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...
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
I dreamed I checked my neighbor's flat for prowlers; I got shot and fell out a window. The same night
my neighbor dreamt she asked me to check her flat, I got shot and fell out a window; the same night
her best friend dreamt she came by and saw from street level the gunmen and my fall out the window...
CAUTION: VIOLENT ATTACK FROM THREE VIEWPOINTS
At thirteen, I dreamed a van crashed right at the spot where my best friend always met me after school.
The next day we went to see what'd happen. I suggested we stand across the road just to be safe...
A man enslaves a unicorn and makes her split time, for his profit! But the timeforks
don't heal as he expected. So the unicorn takes unilateral action (sorry).
Those time-forks look like our current political war. Prepare for sharp kicks...
On the show Finding Your Roots, it turns out my dad's a genetic experiment born in...
1880?! The experiment worked; my sisters and I are slow-maturing, long-lived mutants...
I dreamed of a unicorn rearing in the desert. I wanted to sculpt it and applied to Burning Man
but was rejected. So I sculpted the unicorn anyway, out of playa mud. It was a hit...
I'm a kid imprisoned in an empty stone castle. Squeeze through a stone slit, and prepare to drop ten feet
down the face of a great stone gate. But I go lucid, and my dream and waking body-senses conflict...
My new bedroom has huge windows, but no blinds. I pin up bedsheets for now--flimsy.
A girl walking by peers in. Wait--we're 50' up! She's in my room--and transclucent.
I yell "WHO ARE YOU?" She looks shocked I can see her, says "No one really" and fades...
I had recurring dreams in which a talking horse’s head was nailed to a tree.
Strangely, this was before I read "The Goose Girl" in Grimm's fairytales...
CAUTION: GRIMM ALL AROUND
DAY: At a party, this stranger keeps sniping at me. I see no gain for me in fighting him, and just leave.
DREAM: Aliens attack. They've wiped out other planets, so we fight all-out! Not just for us, for the next species...
I knew I was on my bed, yet I felt myself falling into a tesseract--huge, crystalline, colorful.
Inside I met an energy being who explained I'm not meant to die yet; this was just training...
CAUTION: UNCONVENTIONAL GOD
At the beach, a biology teacher shows me how bottles smashed on the rocks by jerks lead to
slow death for the tidepool creatures. I'm afraid the warning is both personal AND planetary...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC TOWARD RECKLESS G.O.P. CUTS
1: Crystal-skulled wizards, dino & lionfolk parade by. 2: I curl up with three skittish beasts. Patience!
3: My friend Mark tries to rape me. I tie him up, seek a restraining order. Will the cops believe me?
CAUTION: RAPE ATTEMPT
After reading a booklet of dreams about money by Wayan, Althea has four such dreams of her own
challenging family ideas of class, gender, inheritance... and then practical investment advice!...
I saw a man riding across the face of a lake. Bullets and arrows flew at him, but all missed.
He reached the shore. Men who looked like him rose from the ground, and pulled him down...
CAUTION: GENOCIDE DIRECT, GENOCIDE BY PROXY
The Lone Star Planet--worldwide Texas--is weirdly empty. No kids at all! Instead, teens
ping into existence pre-formed. An alternate Earth with no concept of change?
A girl from a low-gravity, dense-air world, where you strap on wings and fly, tours a
world of tropical atolls with me. I love sailing, but flight's spoiled her for it--too slow...
I'm a girl living alone in a forest. I go patrolling after a storm and find a red cable
strangling a tree. Though scared, I climb up and tear it off. But there are more...
CAUTION: POLITICAL INTERPRETATION
Swedenborg stuns the Queen of Sweden by whispering a secret only she and a dead man knew;
A widow begs him to ask her late husband to find a lost receipt. Swedenborg reveals a secret drawer;
Swedenborg, at a dinner party, grows alarmed by a fire that nearly burns his home--500 km away!
Six women in six similar feudal empires swap places repeatedly. They can never meet,
but they can leave notes, each helping out the next soul to swap in...
CAUTION: ADVANCED DREAMWORK
The latest MeToo meme is to leave a door open at night with a heater on, so a hot-air plume marks
a refuge for women in danger--or, of course, burglars! So I stalk our neighborhood locking doors... CAUTION: DECRIES HOT-AIR NAÏVETÉ
My classmates stole my pen. My teacher condones it. I am, after all, a hated minority.
They won't even SELL me one. So I write my final in blood--three huge, crude letters...
Out my window, a dog is fighting a snake. A dog with bat wings. A dog big as a horse.
A griffin! Big as a bus now. A dragon! What spell made me mistake THAT for a dog?...
I find the cure for an alien plague, then visit its homeworld, to find it has a curious variant...
CAUTION: SEX CUSTOMS OF THE NEWT PEOPLE! MY COUSIN'S GAY WEDDING!
I'm a shy wild cat locked in a zoo paddock with elephants and lions
till I remember how to fly! But just levitate, blown about by the wind?
Or can I steer my own course?...
I get back from vacation to find the landlady's installed her daughter Jamie in our shared house...
After a day of medical mess-ups, I dream whites routinely cheat super-fast Native American pony couriers,
till the riders demand showy down payments called Contract Cloaks. Now cheats'll get publicly exposed...
We desert-hobbits break through to a world of jungle giants who
see differently from us. Will they believe us about the UFOs?
An identity earthquake that just wouldn't stop. I transform half a dozen times, and so does everyone else...
I walk home in cold rain; my hooded robe soaked. It has holes for my long pointed ears.
Hit a thriftshop to buy a dry one, and run into two girls I crushed on but ran away from:
Danielle is comforting Cary who's crying. Their ears are pointed too. Wait--who are we?...
CAUTION: GUILT FOR SINS OF OMISSION?
A sexy encounter with two robotic girls hopping a night train outside Portland...
CAUTION: THREESOME
My job's to feed the wolves downtown with the heads of tuna-human hybrids; I mystify the pack
with a blend of skating, ballet and rope tricks. Wait, could this work on scary humans, too?
I realized I was dreaming, and flew. My friends were skeptical and held me down a while, but
soon I had them flying too. At a party in Valhalla, I made love with a mer-angel named Ealswa...
1: I visit Elrond and Bilbo in Elvenhome, but overthinking traps me in a timeloop;
2: Elrond says he renounces seriousness for joy, and plans a great, inclusive party;
3: I feel unworthy, but set out on a desert quest with Elrond's young apprentice;
4: I meet joyful, drunken, singing elves but hide in a tree, too shy to join in;
5: I meet a nervous elven singer and a dolphin trapped in a tiny pool in my bedroom...
I dreamed I was a blond guy tracking down an elf who lived in a trailer park. She'd gone mad; elves trapped
in the human world mostly do. Awake, I sketched her, then saw she's a lot like my younger self! Disturbing...
Two witches, maiden and crone, ride a flying monster made of two magically fused trolls.
But I know somehow that the two are really just aspects of a single powerful sorceress...
I was a child again, sitting on a bench, watching young maidens dance.
But as I grew older, they faded away in the light of adulthood...
I flew over a beautiful park where I taught others how to fly. But there were people who
I didn't want to see me flying. I stood mid-air above them, and they didn't spot me...
Psychics give me an incomprehensible reading. A book from the tree-library gives only Victorian dating advice.
At last a madman gives me a treasure-box holding a tooth that unfolds into slices carved in unreadable symbols...
Hundreds of dusty drawers, clearly not not touched in years. I open one
to find cymbals. Some part of me knows it's a dream and sees the pun...
I used to dream of this violent anthropomorphic being. At times I'd put on his deer-skull head
and become him, inflicting and inciting violence. Naming him gave me some control...
I was at a nice party when a wild horse burst in and insisted on taking me into a wilderness...
CAUTION: CUT-OFF ADVENTURE?
A male real estate agent knocked on the door. The house was full of sleeping crocodiles.
She fled through the house, trying not to rouse the attention of either sort of predator...
I find myself in a church-like setting. Above me, couples in 18th century dress dance joyfully.
It provides a wonderful, ‘curious’ moment to pause and reflect... before my journey must continue.
Superimposed photos and movie stills show my typical lucid dreaming--I look at my hands,
realize I'm dreaming, dance for joy, meet a guide, fly to strange places--best of all, Egypt...
I dreamed of this tree growing out of a cave-mouth. Years later, in Guatemala, I
was shocked to encounter my dream. That tree and that cave were all too surreal...
My Japanese friend Kotaro looks at me sternly and shoves his phone inside my chest. In my dreams, a phone
can mean ESP, so when I wake I check the news. A huge quake and tsunami have devastated Japan...
I'm walking through Harvard Square late at night. Buildings are lit up festively, but
it's pretty deserted. I notice creatures scampering around up on the roofs....
I was in a jungle, seeing birth, growth and death--the entire web of life at once...
I free a friend unjustly imprisoned. On the run, we encounter our Life Paintings. Mine is a beautiful pegasus flying. But on its back is a monkey in a red suit...
I meet a man in a box. A mob wants to attack him. But five white horses defend him! Well, one's really a unicorn. I know each horse is a talent, but only recall one when I wake: clairvoyance...
A man leads me to a cliff looking down on a canyon. Men dive into the river below, but
often hit the canyon walls. The two of us soar upwards though, across the canyon...
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...
My daughter got a tattoo that spread and became blue feathers growing from her arms. Wings start to bud...
Zebra emerge from the lake. They glide as if swimming, and the air has an odd shimmer; did they bring the depths
along? They seem to be having great fun ducking branches and vaulting brambles. Such agility and grace!
In a busy, shorthanded market, the store owner's running a checkstand.
He mistakes me for an employee and starts ordering me around...
CAUTION: AGE & GENDER... BIAS? OR INFORMED JUDGMENT?
I meet a big cat who seems invisible to most humans. She talks in Armenian speech balloons.
Too bad she already has a boyfriend! But her mere existence proves there's hope for me...
Day: an exhibitionist teen uses sex to sell charity cupcakes, while her mom glares...
Dream: I date the exhibitionist, but her dad imposes weird trials, as I sing for courage...
Wayan dreams of petting an adorable cat-dog. The same night...
Cory dreams of meeting an adorable dog-cat. Later that day...
At the beach, Cory meets a woman with a dog named... Oh. You guessed.
My family has a hidden gene for incest--and griffins.
When I bring the family skeleton from the closet...
CAUTION: RAPE, INCEST
DREAM: my late mom invades my workplace. "Check in weekly or we'll stop your allowance!"
What allowance? I'm independent! MONTHS LATER: I got sick from overwork. Nearly died.
NOW: I think my dead mom meant: face your limits, check in with mortality, or you'll... check out.
I'm biking in a construction zone behind a car with a rounded top like a VW Beetle
but with a flared skirt like a bell. It stops. I brake but go right up that fringe over the roof...
My friend Lily misuses the word 'Mareotic'; I know, because I once saw it in a Yeats poem, thought
the footnote explaining it was fishy, checked it myself, and found the editors hadn't even bothered to...
This symposium, airing a dispute between geologists & astronomers who just don't read each others' papers, had multiple revelations--big hazards, bigger holes in our knowledge, and bigger opportunities...
CAUTION: CHART! WITH NUMBERS!!
In an Oakland literary salon (no, not an oxymoron) I'm supposed to
write an ode. But it's so hot, and I have surreal dreams to sketch...
Just a dream vacation! I take a train trip up the East Coast,
meeting, sketching and flirting with the locals, though they're...
As she told me her dream of receiving jewelry--a golden scarab--
I heard a tapping on the window behind me. I opened it. In flew...
He dreamed of a street with a cathedral, and round the corner, two cream horses pulling a fancy carriage.
In Spain on vacation, he saw the street and the church. To test the dream, he turned the corner to see if... CAUTION: CALLS E.S.P. & SYNCHRONICITY TWO PROBLEMS NOT ONE?
Jung walked against stiff wind and fog, sheltering a tiny light, generating a huge eerie shadow--his other self!
He concluded this was his life-task--to nurture his spark of awareness & rationality in the dark. But...
In hindsight his dream models four key Jungian ideas: Self, Ego, Shadow and Unconscious--at age 18!
CAUTION: REJECTS JUNG'S OWN DREAM INTERPRETATION!
A mom in the Black Forest photographed her young son and took the film to a lab in Strassburg. War broke out; she never got back.
Two years later in Frankfurt, she photographed her young daughter. The film came back with both her kids--superimposed.
The film with her son's latent, invisible image had wandered across wartorn Germany to be sold mistakenly as fresh--to her.
CAUTION: DISTURBING SYNCHRONICITY
As a child in Orléans, M. Deschamps got his first taste of plum-cake from a M. Fortgibu.
As a man in Paris, Deschamps saw plum cake again--but not to eat. M. Fortgibu had beaten him to it.
Many years later, Deschamps was given plum-cake. He said "All that's missing is M. Fortgibu!"...
CAUTION: TRULY POINTLESS AND THAT'S THE POINT
My home seemed antiquated but pleasant. I found a stair down to a darker, medieval floor.
A dark stair led down to a Roman cellar. A trapdoor led down to a cave with ancient skulls...
Jung's visions of dragons evolve from fiery destroyers
to thieves who can be forced to give up treasure
to peacful, luminous guardians of the sacred...
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...
In dark, grimy, rainy Liverpool, a friend shows me a park with an islet
in a pond, where a great magnolia tree shines--an oasis of light...
Jung, in crisis, drew a complex mandala, and then wrote about its
symbols & archetypes, always claiming a patient had drawn it...
A green monster guards the divine egg; with the right prayer, it
explodes in a fountain of mad color, half grenade, half freed jinni...
Jung's ally in killing the murderous German archetype Siegfried was Atmavictu.
Here he's worn out, turning to stone, ready to manifest as a different guide...
An version of the Egyptian Ship of the Sun with a mutant Osiris at the helm,
in a monster-infested sea: image of the spark of consciousness in a sea of...
The cosmic egg nests in the branches of the tree of life, glowing with
Muspel-fire. But the tree must periodically burn to regenerate life...
At a party, Nietzsche told a young woman "my hand was transparent as glass;
and a fat toad sat on my hand. I felt compelled to swallow it, and did..."
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPY FOLLOW-UP
I had a chronic illness doctors said was psychosomatic. So I saw Ani, a therapist...
I dream we're prisoners. Ani leads a successful escape, but then walks around
oblivious that her hands are still tied! I offer to untie her; she seems not to hear me.
Great in a crisis, but oblivious to chronic stuff? To me? Not the best fit...
My mom's driving me to work. A nearby car has young people in it--I'd rather be with them.
My mom seems to be dawdling; I'll be late meeting my colleague! I'm furious...
Touring an underground maze, I meet a woman I like. But her brother bristles.
Then, from a height, I see the ventilation pits of the labyrinth laid out like a map.
The Japanese invade! Hide in the jungle. Women in rags butcher centipedes & mice...
CAUTION: UNHAPPY MEALS; OVER-JUNGIANISM
I had a chronic illness doctors said was psychosomatic. So I called Alan, a therapist...
I dream I'm in his office. It's a nook in a basement. No windows, no door, no privacy.
I was so desperate I went to him for six months, while he ignored everything I said...
Lynn's changed. She everything I'm not--playful, colorful, free with her money.
She finds the coolest stuff. Why can't I find all that Lynn has?...
2019/7/20 Upload
Dinosaurs and tigers fill my music club. Not that it takes many to fill it. So spiky!
A dino bard croons. A tigress leaps onstage & snuggles up! Music hath charms...
A reporter interviews the guardian angel of my dead sister Jill in front of a
green screen. He's dissolving in grief--luminous holes show through...
We sneak out of the movie to explore Upstairs. My friends hide from the staff
in storage nooks for rolls of fake-fur. They turn into kitsune, catgirls & deergirls...
A shapeshifting girl lets me try her spell--I become a
wolf-raven-parrot-human blend. Weird, but I love flying...
Clowns have a point system like chess masters, & abuse their apprentices to get ahead,
just like capitalism--but I think this dream's about the suppression of magic...
CAUTION: CHILD-CLOWN ABUSE
I show an Ohio friend the latest California sport. But
we haven't quite worked out how to land just yet...
I'm trying to get a moontan when my mom appears.
My astral body starts orbiting her like a moon. Uh-oh...
In my home town there were tales of coal-eaters. I dreamed of a miner who
transformed the mine-owner into a canary--at a price. He became coal himself...
CAUTION: GRIM MINE, HARSH SACRIFICE
A Gypsy man invites me to dance. But he cuts my arm, deep; then even his touch multiplies
my wounds. Last is a needle through my wrist. But I'm committed to the full dance now...
CAUTION: BLOOD; CURIOUSLY, NOT PAIN
Chased by the old movie Wolfman, I get tired of fear and turn on the monster. I take on his wolfness!
But in me, wolf-nature manifests differently--as a human body with a calm, happy wolf's head...
I was on a London train. An ad had an image from "Jack and the Beanstalk" and I pondered
the tale--the meaning of the golden eggs. A man got on, held out a golden egg, and opened it...
At the beach, a deaf boy with a strong aura asks "Are you here for the coin?"
He buries horse skeletons in the sand; the bones are carved with symbols...
The beach. Smoke? No, spray from hundreds of dolphins hunting. I thought
a giant wave was coming in, but it was just a trick of the light through fog...
A huge explosion knocked the earth off its orbit; it struck other planets and wrecked the whole
solar system. Where will the souls ready to reincarnate all go? Or do they even need a planet?...
Predawn. The beach. A gypsy goddess rises from the waves. She says
"Begin to ride the gods of the Hand, in London." I say "What?"...
CAUTION: CRYPTIC BUT FIRM
I'm in a theater waiting for a woman onstage to fart human speech;
but I have to skate away on a tipped-over traffic cone...
The home we were to stay in was on fire. The next had a living room
that was shallow water, wall to wall, where turquoise fish swam...
In the woods I catch a beautiful rooster. It doesn't struggle; it turns into a dog.
We make friends. We sleep together in the wood; I dream we grow old together.
The dog's owner wakes me; farewell, dog! But at least the funeral has caviar...
I'm in a restaurant when my dad walks in. He looks great; he has
both legs again. We talk, say "I missed you", we hug lovingly...
My nonexistent brother is a bank robber about to be arrested; he says
"I never saw Jung die." Meaning not that Jung's alive, but just...
I'm in the army, in line for a prostitute. An earlier dream cut my cock in two. It heals, but my stodgy technique
bores my assigned girl; and the cops break the legs of girls who try to leave. A riot begins--can I even escape?
CAUTION: STARTS SORDID, ENDS BRUTAL
Worms rappeled down from my ceiling. My friend says "I've had great talks with those creatures."
They became flying flowers exuding a gas that, if you napped, let you have wonderful conversations...
A hummingbird was trapped inside my home. So beautiful. I set it free.
The next Saturday, I found this hummingbird on the patio...
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
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...
I'm a Confederate officer. The only way to save my men is to end the war by
pulling the plug at the bottom of the lake! I dive in, fighting a Yankee, who...
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...
I'm in World War II, asking a reporter to keep quiet about our secret weapon.
But it's already gone off, melting and distorting the whole cartoon world. It's...
The wildcat Rare Bit Fiends slinks out of the hills to stalk and maul
dreamers--until one day she rears up to teach a dream workshop...
In the paper factory where my dad worked all his life, I find him on
his deathbed. Even as he fades, he's still trying to please his bosses...
I take my friend Neil Gaiman to a park where we sculpt a giant horned head. Months later
we collaborate on a graphic novel. The course of the project's full of echoes from the dream...
I tell the angel teaching me to fly that I'm not ready to go solo yet--
I'm wobbly, the terrain's unknown. He lets go, and I...
Nazis call my simple architectural drawing a social protest, take it at gunpoint,
and toss it in the ovens. The commander mocks me with its ashes...
Tony works as a courier in Sarajevo till he inadvertently delivers a bomb. Held by
a warlord for months, he dreams within the dream, and draws those dreams...
CAUTION: GRIM
I'm gloomy about the state of the world, but my alter ego cheerfully explains we're dead and in
Hell--as a demon train rolls up with Elvis Costello on the roof singing "This is Hell I suppose"...
I panic as statues come alive at the museum, but they're all about energizing a mystical pyramid...
Comics character Doctor Blasphemy, on stilts, bares his secret identity:
poet Allen Ginsberg! But who chopped off his missing fingers?
CAUTION: BLOODY FINGERS
Repeated attempts to move a gigantic, sacred, saucerlike stone all failed; but now,
with the world's biggest cranes, we get it on a truck. It crawls past adoring crowds...
Rajiv keeps trying to convince me it's the best hotel in India: the orgy of biters, the
bowls of twitching fingers. But it's only the oracular spirits that really impress me...
CAUTION: CREEPY FINGERS
The posse lost their enemy; reluctantly they asked a tracking detective--me.
They found him where I knew he'd be--from eating my Rolodex cards...
My bedroom window is choked with dirt. I dig up to the surface
and find a man reading comics. He says 'It is the only way!'...
My little son accidentally tears the tail off our goldfish. The wound
looks vaginal. The fish, moaning in pain, turns into my daughter...
A stopped-up mystical toilet gets cleared by an unexpectedly colorful tool;
but then, you never anticipate what'll unplug your, um, "head"...
Boating, we land on a cape and find a house with a Rembrandt on the wall--Bathsheba
holding a letter from David her lover, pregnant with thoughts as well as child...
CAUTION: NUDE SKETCH
Night. A massive crash on the highway. Bodies strewn. Sickened, I descend a spiral stair to the Pool
of Truth. It gives no answers. Women spout platitudes. I go on, in pain, down past the polar bears...
CAUTION: THE DEAD
Intimidated by stylish friends, I split in three--myself, and a small child
nursing at the breast of an earth-mother priestess--or Earth herself...
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...
I catch a magical fish and let it go. A friend and I consider higher learning--and we don't mean academia.
My friend lays a lotus in a chair on the beach. A man baptises in sunset water, shining like a certain fish...
I realize the artichoke plate in my lap is a pun: ART! I CHOKE! I need to peel
off my thorny outer leaves of professionalism to find the heart inside...
I meet a Mormon art-educator I know. We're so different! Then I get a call
from India. My friend tells of an erotic Hindu bas-relief of women and snakes...
On my 45th birthday, at the end of my eight-year dream-art project, I dream of a women's rite
turning scraps of chewed flesh into a whole fish I offer to the fishbowl in the heart of the Vatican...
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...
As they lower me into my grave, mourners don't throw dirt but--cottage cheese? I toss it
back, starting a huge foodfight. I climb out to join the fun. Only the poor pastor looks lost...
I must outrun the rising moon so I don't turn into a wolf and
kill my friends, but only a werewolf is swift enough to...
I'm watching MTV. Laurie Anderson gets inside my remote control. I try to change channels
and she turns my head into an apple. I grope for a potato peeler, and carve a new mouth...
I'm on stage. I have to sing. They just stare. I try dancing. Stony silence. At last,
a second me leads me offstage, saying "You can only fail so many times"...
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...
It was Christmas and we needed to buy gifts. But the shopping dragged on
and when at last we went to the register, the sales clerk laughed...
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 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...
I run away. A car nearly hits me and I fall into the lake. But
a kindly catfish drags me to an underwater phone booth...
A mind-control drug urges her to strangle her loved ones, but
to beat the curse she busies her fluttering hands with bluegrass banjo...
As a mob of Hollywood stars beats me up, I ask for autographs--and get them.
I sell the autographs to fund a statue of the beating--but with me smiling...
I'm in a car with Walt Disney. A blonde comes in out of the rain.
He promises to make her a star, and puts his hands...
CAUTION: NOT GRAPHIC, JUST UGH
I'm a giant cartoon bird. I had to assassinate a friend--twelve times!
Eleven times I killed him, but I spared him the twelfth. He said...
The cake horse resented my taking one slice out of him; but he let me.
No second slice, though! He just laughed at me--through his bad teeth...
I'm chased by spaghetti, snared, sprinkled with parmesan.
My hungry classmates loom, and my best friend says...
Reporters interview my pet rabbit without my permission. Have I neglected her? She says
"Things have been pretty good." I'm relieved, but ask why she never spoke before...
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...
During Tiananmen, I was in Beijing for a conference. I heard chaotic noise outside, and the muffled sounds of gunfire.
I dreamed a star painted the sky an eerie purple-green. Children sang, marching over snow, rifles fitted with bayonets...
I dreamed a sentence over and over: "In my country I shall plant birds."
And I saw a man with many birds flying around him...
My home was burning; I despaired. All my negatives would be lost. But
some figures arose from their photos and walked out of the fire...
After fighting off an electrified Orson Welles, I meet the twelve
vulture-pine-politicians climbing Mt Sinai, looking for librium...
I show a friend my book of dream-art, but it's half-baked and embarrassing.
I'm no good at smuggling guns, porn or cash through customs, either...
CAUTION: LOW-RES SMUT IN THAT BOOK
At a beach, a man attacks the genitals, buttocks and thighs of a giant who sits half in the surf, ignoring him...
CAUTION: NUDITY, MUTILATION ATTEMPTS
I get to see the wish-granting thrift-store painting, but I forget my wish, and two nerdy
brothers own the painting. I hate my consolation prize, a beta Elmer Fudd doll, and throw...
Dancers in 18th Century gowns emerged from a curtain with paintings of ballerinas in the same gowns...
In between drawing devil-bunnies, I advocate letting doomed fringe candidates donate their votes
to more viable colleagues, letting voters express their real choices, not vote for the lesser evil...
CAUTION: POLITICS!
In a repressive, thought-controlled future I find some old banned books;
I tell my student "Reading these makes life more interesting--and angry..."
I dreamed God was naked, selling cigarettes in a nightclub...
CAUTION: MONOTHEISTIC FALL
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...
One night I meet a giant talking skunk and its pup, who asks how to walk to Thailand...
Sharon Stone kisses David Letterman, and his head starts distorting
as she rants about the film industry's baby-actor monopoly...
1: A flooded bathroom becomes 2: a glass water-piano; 3: my friend strips in a restaurant, so
4: they serve me gutted dog. 5: Dolls teach prostitution, as 6: a rhino rubs up to an elephant-bear...
I'm a hockey player. A woman strips to a bikini, wondering if she's attractive. My erection says she is...
CAUTION: BRRR!
I don't want to kill my friend, though his clothes say I must. But
a sculptor lets us sit on her metal trees and drink tea instead...
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
A coy, giggling giant orange bounces onto a man's bed, trying to seduce him, and...
In a dark classroom, my shrink was demonstrating atom-splitting
with a glowing ping pong ball. I was glad I wasn't in that class...
I become a werewolf and climb into a strange attic. I find a grave marker for
an old friend--but her death date is two years in the future...
This woman shows me a book of my art. I'm not sure I want to see them--some pieces are from my future...
Two nude women (drawn Wally Wood style) dance ritually in a
forest, summoning a worm-snake-dragon with a ring of fangs...
CAUTION: NUDITY
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
In a flooded room, an indignant iguana scolds me, while
my wife Marnie checks her computer implant for water damage...
I was going to music camp, but I didn't know how to play my cello.
A teenager and her mother slept like vampires in her giant cello case...
Bearded professors call through an iron-barred window shaped like
a woman's torso, hoping to lure a nude model to fill it so they can grope...
CAUTION: CREEPY
I was late for something, so I opened my pocket watch and swallowed a bunch of numbers...
THROATS: Men put babies into giant throats inset in a funhouse wall;
SLOT MACHINE: I see a slot machine generating random art-speak phrases...
A woman is giving birth and there is no doctor or midwife around.
Though reluctant, I have at least assisted at births, so...
General De Gaulle gives me a ride in his armchair with the plexiglass
roof. Alarming--since he drives backward at full speed...
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)
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My uncle mocks the racehorse he rides! Smears lipstick on this stallion, calls him a wimp... Why?
CAUTION: DREAM PUN, NUDE MARES
The tale of a fawn named Fawn and her mom, a bank-robbing hippopotamus...
CAUTION: GLAMORIZES THIS ALARMING TREND
Miniaturized, smuggled over a border inside a she-wolf's mouth, I long
for where I got briefly hidden--her labia. But healing first, sex later!
CAUTION: FURRY SMUT; WEIRD SCIENCE (BUT REAL!)
I meet Envy, that pushy, ambitious rock singer from the Scott Pilgrim books.
She's kind of sabotaging herself--but then don't I go too far the other way?
I'm a wizard's horse, trying to warn him about a toxic spell on a roadside corpse...
Wake into a second dream, but try to return to being a dream-mare and warn my rider...
And then wake to realize my Nightmare was warning about a home-renovation project!
My friend Dawn drags me to a cultish workshop. But I fall asleep! Or is
that bad? The Financial Guru awards me $1250 for spiritual napping...
CAUTION: RIDICULOUS UNTIL...
I see two Ohlone women around 1900, starving, naked, despised, their land stolen--and still way happier than...
CAUTION: NUDITY
I'm a girl in a Catholic school. But a magazine and my too-small bed combine to change my life...
CAUTION: MASTURBATION, QUEER-POSITIVE, CHRISTIAN-NEGATIVE
A wild flying dream lands me among feral children fighting to live in a glass conservatory of lost flowers...
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In ancient Britain, as Christianity moves in, I'm a slave--sailing through centuries, but never free...
I meet a forgotten goddess--outlived all her cults. Today she passes as a psychic, reads a crystalball...
CAUTION: NUDE CHALK SKETCH
A writer invents an absurd setting for his Utopia, a lens of ice floating atop
Saturn's atmosphere--but then such sessile lenses turn out to be real.
The dream's details suggest buying a certain stock. I do, and...
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.
Nabokov's uncle left him a fortune but the Revolution took it. He dreamed his uncle said "I shall return to you as
Harry & Kuvyrkin." 40 years later filmmakers Harris & Kubrick paid Nabokov a fortune for the rights to Lolita...
Hurry to the station to catch the train--or is it a sky tram? a ship? a hill? an island?
Climb its flank, but fissures open--it breaks up. I'm adrift. Next day, on TV...
The supreme mystery which we learn after death is that the cosmos with all its galaxies is a blue drop...
CAUTION: HIPPIE DIPPIE
Khodasevich (1939): I dreamt a call announced my friend was dead. Really he was still alive--but not for long...
Sergey (1945): My brother died in January but the news took months to reach us. Just before it did, I dreamed...
Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed...
In a museum, I absent-mindedly eat crumbly bricks I think are pastry; they really are rare soil-samples...
Three days later, I see a TV show I thought was on children. Wrong; it's on soil samples--that turn into eatables...
DAY: I find old photos showing my dad ogled my sister, the Lee girls, and teens he met at the beach.
DREAM: Juana Lee wants to fire a rocket launcher--indoors. The house'll burn! But she won't relent...
CAUTION: INCESTUOUS & PEDOPHILIC DAD-VIBES
Two teens crack a bank with a homemade rocket--but forgot a crowbar! Caught, but
the bank can't press charges; the kids have proof the bank uses slave labor...
CAUTION: DISSES CAPITALISM
Joyce, in Paris, dreamed he was attacked by three madmen, Minos, Eaque and Rhadamanthe. Three weeks later,
a madman mailed explosive packages around Paris--signed Minos, Eaque and Rhadamanthe, the Judges of Hell...
As we cross a scary ledge, my tough survival-guide, always no-nonsense before,
finally willing to consider... intellectualism, dating, ethics... fun?
I was having dinner with friends when I saw on the wall a huge skullbone
spider. But I lost the word for spider, and my friends seemed not to see it...
I 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?
(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
I befriend author Andre Norton--an ageless high-school kid writing enthused fan fiction, forever...
I find my Niche--the stone nook that decides if I'm a journeyman mage! Here comes my prophecy...
In Kathmandu, I'm given a flying carpet--but it skims along
only a few feet up, and ambles slower than I can walk...
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...
Famine. Our Tibetan monastery's prayers are answered. A caravan of yaks comes over the pass, bearing...
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 chosen to demonstrate crazy sex positions with a Tibetan lama on stage in front of a crowd...
CAUTION: GOOFY SEX
In a Tibetan monastery on an ancient lakebed, I swim through a vast sunken library.
Books open like sea anemones, letters float to the surface like kelp...
I challenge my teacher's claim human historical patterns are universal.
She challenges me by dragging us both back to the Ice Age and...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
I escape a dark cell, cram with friends into a car and co-drive to LA, steering along with a woman in my lap...
CAUTION: EITHER SEX SYMBOLISM, OR SOMETHING MORE SUBVERSIVE
In Europe, I enter a cave-shrine. Rock walls with... breasts! I suck one. It gives milk. A plaque says...
CAUTION: WEIRD
I find a long, narrow table. I have a table, but a fairy friend
perches on this one and urges "Take it home! You'll do better art!"