed of this green bedroom, striped curtains and red furniture--not hers, but her down-
stairs neighbor's room. It was full of her (adult) possessions, and she said goodnight to each...
We're at the beach. A tsunami's coming, but my parents act oblivious. Bundle my younger siblings into the car, but
my sister Claire got left behind. She's in the water, seaweed wrapped round her, already drowned. And I join her...
We treasure-hunters anchored off the Arabian coast--the legendary ruins of Orbutum. But
an American showed up with papers claiming his government had the rights to it all. And...
CAUTION: SNIPPY ABOUT AMERICANS
My family needs money, so I must publish. But my first draft is trash. My secretary and
my mistress try to calm me down but I consider suicide. At least then I won't have to see it...
Other Dalí dream-paintings are flashy, but here he paints the prerequisites for
dreamwork: quiet, dusk, a bed. The calm making elbow-room for the storm...
I'm conducting a cello duet--nervously, for Dvorak the composer (alive again) is playing! But his
partner, Picasso, keeps up. What a duet! Even when I wake, I see bow & cello everywhere...
Night. Blackfriars Bridge. A hand grabs my ankle--my father begs "Save me." I pull, but I can't
lift him. He's doomed. He says "It's all right. Now we can meet in dreams"...and he's gone.
The curtain rises. Empty stage. I wait... for an hour! I can't move, can't leave. Then a sting at my throat, the
scent of blood, and as I collapse, a woman announces "Tonight's show is cancelled due to the death of..."
CAUTION: FIRST-HAND DEATH SCENE
My beloved horse outraced our ruler's best--so he killed my horse. I dream he tells me
"Make a fiddle from my bones, skin and horsehair, then play our story, and I'll return"...
CAUTION: GRISLY, BUT APPARENTLY IT WORKED
DAY: I've been studying if lucid dreams are really that lucid beyond the bare fact of knowing you're dreaming...
DREAM: I fly over the sea, spotting creatures of the deep below, and creatures of the sky, reflected--blended...
I got a discount nose-job. My nostrils crept up to my eyes. I complained. They lowered them--
to my chin. I complained. They said "What do you expect for 25 quid?" I left the clinic with...
At the beach, a Bactrian camel at the self-service station fills his humps and walks off whistling. The
station owner wants me to pay, but I'm a kid; no cash. "Then sing." But I have no mouth. Or head...
Our band from a decade ago plays a reunion gig. It's a disaster even before my
keyboard turns into a giant pizza and my fingers start burning on the mozzarella...
I live in LA. I buy a used car whose engine, it turns out, is a big potato. How cool--an edible motor! But
it breaks down--clogged by black gunk. Must I replace it with ordinary metal? I want a potato engine...
The newspaper said I was to be appointed Archbishop. But the Cardinal had
a detective investigate me, who found improprieties--ones that make no sense...
From my sick ward I sent a last poem to a competition,
describing my decline into dependency. Death by TV...
Dalí, black & white, shows me Surrealist collages; then, dressed half as a schoolgirl
and half as The Hierophant, Graham Chapman of Monty Python declares: "I am...
I infiltrated a Nazi nest to give Goebbels a poisoned cigarette. All I could do
was to light it, jam it up his nostril and flee, hoping the dose was enough...
Charnock loathes fantasy and its fans, but can't escape it--he dreams
an evil sorcerer is foiled by a shopgirl and her stone-carving lover...
The Second Ice Age. London's domed. I find a body in the swimming pool--blood in the water. I flee
to Shiner Town. The Empress gives birth, and her babies feed on the blood of Sephardic Jews...
At the seaside I meet a woman late in life, well-established, who's just seen, in the great silent sweep
of the sea, a solitude & quiet she didn't know to seek. Too late! I see her life-poem carved in metal, and...
I had to design a gown for a pregnant bride. I felt stuck. Slept on it. Woke with an odd dress in mind. She loved it.
That night I dreamt a faceless girl said "Glad you liked it. It was my dress, but I died just before my wedding..."
I go on a country ramble with writer Ford Madox Ford. He tells me local legends; he drapes a bull over his
shoulders; we cross a stream on a lock; he comments on men's fashion preferences. What's going on here?
DREAM: I dined with Khrushchev. I liked him. I told my friends "He has a beautiful face, the face of a saint."
NINE DAYS LATER: Of course saints can't be sanctified while they're living. Khrushchev was overthrown...
CAUTION: CHANCE OR FORESIGHT?
I was at a play, A Game of Croquet, with lines that flowed so well I felt as if I'd written it myself...
CAUTION: NARRATOR UNRELIABLE?
First I float bodiless in a smooth, shining, delightful plane of liquid light; then a rough scratchy plane descends, smothering me. I try to scream, but...
After I returned from Vietnam I kept dreaming I was in the jungle with a box of blasting caps,
while a enemy soldier chases me, throwing lit cigarettes at me--and he has an infinite supply...
On the train to Rome, I slept, and dreamt of the nine Muses
on Mount Helicon. As soon as I unpacked, I painted it ...
A great snake spirals into a radial constellation toward one central
star, just as our lives spiral in toward our purpose, our soul...
I'm a rabbit girl living in New Orleans. Humid summer. My roses all died;
a rot that needs to be disinfected. So I light a torch and burn them back...
CAUTION: HARSH POLITICAL INTERPRETATION
Our group's being hunted. We flee into a cave. A gulf ahead that we can't jump. We have to fly.
I know how, and I teach the kids among us quickly enough, but the adults are scared to try...
I dream I'm taking a hot shower, then realize our water heater died; this is a dream. "It means I want hot water!" I
blurt (in the dream) & wake. Next day, a plumber's error gets me drenched in hot water with no new heater...
I bike up a Hawaiian hill toward a lava fountain. A house catches fire, but it's blocks ahead.
I go a bit closer. Then a heat-shimmer shows deadly gas has crept ahead of the flames...
CAUTION: FATAL MISJUDGMENT
I sit on a half-flooded pier and read a dream-journal--the first ever written by a dog. But
I can't interview the dreamer; the dog followed a fad diet and just died of excess salt...
A mom & daughter caught a squirrel robbing their guaranteed rodent-proof birdfeeder. He
speaks English, so they demand to know how he did it. But he knows they won't hurt him...
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...
DREAM: I run into a couple I know. I get gridlocked. R.D. Laing gives me a transpersonal message.
DAY: I bump into that couple, get gridlocked, and hear R.D. Laing speak on transpersonal messages...
After reading a manga and gorging on sushi, I dream a mob of little ninjas
dressed as catgirls pile on me, begging to be petted. Excitement, guilt...
CAUTION: PEDOPHILIA, NON-FREUDIAN INTERPRETATION
Hell Chess isn't just black and white. Living women, from weak pawns to transcendent rainbow queens...
Coming Causes Amnesia: reincarnation, 69, and plate tectonics all fuse in lava-hot orgasm...
CAUTION: ORAL SEX IN DREAM TWO
A guy smashes homes with a duckbilled train; gunmen shoot up shops near the tracks.
The ensuing civil war burns all. Years later, we live on hardscrabble farms. Global Texas!
CAUTION: GLOBAL TEXAS!
My parents, alive again, steal my car, my meds & my supplements,
trapping me in their isolated house and forcing me to stay awake--
no sleep, no food. They're out to cure my silly, selfish idea I have needs...
DAY: I see Disney's new film, Encanto. Everything's about Family. You are your role. What is this, 1950?
DREAM: I'm trapped in Encanto's Family. We have powers--but what powers our powers is sibling incest...
CAUTION: DID I MENTION INCEST?
An archeological dig inscribed in the Roman alphabet, Chinese characters, Ethiopian
syllabics and unknown scripts. A carved egg bears news from the future, not the past...
CAUTION: CALLS PROPHECY A LEARNABLE SKILL
DREAM: I see photos of smiling couples at the beach, but someone's scribbled on them: just black blots for eyes. Creepy.
DAY: Read a fantasy novel in which a prince has a cursed double, identical except: he has black blots for eyes. Creepier...
A jaguar tracked me. I ran, but never escaped; it pounced on me and I woke crying. I tried climbing trees, but
it climbed after me. The only escape was to jump from the highest branch, flapping desperately. And I flew...
I climbed a tree with a beautiful view, but climbing down I fell, and woke. I visited the people under the
river. A beautiful ayocora bird danced for me. But so did the moon spirit, baring its fangs. Terrifying!
When I first took yãkoana, my visions were disappointing--where were the spirits? They studied
me for days, until they knew I was serious. Then a few came, then a horde! Overwhelming...
DAY: Sidarta Ribeiro theorizes dreams are brilliant at extrapolation, which we mistake for a sixth sense.
DREAM: I tell Ribeiro "Your theory explains the occasional prediction. But after your first thousand..."
On my first trip to Europe, I found bees there live in boxes. They came to me in my dream to say "We are slowly
starving, as humans kill the flowers and trees we need." They asked me to warn the white people, who are deaf...
I visited Europe while suffering from malaria. The local spirits helped me, cooling my fever. They prefer to live
high in the mountains where the air and water are still clean. White people ignore them, but they're still there...
Had sleep paralysis early one morning while trying to wake up, and "saw" this creature or woman looming over me.
She had two spider legs (if more, I couldn't see) and was smiling--with no face. Terrifying. Amazing...
I dreamed I saw this statue of a woman wearing a round hat or bowl that covered her entire head.
When I got closer, a bunch of arms sprouted from under the hat/bowl, moving like spider legs...
We were trying to catch this "harpy", who looked like a 1980s
angel, but she teleported away. It was freaking weird...
There was a tall man wearing a mask standing at the door.
At least I think it was a mask...
There was this giant creature in the water along with a bunch of sharks.
The creature turned out to be nice though, much nicer than the sharks...
I had a dream that everyone was sinking, drowning, but still alive. No one
could move, and it was just getting darker and darker with bodies. Lovely...
In this dream, everyone had wings but me. I tried.
making my own cloth wings but it didn't work...
First I met an assassin girl who could raise dust storms; then a monster-hunted named Rho;
then I was the hunter, with a futuristic hovercycle and low-tech bow and arrows...
A blind girl had trained for years to get revenge against a winter god named Lük or Lock, who took the form of an ice wolf.
By defeating the god, she would get her sight back, but she didn't know she'd also send the world into an endless winter...
I was working at a farm with a two-headed dragon creature as my companion. One head
was very loyal and the other head absolutely hated me. I always forget which is which...
I was at the edge of a cliff and I had to jump to some pillar-like rocks.
I was very hesitant though because the ocean waves were so violent...
I had to prepare the house for a party, but the basement was flooded. I thought I could
decorate it with some floating flowers anyway, but they kept dissolving or sinking...
I dreamed a tired soldier visited an oracle or priestess,
who hummed a simple tune and provided refuge...
We found an injured girl with wings. We took her to the hospital and
I warned them she might be dangerous, but no one listened to me...
I had a dream I was exploring ruins in a forest, where
I encountered this feral girl with a porcupine head....
I had a dream I was climbing up a bunch of tiny shanty buildings and I got stuck. There was a wall full of
giant Koi Betta fish I couldn't climb across, and when I looked down, I could only see the top of the sky...
I saw a boy beating a qilin [Chinese unicorn] with a willow branch, hurting its left leg. I scolded
him and wrapped the leg in grass. In gratitude it spat up three books! I studied them diligently...
Coleridge's dream-poem describes a palace itself inspired by a dream! Kublai Khan dreamt
of a huge yet delicate "pleasure dome", sketched it, and sent scouts to find a site matching...
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 a child sick in bed, Max had a fever dream that the shapes in the knots and grain in a
wooden panel were children terrorized by a bird. Adult, he assembled a sort-of-painting...
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...
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 murder case. But the suspect had gone to an interpreter and told of an ominous dream.
The investigator saw its strange images might be puns, naming the real killer--and they did...
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
Wei Linggong was an autocrat heeding only one minister. A dwarf bravely told him "I dreamt
you were no imperial sun warming all, just a stove, and your crony hogs all your warmth..."
Bo Ji, a minor concubine in the early Han court who'd never even met
the Emperor, dreamt a dragon slept in her lap. Next night the Emperor
summoned her; the child they conceived became one of China's best rulers...
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...
Li Bai's mother dreams of Venus shining, and names her unborn son Bai, 'white'. She dreams he'll ride a
red dragon, too: greatness, but what kind? Li Bai when young dreams the answer: his brushpen flowers!
At 17, Xiao Dao dreamt he rode a black dragon as the sun set. A dream interpreter said sunset
meant the end of the Liao Song dynasty, and that Xiao Dao would rise to found the next dynasty...
DREAM: Lu's best friend had to go away. They composed poems on the sadness of parting...
DAYS LATER: Lu learned that on the night of his dream, his friend had been killed in an uprising...
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
On New Year's Eve, I 'woke' to find my room full of light. A coffin lay on chairs; inside was my father.
My watch read 12:40. I woke again. A day later the letter arrived. My father had died at 12:40...
I dreamt I was an adult, and male. I was hiking in the snow with my girlfriend or wife. I felt protective--and
utterly at home in this quite different body. If dreams process our daily experience, what did this dream draw on?
Driving down a country road, I go lucid. A gorgeous hitchhiker appears. I'm tempted, but I decide to try for something higher than
a sex dream. The car takes off, climbs past religious symbols into a clear sky where I find myself singing a transcendent hymn...
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...
This picture of a split man was in no sense a product of my conscious will. I simply
bowed to compulsion after four years of being haunted by that face in my dreams...
A mysterious old woman with cat-face and claws threatened me; she seemed
to be guarding a treasure. Sometimes she appeared as a praying mantis...
In the dark, a dragonlike god of fire stretched out
one claw to courteously light my own small torch...
Sybelle & I climbed the cathedral spire. Bravely she kissed the monstrous guardian, exhaling
blue light. My own challenge was to leap across an abyss, under the luminous eye of God...
The Lynx, my dream-god,
comes for me at last...
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...
At 16, Rochan dreamt she rose from her body and explored outside, seeing a white car and brown bag. She
woke--and checked! White car, brown bag. Now, adult, she trusts her dream intuitions about larger things...
Roya's mother-in-law had a painful death. Roya dreamt she met her, a joyous bird,
who had forgotten the pain of death just as we forget the pain of birth...
CAUTION: NICE, BUT NOT EVIDENCE
DREAM: a car crash; my parents both die, though my sister & I are thrown free, unhurt.
DAYS LATER: Aunt & uncle invite me on a car trip; my dad says no, I have to study.
TWO WEEKS LATER: Aunt & uncle die in a head-on; their kids are thrown free...
Jill, pregnant, got a high fever. She dreamt her child's soul was locked out of the house. That fetus died.
Jill, pregnant again, got a high fever, but dreamt a chorus of children happily sang. That fetus lived...
Abducted as a kid by alien angels and raised in a luminous
cloud, I find it hard to keep a mortal, human perspective...
I'm alone in bed, but begin to see sensual bodies around me. I start to masturbate, climax, and wake. I feel loose and light--
so light I float above my bed! A beautiful woman's next to me. We caress mid-air. I come intensely, and wake again, alone...
CAUTION: SEX
Linscott dreamt of a murder and woke to find it'd happened down the block. Friends
nagged him to tell the dream to the investigators. He did. They tried him for murder...
I see a leopard chasing an Indian man who defends himself with a knife; then
I wake. To find I'm still witnessing the same scene, only now I'm the leopard...
Kellogg jabbed a wooden skewer through one tonsil. It got infected. In a lucid
dream, he willed it to heal. In the next twelve hours, the infection vanished...
DREAM: a man tries to break into my house. I call for help; the operator says "Oh, that's Nisrock."
DAYS LATER: I open a book on the unconscious. It says Nisrock was a Babylonian god of dreams...
CAUTION: BAD MYTHOGRAPHY
I was desperately arranging cut flowers for something important; the forces
that acted upon me seemed to say "Your life depends upon this assemblage"...
DREAM: at a dreamgroup, I tell a predictive dream that my artist friend's front tooth will get infected. Then
we all chant "Loga-Shana!" THREE WEEKS LATER: my artist friend's front tooth gets a serious abcess...
CAUTION: WILL TROUBLE E.S.P. SKEPTICS
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
The sea pours in the house, but Lynette swims and floats in the sun. When the flood ebbs, the
land blooms into paradise. An oracle says "Your mom will die, but you'll help her through it"...
CAUTION: SUBLIMINALLY SENSING ILLNESS, OR PSYCHIC?
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 heart-lung surgery, Claire had dreams of her donor that told his name, his appearance and some of his
behaviors. She contacted the donor family and verified these. Can dreams access nonbrain cellular memory?
A bride flies as a ghost, invisible, inaudible, sealed in a crystal shell; a guide
shows her what'll happen if she can't shatter her armor and show her love...
Leah, pregnant, finds herself at the beach, flying on a pogo stick,
just as all the seabirds do. Fun at first, but it gets out of control...
Johns dreamt he was painting an American flag. He woke, and did--
mixing pigment and beeswax, coating newspaper strips...
While writing about Tibetan dreamwork, I dream I'm on drugs and see myself in a mirror, first old &
scarred, then young & sexcrazed. I think "This'd scare me if I hadn't been reading up on Yoga stuff!"...
Margherita's dreamworld is lonely, empty, endless. She wanders on foot. Her husband
gets her a bike, a patch kit, and when she crashes, hears her cry for help--while awake...
CAUTION: MARITAL TELEPATHY OR ITALIAN HYPERBOLE?
I'm a spirit flying over the dead, blessing them. They're in mass graves, sorted & grouped
only by their life-stages--kids, adults, elders. Wait... is this how to structure my book?
DREAM: I see the leaves outside turning from red to green, not green-to-red as usual in fall.
AWAKE: I've been dating two boys called Red and Green. Guess my dreams have chosen...
A yard sale in a small town turns out to be my family selling porn.
But they want to push more than their sexual values on me...
CAUTION: TWISTED FAMILY, ELEPHANT ABUSE
Four teens dream their moms are monsters: Patricia sees hers as a demonic doll, Fiona finds
her mom's a wolf, Lenore's is a grinning vampire, and Helen's is a bossy, punitive octopus...
Jeff's stepson Lewis can't memorize the times tables. Jeff sleeps on it, but wakes only with a silly rhyme.
But he chants it, and Lewis adds more rhymes--one per equation. He goes from class dunce to the best...
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'm running along a freeway, pacing a cheetah. But that domestic cat
and her kittens can't keep up. Wait, why are we slowing for them?
Hilda, founder of two monasteries, dies in one. Begu, in the other, 13 miles away,
dreams Hilda's been taken to heaven. She tells her sisters. Messengers arrive...
Caedmon can't sing. But he dreams an angel makes him try. Soon he's the first great English poet and singer...
Fursa the preacher, sick, dreams flaming devils & angels are trying his case; one
failure to coax a deathbed repentance gets him scorched. He wakes with burns...
CAUTION: DREAM HAS PHYSICAL EFFECTS
King Ethelfrid bribes Redwald to murder his guest, Edwin. Edwin dreams an angel warns him, swearing to save him if
he'll convert. Redwald's wife tells him "Don't kill a guest." Once Edwin's king, that dream-angel demands his fealty...
CAUTION: SHODDY SPIRITUAL BARGAINING
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 find myself on the bridge of a starship. But the décor is Arabian Nights--and half the crew are unicorns,
grazing built-in flowerbeds. Some humans on board treat them as mere pets. But one's piloting the ship...
CAUTION: PREDICTIVE
I'm dating a sexy salad. But I just gobble the good bits and leave: I have an appointment in Chinatown.
The salad understandably feels let down, but she's painfully familiar with guys who eat and run...
CAUTION: WEIRD EVEN BY MY STANDARDS
DAY: the crew of the Enterprise sings about love & career(ism). DREAM: I'm taking a test at Starfleet Academy.
But my teacher's a gorgeous unicorn, & my answers are filled in! I try to change one but my eraser breaks...
CAUTION: MOCKS LA BERGE'S LUCID DREAMWORK? NUDE PROFESSOR, TOO
One night I meet a robot and an alien staring in a shop window at a photo of a Gothic chapel.
They're shocked--it's a Galactic legend, the Palace of Good Policy. Pure myth! Or is it?
A pig-man hybrid--huge mouth, tiny body--happily eats trash, smirking as I pass...
Then a woman bends over to flash me, smirking, as a censorious Judge glares...
CAUTION: SCENE 1 GROSS, SCENE 2 SEXUAL
A girl I like invites me to her apartment. Her personal stormcloud hovers over her. Her housemates come home
and warn me "It's always there, it's her attitude," and I realize I like angsty intelligence, but I need a sunny...
I find myself working in a bank that won't let us do our jobs. Only one guy can disburse cash!
Lines of angry customers. If management won't change the rules, I'll have to quit...
CAUTION: PREDICTIVE!
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?
Strangers ask me about my nine selves, and I find I know exactly what they mean!
The last three are new and odd--calm quiet states that heighten paranormal senses...
CAUTION: MYSTICAL
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 live in four consecutive bodies: I'm a Bose-Einstein condensate, a cloud of particles moving as one--
unless overheated. No, I'm Witch's Butter, a mob of amoeboid cells who unify into a quasi-slug--temporarily.
No, I'm a person, but soft and yellow as Witch's Butter. No, I'm firming up, but still entangled...
I fall for a girl whose charm turns out to be partly her utter lack of worry and guilt--as she lies & cheats!
At last I face facts, and drop her. I end up with a quieter but honest girlfriend, though she too has quirks...
CAUTION: PUBLIC SEX, POLITICAL INTERPRETATION
DREAM: Outage! I bike through dark streets. One bay window glows--room lit by a glowing woman reflected in many mirrors...
NEXT EVE: Outage! I bike home through dark streets. One bay window glows--room lit by candles reflected in many mirrors...
CAUTION: NUDITY; APPARENT E.S.P.
After his dad's death, a boy dreams he's an orphan facing cannibal witches--every night! Therapy helps;
his recurring dreams shift to a manhunt for a criminal who hides on the ceiling. The dreams shift again, to
a tiger hunt. That is, the tiger hunts you. The boy jumps in the sea. Swimming with sharks...
CAUTION: INTENSE NIGHTMARES, PARENTAL LOSS
Joseph as a teen dreams sheaves of his brothers' grain bow to his; then the sun, moon & stars bow to him.
Eleven years later, in prison, Joseph interprets two cellmates' dreams as premonitory, and gets both right.
Two years later, he interprets two bizarre dreams troubling the Pharaoh, thus saving Egypt from famine...
CAUTION: BRONZE AGE FUN! NEAR-FRATRICIDE, SLAVERY, EXECUTION, FORCED MARRIAGE...
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
Dumuzid dreams raptors prey on his flock, his hearth fire's doused, his churns knocked over; he lies dead.
His sister Jestinana interprets it: "Manhunters will kill you; you must flee." He does, across the known world...
Gopa dreams the earth shakes, stars and meteors fall. She's naked, her marriage bed is broken, her husband
Siddhartha's treasures lie scattered. He says "How auspicious!"--and prepares to abandon her and their son...
CAUTION: SEXISM
As I tour an English estate, wrinkled green elephantine creatures 20' tall peer at me through huge spectacles.
I'm told "they're only kept now for their singing." I want to hear, but my guide's bored; I let her drag me off...
CAUTION: CONFORMITY STIFLES SHAMANISM
A great storm causes flooding. I'm knee deep in the surge. Women flee and flounder,
wearing different colors, forming a panicky rainbow. So much for God's promise...
A great quake and fire devastate Athens; I'm up on the
Acropolis, as the stone columns of the Parthenon fall...
Night. A big city. High in a tower, a man in a wetsuit and flippers is
swimming in air--practicing before slipping out the open window...
A marsh. One figure's wrapped in mummy bandages; another swims--or drowns.
A ruin's being rebuilt. Out in the bay, a faint water-road leads to the open sea...
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 dreamt, and knew I dreamt, and I made love to Lady Castlemayne, and had all my desire.
If, as Shakespeere said, death is but sleep, and dreams may come, why then fear death?...
Silla Kristos angered Saint Walatta Petros, so she cursed him. He got sick and died. She knew she'd overdone it,
and asked the Virgin Mary to revive him. Mary grumbled, but did. While dead, Silla Kristos got wise angelic advice...
CAUTION: BRATTY SAINT, BRATTY MONK
A cranky nun wants fish. Ilarya, the monastery's cook, sets out to buy one--a long walk, and unsafe after dark.
So Ilarya asks the sun to halt! She buys her fish, cooks, feeds her patient, and forgets to tell it to set...
CAUTION: PETTY, GOOFY, COMMUNITY-BAFFLING MIRACLE
I meet a half-angel half-mortal child, fruit of an illicit affair. Constantly growing pinfeathers,
but never mastering flight; ageless, but unable to grow up; at home neither in Heaven nor Earth...
CAUTION: 19TH-CENTURY VERBOSITY
I go back 3000 years to the Judgment of Paris, then at Babylon's height see King Nebuchadnezzar,
then the doomed lovers Antony & Cleopatra, then Triton and the Nereids celebrating a divine birth...
CAUTION: DENSE CLASSICAL REFERENCES
My children ask me to tell our family history, up to the death of their mother. I wake to find
myself single, my late wife alive but married to another, and my beloved children, phantoms...
CAUTION: 19TH-CENTURY LOGORRHEA
DREAM: a great bird carries me to Mecca, Yemen, India, the south sea islands, China, the snowy north...
AWAKE: My host says it means I'll travel the world--but he adds "in India, my brother will save your life"...
Bruno flew through space--not crystal spheres, not Heaven, not even the Copernican solar system, but
interstellar space. He saw the stars were suns, those suns had planets, and those planets bore life...
CAUTION: BURNED ALIVE BY THE INQUISITION
DREAM: Millions of birds were at war, tearing one another apart. It was out of control, thousands and thousands...
DAY: Pinochet's coup took Chile. Alerted by the dream, Painemal went into hiding and lived--unlike thousands...
CAUTION: EXTRAPOLATIVE OR PSYCHIC?
I dream World War Two's begun. I always felt war was just rivalry between ruling elites, but now I find
I'll even back Imperial Britain against the Nazis. The next day, Hitler and Stalin announce a pact...
CAUTION: GRIM TIME FOR IDEALISTS
Plutarch says Caesar dreamt of sex with his mother; it was interpreted as "you'll take the motherland". So he crossed the Rubicon...
But Suetonius says he dreamed it way earlier, at age 33, after seeing a shrine to Alexander (who died at 33); Julius felt inferior...
CAUTION: INCEST; DREAM USED FOR PROPAGANDA
I saw a red screen, as if formed by flowing blood. On it, a hand wrote elliptical integrals.
I knew they were from Lakshmi. As soon as I woke, I committed them to writing...
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 fall in love, defying kidnappers, dwarf-tossers and
Toulouse-Lautrec, until I become a time-traveling bunny...
CAUTION: SEX, SHAMANISM, DWARF-TOSSING (LAUTREC!)
At an anarchist fair in San Francisco, a 13-year-old punkette genius sings some shocking advice to me...
In one long night I hike out of Obligation Hell
all the way to Inner-Freedom Heaven...
Two shapeshifters meet, fight and love over the centuries--
and I live out scenes from both their long lives...
I was on an island about to explode like Krakatoa. I warned the French colonial authorities "4,000
people will die if we don't get them out!" but no one listened. I woke. The paper came. "Mont
Pelée erupts, kills 40,000". I had missed a zero! But 40,000 turned out to be wrong too, implying...
In prison, the midnight bell chimed. I dreamt I saw a cavalry column of men and horses skinned, gory, still marching.
Wagons of the dead passed for hours. As the guard changed, the gate crashed, waking me--just minutes after midnight!
CAUTION: PROVES NOT ALL DREAMS ARE REALTIME
DREAM 1: On green grass, a red & blue boat with a net draped atop. Predictive.
DREAM 2: Climbing a ladder with square rungs in a space w/o walls. Predictive.
DREAM 3: A small boy with a toy boat. A sail's laid out flat for washing. Predictive...
DREAM: I meet a woman with a bun hairdo, black skirt, black & white striped blouse. I think she's a spy!
TWO DAYS LATER: I meet that woman--bun, skirt, blouse. And all the hotel guests here say she's a spy...
Just north of the Firth of Forth in Scotland, a train fell from the track to a grassy park where small groups of people
wandered. I sensed it was one of those odd dreams of mine & tried to get the date--next spring. On April 14, 1914,
the "Flying Scotsman" jumped the parapet 15 miles north of the Forth Bridge and fell to the golf links below...
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...
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...
My sister Miriel asks me to ask my dreams if it's safe for her to get cataracts removed.
I find myself in her body, biking at night--near-blind. Surgery has risks, but this is riskier!
Age 7 to 11, I often dreamt I inhabited a consistent geography of mountains & deserts. I was an adult of dark
complexion in non-European clothes; I spoke a tongue (and read a script) that I didn't recognize when awake...
CAUTION: ADULT DRUG EXPERIMENT; PAST LIFE MEMORY?
by Gala Dalí 1943? painted by Salvador Dalí 1944; a supposedly instantaneous dream.
Dalí's wife Gala naps, but a bee wakes her--and her dream instantly magnifies
bee into tigers! After all, both have fur, sharp bits, black & gold stripes...
CAUTION: BREASTS; BAD DREAM THEORIES.
DAY: I research a weird Salvador Dalí dream-painting mingling, flight, tigers and sex.
DREAM: I flirt with a talking cat. Want her to fly with me. But she wants something earthier...
I'm in the cellar, petting a tiger-cat. She speaks inside my head: "I'm tired of living on bread. I need meat."
I make excuses--it's pricy--then see big hanging quarters of meat. I hide them! She says "Call me Mistress
Touttmouss"--well, something like that--I know it's English, but can't make it out til I wake, when I see...
As a child I read Jules Verne's Clipper of the Clouds--a metal craft with many propellers on spars, not wings.
Soon I dreamt I designed & flew quite a different craft, like a small boat of canvas on a wood frame.
20 years later, I was test-flying a new aeroplane with a boatlike cockpit of white canvas on a wood...
Before I'd ever heard of planes, I dreamed one landed near me. A white man invited me to ride,
and we flew over Oraibi. I told people but they didn't believe such a thing could come true...
Layanasha foresaw the British would bring a great snake spanning Maasai territory, then a plague killing
half the tribe, a second plague killing nearly all the cattle, and finally huge birds flying over the veldt...
An eagle lands near me and turns into a woman. She says "That pet eagle you had as a child?
It's me!" I'm a bit surprised. She wants a turquoise bead with a hole in it, and I look for one...
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 dream my cousin and I ride out looking for his lost moccasins. Suddenly he's swallowed by mud
and drowns. It's so fast. I feel sorry for him but I'm helpless. Two months later, my cousin died...
When my grandmother was young her husband had a prosperous ranch. She dreamed some Indians attacked.
She convinced them to hide; the Utes killed or stole nearly all their sheep. But at least they were alive...
My grandmother told me dreams tell the truth. I was skeptical. I dreamed my brother came home from Indian school. He looked terrible--
skeletal, with sooty skin. Soon after, my brother got sick. He looked as he did in the dream. We brought him home. Four days later, he...
DREAM: the storm was strange and fierce. A voice warned me the clouds were somehow dangerous.
DAY: I got caught out in a fierce storm. I dismounted and sheltered under a tree. Lightning struck, and...
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...
Three men chase me. I can't get away so I turn and fight, and put out one guy's eye. That makes them pause!
At last they back away. As they paddle away in a boat, I realize who they are: Muskrat, Otter and Mink...
CAUTION: ANTHROPOLOGISTS!
A crow offers me a ride. I hang on tight and he flies me up into a beech tree where lots of other crows
perch and talk. Then he flies me to another tree and leaves me. I think "How am I gonna get down?"...
I dreamt my wife and I lived on a farm. I was summer and all was ripe. But I found I wasn't
digging vegetable beds, but graves. I woke. By next summer, my wife and child were both...
I walked along a hilly road with ropes and boxes. My wife vanished in a hollow. But
my path went on until the hills were blue in the distance. An old man interpreted...
MY DREAM: I was walking a hilly road, my uncle ahead, my stepdad behind; trying to keep them in sight. My mom appeared and I woke.
MY MOTHER'S: the same. She told me hers before I told her mine. She thought it meant my uncle would die first, then me, then...
CAUTION: APPARENT TELEPATHY, BUT MISINTERPRETED MEANING
When I was little, two boys with strange laughs invited me to play. Their house was crowded and underground.
After I came back out, I realized their home was a grave and they were ghosts. They gave me a power...
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
I was in a strange house. I met Mr Hall, a preacher from Alert Bay. He said he was different now, in the
world above. I woke and told the dream. Two months later a letter came saying he died February 27...
In my dream, I flew upward. It was as though I was going to the place where stars are, for the stars
were showing in the daytime. I saw all around our world. Then I wished in vain to go down again...
In a world where respectable men wear masks, an old, old man rebels in the crudest way he can...
I was a missionary in South Africa, staying overnight in a remote village high in the Drakensberg. A man rode up;
Six nights ago he was told in a dream to find me here in six days. He gave me a single gold coin, and left. Why?...
CAUTION: FAILURE OF IMAGINATION?
Our son woke in the night crying "Poor Mrs Timms; poor Mrs Timms!" We knew no
such woman, but it turned out she lived nearby. That day, her son had died in France...
CAUTION: IMPLIES WE'RE TRAINED OUT OF A 6TH SENSE
A friend scoffed at Biblical talk of the apocalypse, but as we spoke, the evening star came down and burned all our
cities. I knew it was no ordinary dream. Next day came the news: the Russians had burned the city of Sevastopol...
CAUTION: WAR CRIME
I'm on a mesa, looking down in terror. I try to pull back but a compulsion
overrides my will--I crawl helplessly forward until I go over. As I fall...
CAUTION: PRE-FREUDIAN DISMISSAL OF WARNING
I admire a baby, and talk the tired mother into washing it. I go get some
clean baby clothes and return to find she's roasting her baby in the oven...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, DENIAL
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...
DREAM: Hunt's mother points at a tall figure in the shadows and shrieks "Death! Death!"
ONE YEAR LATER: in Jerusalem, his hostess finds her young son dead, and shrieks...
CAUTION: BEWARE THE IDES OF JANUARY?
Mary Queen of Scots' will (1556) was lost for centuries. In 1845, Major Buckley hypnotized
a fellow officer and had him 'read' a family heirloom. He said it was Mary's! Her lost will
was found in 1854 and published in 1863. Turned out the claim in the trance was right...
CAUTION: MARY'S LIFE WAS BRUTAL
Wading a river at night, I fall in. I'm drowning! But my friend Edward pulls
me out. "But Eddie, you're dead!" "No" he says. "You'll grow out of that!"...
I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Gold-hungry Mexican bandits capture me and put my feet to the fire,
demanding "How do you transmute copper into gold?" I scream "I don't know!", waking to find...
CAUTION: TORTURE PLAYED FOR LAUGHS
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...
She tells me there's a stream under the floor, upstairs. Peel back the carpet, pry up the boards. An icy creek.
Trout. She brings me a fishing rod. But the fish say they're too young to die. I feel such guilt and grief...
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?
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?
When I was very small I dreamt a pack of wolves climbed the tree outside my window and
somehow got it open. Freud told me I must have seen my parents having sex doggy style...
CAUTION: REALLY, DR. FREUD?
DAY: I reread Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. His own dreams feel petty, devious, status-obsessed... dull.
DREAM: I find Freud's bought my childhood home! I spelunk the Freudian underworld--a dark complex of tunnels,
sewers and rats. Cross the rivers of muck on stepping stones. Emerge into sun at last, swearing "Never again..."
A certain intensity marks some dreams as predictive, whether they foresee a death or a crisis averted;
but I keep quiet about them, writing them only in a locked diary. Once I spoke up, and was shunned...
CAUTION: DISTURBING ANALOGY WITH SEX-ORIENTATION CLOSET
In the underworld, soldiers chase fundamentalists in underwear, as leopards stare. The
upside-down elephant plugs the exit. We can only escape if we
Night. Rain. A hansom cab. The horse slips on the wet pavement, toppling the cab with my husband inside.
I woke sure it happened. Next morning a postman tried to tell me of the crash, but I told him...
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?
Fires erupt all over the Bay Area, but people I meet (and the news) just say "global warming." No!
It's no warmer than normal and those fires are in lines! Arsonists are driving around, torching...
CAUTION: POLITICAL READING
After the death of her 5-year-old, Adela dreams Alexandrina says "Don't be sad, I'll come back." Eight
months later Adela bears a child identical to the dead girl--and she recalls things Alexandrina saw...
I dream my friend Suvy introduces me to a man who just took a class I'm considering.
Weeks later she introduces me to him--but just as in my dream, he feels a bit insipid...
DAY: R.J. Rowland needed papers for a legal case, but couldn't find where his father had stashed them.
DREAM: his long-dead dad told R.J. that a lawyer he'd never heard of had the papers, 'but the man may need
some reminding', and gave details of Portuguese gold and a drinking bout. Next day, it worked. But how?
CAUTION: GHOST? E.S.P.?
From the dream-sketchbooks of Jane Gifford: odd creatures, flying,
coping with Covid, and cleaning the underworld (as one does)...
Ethiopian records say Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, had a son who stole
the Ark of the Covenant! Solomon dreamt of the theft but didn't check til it was too late...
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 dreamt I stepped on my engagement ring and crushed its pearl. Next I dreamt ink stained it.
Then I dreamt it fell in the sea, and the brine dissolved it. Then the telegram came: my fiancé...
I'm lost in a labyrinth, trying to get to an appointment. What time is it? My watch is gone, and when
I ask a watchman he sneers. But clock faces glare down from every wall, saying 4:10. I wake. It's...
CAUTION: HOW DID I KNOW?
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...
Guan Xiu, a painter in the late Tang Dynasty, dreamt that sixteen arhats
or luohans (Buddhist sort-of-saints) asked him to paint their portraits--
not their earthly forms but their (rather peculiar) astral forms. He did...
Croesus dreamt his heir Atys was slain by an iron blade; he locked them all in the armory. But Atys went
hunting; his guard Adrastus's spear went astray. Did Fate kill Atys, or superstition rattling poor Adrastus?
I'm gigantic, stretching from Ceylon to Tibet. Grass grows from my navel to heaven.
Worms crawl on me. Birds flock to me and change color. I climb a mountain of dung...
CAUTION: PIOUS MISINTERPRETATIONS
After 20 years without a child, Maya dreams devas carry her to a holy lake, wash her...
and then an elephant carrying a lotus flower enters her right side. She knows it means...
CAUTION: DREAM OMITS TINY DETAIL--IMMINENT DEATH
Suddhodana dreams of great upheavals; no courtier can interpret the dream.
An ascetic claims the upheaval will be for the good, then... turns into an owl?!
CAUTION: PERHAPS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE
War between a big conformist land and a small land devoted to quality. Big Land's rulers all die, but at last, sheer
numbers defeat the smaller land. Now their leader, beaten and starved, awaits the sword at the end of the hall...
CAUTION: POLITICAL? ACCORDING TO CARL JUNG!
In bed asleep, the dreamer discovers this seemingly empty room hosts a
fairy ball, full of luminous half-seen beings serenaded by a monstrous band...
DAY: Friends described JW Dunne's experiments with time. I decide to look for dream elements from the future.
DREAM: I meet Oscar Wilde & other writers I dislike. A nonsense word like TELPOE or PELTOE appears...
DAY: A letter arrives full of anagrams (based on my poetry) about Oscar Wilde & other writers I dislike...
Action-painting cityscapes, but seen from far above--in flight. But
she keeps herself out of the picture, so you'd never guess, unless...
I don't mind regular dreams. But when I dream a thousand dreams simultaneously,
I get overwhelmed--drowning in wonders. Is my brain doing this, or is it a message?
The two great political leaders of the Victorian Age bare their souls to me. Gladstone's ashamed that
he betrayed his ideals; Disraeli dances about, vilifying his loathed rival, but he feels no shame at all...
CAUTION: VICTORIAN PROSE, BAD POLITICIANS
Delboeuf, ignorant of botany, dreams of feeding lizards a fern called Asplenium ruta muralis;
years later he finds both lizards and fern in books he read and forgot years before the dream...
NIGHTMARE: a huge horse goes wild, leaps a fence and chases me.
NEXT DAY: a horse does just that--yet every detail's different...
A woman in Stockwith dreamt she'd drown going to market; but her friends talked her back into the trip.
When she fell in the water, they all stood by as she drowned; not one helping her till it was too late...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
I had gone blind in one eye. I dreamt our Savior came to me, and when I woke, I could see...
At 14, B. dreamt a stranger attacked her and hurt her badly. She said "but I'll hurt you worse." She did:
a week later that man attacked and nearly killed her. She survived to identify him--and get him hanged...
CAUTION: HARSH JUSTICE
Bennet's daughter dreamt her husband drowned after wading too deep (he couldn't swim). He promised
he'd avoid deep water, but his best friend played a prank, treading water to make it seem shallow...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
Samuel Savage dreamt he rode through a graveyard and saw a new monument--for himself!
His death-date was marked: two years in the future. He died September 1772, on that day...
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
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...
Bess painted images that look like abstract symbols
but actually flashed in front of him when half asleep...
All the Asteroids were coming together at last to form something bigger. In church,
the dull-eyed preacher hadn't noticed. I led a blind man on toward the new...
Touring Bretagne, I lodged in a nunnery. At 1 AM I saw by moonlight an old woman at my table.
I later learned that old woman died at 1 AM that night; for many years, my room had been hers...
Mrs Claughton moved into a house known as haunted. She dreamt multiple ghosts asked her for help.
She crossed England to pass messages to heirs, containing private details Claughton couldn't have known...
CAUTION: ENOUGH CORROBORATION TO MAKE SKEPTICS UNEASY
1521: I ask a talking ape how long I'll live. "Four years" he says. "No longer?" "No."
26 years later, I'm still hoping to get truth from dream-figures--two dead guys tell me...
CAUTION: JUNGIANS BEHAVING BADLY