I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
DREAM: a thirtyish blonde says her death is ordered. Her head's cut off. But it won't die--bites his hand!
Dr. Prince feels the dream shouts "premonition!" and writes an account at the Society for Psychical Research.
Next night, a thirtyish blonde nearby commits suicide, leaving a note saying her severed head will live on...
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPIER NEWS
I asked my dreams why I had no more sexual desire for my rage-prone boyfriend. I dream
a nature show says "Rabid dogs can't be cured" and shows the horrible wounds they inflict...
CAUTION: THERAPIST TRIVIALIZES URGENT DREAM-WARNING
I dreamed I built a palace, but for fifteen years I kept silent, ashamed. Then
I tripped over a beautiful stone. I took it home. Next day I collected more...
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
Some 200 Brits have dreams and premonitions of black landslides smothering children.
After heavy rain, half a million tons of coal slag sweeps over two Welsh schools, killing...
I dreamt of a better translation of Nebuchadnezzar's name, since universally accepted...
I dreamt a priest of old Nippur told me two agate pieces, long separated, formed a pair...
I'm at an all-geek banquet! We're all shy; we just can't do
smalltalk. Then the hostess explains why she chose us...
Glaciers feed a mountain lake; dust blows over a pass. Then I realize the ice is the robes
of a great choir; the dust, thousands of musicians filling the cirque, singing, playing...
At a party in Shanghai, I overheard a fellow RAF officer say he dreamt that my flight to Tokyo
would crash. I didn't worry much, since he'd seen seven passengers, and my flight next morning
did not... until three last-minute passengers came on board! The plane iced up, and crashed...
UFOs hover near enough so I can see they're truly lenses--lenses projecting images.
I judged UFOs to be projections from our minds, but now I see I am their projection!
Hiking, I come to a chapel where a yogi is meditating--on me. Creating me! And when he stops...
Thutmoses napped in the shade under the Great Sphinx--then buried to the neck in sand.
The resident sun-god complained of the sand; "the throne is yours if you'll clear it off..."
I'm at my favorite opera, The Magic Flute. When I hear the line 'That is the devil certainly,' I think
of Hitler. The Gestapo have a device that reads my thought, and come for me. Bystanders spit on me...
CAUTION: NATIONAL NIGHTMARE
On a hunt, Guntram took a nap. His courtier saw a snake emerge from his mouth; it tried to cross a creek. The
courtier lay his sword out like a bridge, and the snake crossed, climbed a hill, and went in a hole. It returned
and crawled in Guntram's mouth. He woke and said "I was crossing a river on a great iron bridge..."
My husband's sweet, supportive, but not that attractive. It's my brother (meaning creativity) who
gives me oral sex to die for, as my parents quarrel and a chorus chants "Ecstasy, ecstasy"...
CAUTION: INCEST
As his reign begins, King Solomon worries he's inadequate. He dreams
God offers him one gift, of his choice--but what would help the most?
Marianna escaped her bossy dad, only to end up with a bossy countercultural boyfriend.
In these two dreams she makes the connection, and faces that she's picking Napoleons...
CAUTION: BLOODY BATTLE, BAD SEX
I wanted spiritual guidance. A guide appeared regularly in my dreams for months, but then
vanished. I incubated a dream, and was told "you have a big job you forgot! Come back when..."
Why did I sign on as a crewman on the Cheapship, a freighter
that's falling apart? And yes, I do mean that literally...
SITUATION: I was attracted to my prospective therapist. I asked my dreams what to do...
DREAM: His wife vanishes. We get in bed. I feel such love I ignore how tiny his penis is...
AFTER: In the morning, I decide I'd be wise to work with a different therapist...
CAUTION: SEX
I was in front of the gods on Mt Olympus or in Valhalla. I was scared,
but swore an oath to follow my passions and no longer play it safe...
I was half-drowning, holding our son up in the pool, while my husband tried to take a
photo. I kept gasping "Did you get the picture yet?" but he kept saying "Not yet"...
The far future. The moon falls to Earth. But then... the moon unfalls!
Golden light nurtures a rebirth of our dying ecology & civilization...
A gang of young men breaks in. I lure them outside and lock my door. They break in again, and
this time they're scaly, tentacled monsters. But I ask why they're here, and to my surprise...
Central America. A pale sorceress has stolen the splendor of the Mayan pyramids. Is pagan
power strong enough to defy the church's promises of savation & its fears of a rumored devil?
A few years ago I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, though I knew they were carcinogenic.
I dreamed I had terminal cancer; my denial of the evidence had killed me. I woke, and quit...
I went into her room one morning before she awoke and saw her eyes moving. Suddenly she said,
"Pick me! Pick me!" I woke her and she immediately said, "Oh, Daddy, I was a flower." ...
My golf game has been way off; a 76 is starting to look good. But last Wednesday I dreamed
I changed my grip--just a little. When I woke I tried it. Yesterday I shot a 68; today, 65...
An experiment to see if pie can substitute for REM seems to work at first, but after the third slice
the subject grows less enthused. By slice six, he dreams he's forcing that pie down the experimenter...
The sixties. I'm at a party with Eydie Gormé and Sammy Davis Jr.
I get a laugh with a pun about para-keets/para-chutes/para-shoes...
My glass heart survived the rocket's blast, but I'm stranded on this barren world.
Wrapped in glamor, we climb a steep forbidding stair into a rosy, fake tomorrow...
I'm in Hell. No fire, no guilt. Just endless forests under the moon. My mother paints
endlessly but never gets it right. A sunny day, but I can't go out to play. Cut off...
CAUTION: DEPRESSION
The past. Summer. Sunset. I want to sneak in a final
swim--in someone else's forbidden backyard pool...
In Ireland, in Yeats's stone tower, he leads me up the spiral stair toward a thyme-scented portal...
A voice tells me I have 100 months to live. I vow it'll be enough to finish my work here...
CAUTION: THAT VOICE WAS WRONG
Giant presences; rock, hill and crag are aspects worn. Shape-shifters they are; each in as many forms as eyes behold...
I dreamt I was given verbena sprigs--from my mother, I'm told. But am I me, Persephone, or all the daughters given love by all the mothers?
I tossed the crystal decanter of my self into the river, and watched it float away...
I'm on a British train, sitting across from an attractive, stylish woman
with a massive databolt stuck in her eye--and I have to unscrew it...
I set out in a dream / To go away / Away is hard to go, but no one / Asked me to stay...
Last night I seemed in your embrace; you were about to die.
Today I wake into my place: you immortal, I...
Holding a luminous crystal sword, I enter a crypt where a king lies--ill, not dead.
An old woman wants to punish him, but as he stirs, I sheathe my sword...
I roamed the mansion of the dead, my heart athrob with terror, lest
I see faces, not human, that once shone on me with familiar love...
The Agile Beasts build traps to catch Moth Monsters, but Moths may build traps for Beasts...
I wake & wonder--could the theater group where I feel subtly unwelcome be the trap?
I walked a vast rose garden, but all were Ophelia's yellow blooms of love forsaken; not one was the color of love's true flower...
In my dream I walk through golden glowing woods; I wake to a soggy London November...
A voice calls to me by name--but not the name I now bear, evoking memories of another life...
Colorful birds swirl round me. They may be natives of Paradise--may be, in fact, avian angels...
I'm trying to bathe, but there are Boat People in the tub!
And my inner Grandma's spying on me, behind her fan...
The past. Burma. I'm shown a stupa covered in gold leaf, and given a key
to a tunnel where they say a tooth of Buddha is encased in glass...
After moving in with Gemina, Matt suddenly had erectile dysfunction. He asked
his dreams why. He dreamt he was a kid being bullied by his big sister Cindy...
Eileen rose out of her body. A man dared her "How far away can you go?", then stole her body!
Jony and their daughter Kim had nightmares of invasion too; all three woke up shaken...
A woman rides draped over a giant rabbit
who somersaults through the night sky...
I dreamt I was out of my body. My friend John was too, so I slipped into his to see how it felt. Big lungs,
big muscles! When I woke, John told me he'd had a great out-of-body dream and was reluctant to wake...
My grandma couldn't drive, but after she died, I dreamt she drove my brother Bill and me
around--speeding, in fact. When I told him the dream, he filled in details--he'd dreamt it too!
In a world with a dozen intelligent species, dominated by dinosaurs,
I get in trouble for publishing a kinky tale of forbidden mammal love...
Beverly dreamt her party guests all wore masks. What were they hiding? Next she dreamt they passed around a
breadbasket. In it was her husband's penis! She woke, asked around, and found he'd had affairs with half their guests...
CAUTION: GENITAL SYMBOLISM
Ann had inflamed ovaries and faced surgery. She asked her dreams for a second opinion. She dreamt of voices and images saying
"there's plenty of time for all this." She bathed peacefully in a river, meditated, gave easy birth to an infant, climbed a ladder to
her law degree. She woke cured. Her next doctor said "you must've been misdiagnosed; you just thought you were in pain."
CAUTION: SEXIST GASLIGHTING
My friend Tanya tries hard to save her marriage, but in her dreams Isidora Duncan,
Carl Jung, even the gods themselves warn her to face their deep incompatibility...
DAY: I write, exploring my jealousy toward my wife, though I know she's not cheating on me.
DREAM: Doctors remove my spleen and wake it up! Now my spleen is out to do me in...
Worldwide drought. I have a mutation making me produce lots of saliva, so to keep
people alive, I drool into their open mouths. Gross, but it's take my drool or die...
CAUTION: UGH
I was trapped in a Handmaid's Tale dystopia; I was a mannequin, naked &
helpless. I couldn't even walk. But I hid one rebellious act: I kept a diary...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY, CARTOON DYSTOPIA
I had to negotiate a salary for hosting a radio show. I'd never done such a thing. I asked my dreams.
I was shown a land of ruthless warriors with a bushido code. So I went in tough, stayed tough, and...
Laurel and Frank each dream the gardenia in their bedroom went
neglected & unwatered, but with care is now blooming again...
ALYSE dreams Tim drives a motorcycle-book up a hill, but she doesn't LIKE riding so fast...
TIM dreams a wise woman tested him, but found him unqualified to play teacher to Alyse...
I asked my dreams if I should leave my alcoholic wife. I dreamt we were conjoined flames, green and blue.
I awoke hopeful, and knew I'd stay. For eight months my wife struggled. Now she's been sober five years...
I had to face the Dark Lord. But my inexperienced therapist was unprepared for the battle--he hadn't even put his
shoes on! I told him the dream; he got defensive. I switched to a veteran therapist and got much better feedback...
I was tired and sad and mired in routine. I asked for a dream to restore my soul.
I found myself under a tree as a chorus of gorgeous birds sang classical music...
The lights go out, the world's ending. Roz tries to make party snacks and keep folks calm. At last
she notices lights out the window. Other buildings seem fine. Is it really the Apocalypse? Or...
Should I subscribe to Sundance Community Dream Journal? I dream I find a letter--yellowish paper, cryptic blue
lettering, a red margin. I eat it! Best thing I ever tasted. I wake and order that journal. It arrives--and the cover is...
I face the Quickstep, the final test for high-level ice dancing. I do well, yet the judges fail me--for trivia. Then I realize
I passed this test years ago! These judges are my nitpicking inner critics. I ignore them, and joyfully soar, spin and fly...
A ship-captain insisted some castoff clothes were mine. They fit. As I put on an elegant coat,
I recalled it was made in a past life to disguise me so I could enter a temple excluding women...
On a trip, lonely, I induced dreams about my fiancé Steve, hoping I could visit him
out-of-body. On the one night I succeeded, he abruptly felt my presence while awake...
I knew the universe worked perfectly. Its existence was joyous, and I was part of it. This was imageless insight,
but to aid recall, I summoned images; I depicted the universe by a flowing circle of stars. And I was one...
Trump wackos bomb the World Trade Center. I flee New York. Morticia Addams puts us up. Inside the
dream, I fall asleep. When I wake I ask "was the attack a dream?" Morticia says it was smaller. I try to
write it all down on my bedsheet, but the ink spreads. I wake again, sure I need to wash the sheet...
I'm in a restaurant at a round table. Waiters wrap me in hot towels. I laugh "If I were
chilled, I'd love this--but I'm NOT!" I wake to find I am too hot--too many blankets...
Turns out you can float in deep space without a helmet.
But there's this weird disturbing smell, like an electrical fire...
I dream I go to my NY dentist, but the novocaine sends me into a dream of having dentistry in Tel Aviv!
I 'wake' and my NY dentist explains he can't do me today: sore hands from doing Henry Kissinger...
Why does my passport have color photos of me ice skating? I haven't in years. Your
passport must show your true face. Should I change it, or do they know me better than...
CAUTION: SHAMANIC SYNCHRONICITY
My kid and I have mere nubbins where our fingers should be,
but I realize it's a dream--I can grow fingers or absorb them
Is our brain trying to tell us something that, evidently, we haven't heard the last 70 times? Or is the
dream-manufacturing area feeling a little lazy? I have no idea, but here are some of my "classics"...
I ask how my relationship with Scott was going. That night he asks me to sail on the Titanic. I say
"That ship will sink!" but he won't listen. I see a skeleton-baby and know I have even more to lose...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE, UNFIT DAD, ABORTION
My fiancé and I got along impossibly well. I asked my dreams "Can this last?"
I dreamed we were two redwoods, happy next to one another for centuries...
I DREAM I'm in the mansion of my favorite film producer, Otto Preminger. Then I learn it's my home!
I WAKE realizing I'm the producer of my dreams--not some impersonal, instinctive Unconscious...
I dreamed I was one of several soldiers about to be executed. I told my girlfriend the dream.
She asked "What were you wearing?" and I burst out laughing as I saw the pun: "Fatigues!"
I was at a dream conference and brought up a recurrent theme
that others hadn't mentioned: multiple antlerlike branchings...
Often while lucid dreaming I find myself exploring a pathway with amazing detail.
Sometimes a doorway seems to be asking me to continue on to a higher level...
This dreamer is starting to notice certain subtle signs that all
is not normal and this may be a dream. Well, not that subtle...
I was focusing on emitting healing energy from my hands which resulted in
an "electric" flow of energy through my entire body. Later in the dream...
A spot on my elbow triggers a dream of being in a suicide clinic, getting the injection, starting to die. Yet
for two years, I put off having that spot checked! Only after a second warning dream do I go in to find...
Embodying that upsetting feeling
when you're crawling on the ceiling...
The red string tying that creepy puppet to
the child sitting on the moon has broken...
At the beach, facing down a wave taller than you,
the only thing to do is levitate discreetly...
"D" wants to renovate her house. A powerplant with twin stacks is ugly, but will power
the tools to get the job done. But her new therapist interprets the dream very strangely...
CAUTION: NEO-FREUDIAN PSYCHOBABBLE
Subtitled "In his Sleep he Saw Love, Glory and Wealth Appear to him". Is it a real pre-Freudian dream
on being tempted by three powerful allies of the Id... or just allegory? I have my doubts...
A girl and I climb a half-built tower to get some privacy from my nosy, sneering parents.
But they find us during oral sex, and their scorn melts my girlfriend into a goat...
CAUTION: SEX, HUMILIATION, FAMILY VALUES
I sold my soul to the Devil. On an impulse, I handed him my fiddle. To my
wonder, he played a sonata of exquisite beauty. When I woke I retained only echoes...
When I was 17, an older girl pushed booze at me and came on to me... in front of my parents and teachers!
For months, I had ambivalent sex dreams trying to process what Donna taught me--not all of it negative...
CAUTION: WEIRD SEX; ADULTS BEHAVE BADLY
As a kid, my nightmares were of Sesame Street characters. In my teens I graduated to
slasher nightmares and recurring lucid dreams. Alcohol trashed my dreams for years, but
now they're not nightmares--just surreal. Hitler wrecks my sex life! What a spoilsport...
CAUTION: (MOSTLY FRUSTRATED) SEX
After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream
Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
I look down on scrawny centaurs with cropped manes & tails: butch minimalism. Unsexy! Then I'm
down among them. Now they have big eyes, luxuriant manes and tails: femme excess. I find this sexy...
CAUTION: CENTAUR NUDITY
Climbing out of Childhood Abyss, I literally get a leg up from a girl seeking the Ledge of Teens.
A shy girl has to hide she's a were-creature. Gay men make out in the witch-registry to rattle its
homophobic guardians. My sister stripteases while scolding me for a mess I didn't make...
CAUTION: DUH, SEX TABOOS! KIDS, FURS, GAYS, SIBLINGS
His literary afterlife was just six inches of shelf space. But then friends brought more, trucks more, til I slid down hills of paper...
CAUTION: DEATH'S AFTERMATH
She turned me to a pig. I rooted hungrily, not for food but for moly, the sacred herb that could undo her spell...
CAUTION: TRAPPED IN PORCINITY
Enlightenment came to me via that shimmering, animated Hamm's Beer billboard...
CAUTION: SAY YES TO DRUGS?
I visit Shangri-La, the ancient Tibetan valley of refuge. Unicorns graze. We
drive around on car-sheep. Robin Hood rebels against the Priestess of Gloom.
Pilgrims in silly gauze robes arrive. Or are they just tourists? Oh, well. Toga party!
CAUTION: GAUZE ROBES, NUDE UNICORNS
After fasting for six days, I dreamed of three spirit helpers who aided my village,
guiding hunters toward game and healing others. But I lost so many loved ones...
CAUTION: SPOUSE MURDERED; CAREER BURNOUT
Our Star Trek team explores alien ruins covered in cat scratches. Or are they writing? I uncover
Roman letters, Arabic numerals, I Ching trigrams, Chinese characters, Chumash pictographs.
Reading them turns us into cats! One cat lays eggs, but two more try to smash them...
CAUTION: CAT-EGG VANDALISM
The will named a strange executor: a kangaroo. Turns out there's some logic to it:
executors need burglar-skills, and few quadrupeds can climb in bedroom windows...
Fighting alcoholism, I dream I drink all the booze in a bar, then wake up shaken...
so shaken I reach for the bottles by my bed and drink THEM, then wake up shaken...
and clutch my cat, wondering if I'm still dreaming--will I wake up again?
CAUTION: ALCOHOLIC NIGHTMARE(S)
I'm the new manager of the watermelon mine. And to free the trapped minors--
oops, miners!--I have to plan. So I cover the floor with My Little Pony post-its...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY
I wake in a suburb with Dire Wolves next door. I'm told an herb will appease them.
But the local herbal expert's a regal talking lily--and can I speak plant-language?
I'm in bed with a witch and a piano who's come alive and wants to try sex with us. But I worry a stranger named
Linda will break in. I wake, write the dream--and a stranger breaks into our house seeking her son! Her name's...
CAUTION: BIZARRE THREESOME, BIZARRE PRECOGNITION
I dream I'm reading an amazing comic about a bright red geometric dog named Question,
floating through surreal landscapes. I'm envious--until I wake in relief that it's just a dream!
Inspired by Shaun Tan, I fill a black-paged photo album with 36 improv paintings.
They become a tour of my dreamworld, led by my anima Silky, a literal nightmare...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, WEIRD DREAM IDEAS
Huge balloons labeled "Waymo" in bad Chinese are taking over San Francisco.
But the sexy balloonists seem to be more into masturbation than conquest...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM OR OBJECTIFICATION?
On a scorching world not built for people like us,
I find someone who seems to be a lot like me...
I dreamt I was trying to save dying puppies; then a new dog appeared at our door, one
I was sure we had to find and adopt. We found Sally, and it turns out, when I dreamt
of doomed puppies, she was trapped in a freezing basement, trying to save hers...
CAUTION: PET ABUSE; APPARENT CROSS-SPECIES TELEPATHY
Inspired by Lynda Barry, I fill a black-paged book with 20 improv paintings.
They grow into a tour of my dreamwork led my anima Silky, a nightmare...
My parents host a dinner party, but squeeze us all onto a piano stool. I plink away nervously.
The guests flee. My sister blames me, but I suspect it's my dad's pet crocodiles! Next day...
In endangered woods I meet deer with bold black-and white feather crests.
Higher up, it's barren--a hard winter. But I taste a medicinal blue-black fruit...
WAYAN: My housemate Linda shows me her weird navel--and pussy, to compare...
LINDA: At Christmas, I run through snowy streets, naked except for earphones...
CAUTION: NUDITY & AWFUL DREAM-PUN
DREAM: I'm hiking in a local preserve when a jay with a handgun shoots an owl...
A MONTH LATER: the first owls to resettle my urban county nest in a nearby park...
A MONTH LATER: they're dead. One was shot; its mate died of grief.
I'm in an alt-world Berkeley where mythic creatures shop on College Avenue. Marigold
the unicorn flirts with me. Rainbow Dash the pegasus has turned male. Very very male...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY (AND CRUDITY)
DREAM: my car has a fuel leak. Luckily, I carry around a crystal hot-water knob--
for beauty, not car repair. But I screw it in & stop the leak, fixing my 'drive'...
NEXT EVENING: turn on the TV news, and there's my hot water knob...
Mr Bai dreams his son the mandarin is a tiger leading a pack of wolves--all man-eaters,
at least until two angels knock out his fangs and predict he'll get beheaded soon...
CAUTION: CANNIBALS, REVENGE KILLINGS
Dou dreams he marries Lily; when a monstrous snake attacks her huge family, he reluctantly hosts
them all... when he wakes, they turn out to be bees driven from their hive by a (very real) snake...
A farmer dreamt his new cow grew wings and flew away. Next day, he sold that cow at a heavy loss. Walking
home with the cash, he found a tame falcon, and tied its leg to his moneybag. One guess what the bird did...
Traders were vanishing. Newly installed Viceroy Zhu fasted, focused, and dreamt
the gods sent him a riddling poem. Each line suggested one word--together, they...
CAUTION: BRUTAL ORGANIZED CRIME
As locusts advanced on his farm district, a magistrate dreamt a Mr. Willow had advice.
He took it. Bearing a gift of rice wine, he sought out the Goddess of the Locusts, and...
Dream: a woman wants to drive my old hippie bus. But a tire's missing! She pushes. I don't think it's safe...
Next evening: my housemate wants to drive my old hippie bus. She pushes, but I don't think it's safe...
An autistic genius gets distracted from her cosmological research, and rants
about non-autistics' monkey-mind distractions, distorting their worldview...
CAUTION: HARSH ON NEUROTYPICALS
1940s reporters almost trap me in a mob shootout. I shelter in a gender-segregated hotel.
The owner of Wharton Tower shakes the hotel so it swings between its butch & femme halves.
I fall off the Hudson Palisades, but I land safely on the Glass Ceiling...
I bike round the ring of women on the stage. Oracles! Whoever speaks, levitates.
One advises me, but I can't act on it--too ill. "Gotta heal!" I blurt. My own oracle..
On an alien world I meet a judge from the newly discovered
galaxy of Antlia, and learn distance can lend objectivity...
I try to rescue my girl friends losing a boat-chess game
to a devil, but they'd rather be with bad-boy him than me...
CAUTION: NUDE DEVIL
DREAM: I climb a stair to a surreal space where kids dance in tights spattered with wet red paint.
NEXT DAY: I watch Wednesday--Wednesday Addams dances & gets spattered with wet red paint...
CAUTION: NUDITY, ESP SPECULATION
A girl writes a whole movie to get a shy boy to hold her; I stupidly summon a monster dragonfly-bus;
a devil-suited jerk hogs a musical's stage TWICE; leeches crawl from the treasure-box I opened...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, SEXUAL FEAR/GUILT
DAY: our ex-cat comes back, needing surgery. Dad doesn't want to pay. Big quarrel.
DREAM: Cats, birds, elf-girls; in their asteroid library, a tale of oath-breaking...
Now I'm the one who stole a tooth of jade from the volcano hall. Greed... erupts!
CAUTION: NUDE BIRD-ELF, DEATH BY LAVA
I'm a great blue heron with hands and human speech. A hunter fires arrows at me,
but I'm fast and can catch them. They're costly, so I demand a bargain with him...
CAUTION: ABOUT EMOTIONAL ABUSE
I'm a demon girl out to sabotage a pirate radio station by climbing a tall
wall of glowing wax, carrying a comatose mountain lioness on my back!
Truce at last! We can party again. But witch-hunters burst in and try to arrest me for being a wizard. They
use a box of strong-arm force; I use my wand. But their weapon's rechargeable battery overheats, while I...
CAUTION: CRITIQUES SELF-STYLED RATIONALISTS
My clinic's euthanasia program is so warm and cuddly I barely notice I'm drifting toward death
til I reach the final form... and it's in Russian. They think I'm a refugee! Don't know me at all...
CAUTION: FLAMES ANTI-ABORTION AND HEALTHCARE IDEOLOGIES
4/12: I get a mysterious energy node implanted in my belly. After convalescing I'll have new talents...
4/13: I'm altering my home to host two flannan, bird-girl spirits swift to hunt down the truth...
CAUTION: WITCHCRAFT, NUDE SPIRITS
I'm lost in the underworld again. Happens a lot lately. But I run into my anima Silky,
in yellow boots and a safety vest, blasting clean the walls of the land of the dead...
DREAM: I'm a Soviet Potato Fest. Reds, grannies, food. A girl's told a life-and-death lie about a canine...
NEXT DAY: I read a version of Red Riding Hood, and the dream's weird elements suddenly make sense.
CAUTION: SOVIET CLICHÉS, E.S.P. SPECULATION
My home's a huge maze. Find a clinic and a cafe. Cops appear, & claim I'm a woman named Mem Loi
& confiscate weird masks off our walls. Ugly masks, so who cares? Wait, one looks like a covid virus...
CAUTION: DREAMER'S A DOORMAT
DREAM: in my car, the window crank turns on its own; my invisible girlfriend is crawling
out the window! She's turned so quiet & private. Have I seen the last of her? Well, not seen...
NEXT DAY: I stumble on a one-off manga about an invisible girl; but the artist writes "I
decided not to make her a regular--too quiet & private, & I can't draw her feelings"...
CAUTION: GLASSY NUDITY, E.S.P. SPECULATION
DAY: I bike across San Francisco writing down what I actually see.
DREAM: I'm an abused English heiress with a dangerous alien artifact...
CAUTION: HAUNTED BY CHILD ABUSE
UNICORN EMISSARY: I meet a unicorn diplomat in Japantown. Beautiful, formidable...
THE A.I. WHO RUNS THE WORLD: I meet and then briefly become our world's
leader; before the strain of it wakes me, I learn she rules mostly by not meddling...
I meet a cult worshiping a mermaid who just wallows in a puddle, teaching
her followers absolutely nothing; she just wants admiration for her looks...
CAUTION: CARTOON BREASTS
I cross the Mushroom Desert, meet a blue-tailed squirrel & a horse-size dog, then zombie-vampire suburbanites.
NEXT DAY: an artist sends me a flyer with a new dream painting--a huge dog whose fur-patterns depict a horse...
CAUTION: SYNCHRONICITY
A dog man invites me to play in the park--and as long as
we play on soft turf, without teams or rules, I'm happy!
A TV documentary shows the history of war. Or does it? In what war did great clouds of flame
swallow sailing ships? Every scene they show is a natural disaster. Why are they lying?
Spies kidnap a girl and move her soul into a madwoman's body.
Can she survive? Recover? Thrive? The TV dance show helps...
I kept dreaming of a boy in striped pajamas. I had to save him every night.
Until one night I failed. I just couldn't. I knew who he was--my brother who...
CAUTION: DEATH
I had to deliver a message from the gods. Not that I understood its meaning!
I arrived at your home, and found I liked and envied your big, warm family. ..
Two archangels meet; one red and gold winged, one blue and green. In heaven, form reveals
worldview. Yet these two souls in dispute are great; rather than fight they appreciate...
The house I'm looking at has unexpected rooms, even a pool, but another buyer beats me out.
An old woman says "Don't worry dear, in time you lose everything." A comfort at first, but then...
A man dreamed he was the River Xanthus at Troy. I interpreted it to mean he'd bleed for years, but not die of it...
PATIENT: I dreamt of a dangerous cat and a mixture of cream and booze called 'appealing nausea'...
THERAPIST: I heard a lecture on feeding alcohol to cats til they choose milk laced with booze...
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
DAY: I'm an experimental subject given a drug in hopes it'll induce ESP. I just babble stupidly. Humiliation!
DREAM: my vacuum cleaner comes alive to attack my terrier & me. I flee, but there's an explosion...
TWO DAYS LATER: at the movies, a cartoon: a vacuum cleaner comes alive to attack a terrier. Then, BOOM...
CAUTION: WILL REALLY BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
VAUGHAN'S DREAM: I visit Kurt Vonnegut. Kids all over. He's going on a trip soon. Mentions of 'Jerome' and an island...
VONNEGUT REPLIES: "That night, childrens' author Jerome B visited; we discussed my upcoming trip to England..."
I saw one man stalk another. Unprovoked, he cut his throat. I felt I knew him but couldn't see his face...
That night, my brother-in-law was brutally murdered in just this fashion, outside a wedding party...
CAUTION: GRIM. 19TH-CENTURY GRIM.
I've never done railway work, but here I am signaling a train to approach a station at dawn. A second train hits it head-on...
CAUTION: EIGHT DEATHS
Dream-skeptic Cicero dreamed a youth descended from heaven on a golden chain.
The next day he first met Octavius, and exclaimed "but there is the actual boy I dreamed of!"
The boy became Augustus Caesar, presiding over Rome's golden age...
Tubman woke ecstatic, unable to eat. "My people are free!" Her host said "My grandchildren may see it; but we will be gone."
"No! I tell you, sir, you'll see it, and you'll see it soon. My people are free! My people are free!" Three years later...
I dreamed of flying like a bird over beautiful meadows to a border or river I couldn't cross. But ladies in white
helped pull me over. After I did escape, I met some of those ladies and knew by their faces who I could trust...
I saw a chariot fly south then return with the cold body of my friend. I ran into town to warn them
"Miss Fanny's dead!" As I reached town, the news came, confirming her death...
I saw a snake with a white-bearded man's head, and two younger heads alongside. Men attacked the
snake, cutting off the younger heads. The eldest looked at me, mournful, and they cut off his head too.
Soon after, I met John Brown; I knew it was him. But only on the day of Harper's Ferry did I understand...
Leading a party out of slavery, I got off the road when God warned me to. He insisted I must ford a cold river.
Turned out the slaveowner had posted a reward at the station ahead; we were saved by divine guidance...
I dream I meet a lady in red named Miss Napier. I know no such person. Senseless! Next evening,
after I read onstage, friends enter my dresssing room to introduce me to the lady in red--Miss...
DREAMS: I'm arguing with a worker on our oil rig when a huge piece of steel falls, crushing me instantly.
MONTHS LATER: that very worker gets in an argument with me. I recall my dreams, step back, and...
DREAM: I write a book involving spies and Lord Snow, but give him a cover name: Artie Shaw.
TWO WEEKS LATER: My wife & I go on the Tonight Show; unexpectedly, Artie Shaw shows up!
I tell him the dream. He turns pale, saying "No one knows this--I wrote a book under the name..."
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
I ask my dreams if my dad's influencing my divorce. I dream my dad warns me "You can't ride a
motorcycle." I mount the bike and zoom down the road. I love it. When I park at last, my dad says...
I ask my dreams to evaluate my current relationship. I dream I'm vomiting up big maggots, and a mirror
shows smaller maggots eating one eye! In dream group, I ask the maggots who they are, and they say...
CAUTION: GROSS, BUT POSITIVE UNDER THE HORROR SKIN
DREAM 1: A man wearing long white underwear shoots me down with a machine gun.
DAY: Long John Nebel interviews me; his Freudian friend calls me a penis-envying woman.
DREAM 2: Long John and his buddy umpire a rough baseball game. Definitely not cricket...
CAUTION: SEXISM, FREUDIANS, PUNS
DREAM: I'm in the Arctic facing a hostile mob. I insist "I'm dreaming; you can't hurt me." They try!
I look down at my body, stuck full of hatchets, and say "See?" They slink off, looking sheepish...
TWO DAYS LATER: I'm in northern England. A reporter snaps "Dreams won't help the miners..."
In nightmares I was stalked by a big ugly bruiser. At last, I faced him, asking "What do you want?"
He asked for my hand. His animal energy attracted me, and despite my doubts I said yes...
DREAM: Surgeons cut off both my breasts--without my consent! I feel resigned, but the staff is upset...
DAY: I'm interviewing for a job offering $2,000 less than I make now. Told myself it's OK, but...
CAUTION: MALPRACTICE, MUTILATION
When I try to play the piano in public I get sabotaged. At last I see a child who says she can't play while she's in pain...
A student of Elsie Sechrist reports a dream in which Bob Hope came jumping
down the street on a pogo stick, expressing the dreamer's feeling that...
I dreamed at least weekly I had to view a slide showing something wrong with my fetus.
I assumed the dreams expressed doubts about motherhood--until my miscarriage...
DREAM: I'm in a restaurant offering just one dish: wild boar, for $12. Excessive. I say no.
NEXT DAY: I tackle a book review I must write. The book costs $12. Excessive. Oh! It's a...
At college, my sheet music arrives from home, but vanishes when I try to play--or the piano does...
DREAM: My husband was slipping a gold necklace onto a slim, dark girl I'd never met. I woke and sketched it...
AFTER: He was having an affair with the girl, and gave her the necklace the night of my dream--her birthday...
DREAM: I'm in the White House. Nixon blows his nose on the curtains! I think "despite his crudity, he reached out to China."
DAY: my wife Ann has a cold--she's Nixon! The dream concedes she has private flaws, but she's pioneered dream research...
When I overwork, neglecting my body's wants, I dream of an angry tiger. Over
time, I've learned (mostly) to feed my tiger, and sometimes he's an ally now...
DREAM: a distinctive house with a tempting green field by it. But the field's forbidden...
DAY: Ronald's analyst had rented that house--but the adjacent field was forbidden...
CAUTION: E.S.P. THEORIES
Every night the same nightmare--the creatures take flight again, and I wake shaking...
A hall designed to give your fear-glands a workout, since
muscles aren't the only thing we need to buff...
I'm a hobbit in Silicon Valley, stalking Ring-wraiths down El Camino. But one of them's stalking me...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, HYPNOTIC GASLIGHTING
Idiotically, I bet I can escape an atomic bomb on my bike. Maybe if I ignore stoplights...
CAUTION: IRRESPONSIBLE WEAPONS USE
Two unarmed sisters on bikes easily defeated a dragon, but in a
rematch he killed them, and all other challengers. What changed?
I'm Bill Cosby's wife, finding it hard to cook for him without a stove or fridge...
CAUTION: SLANDER, I HOPED. I HOPED WRONG.
I find the feminist principle "the personal is political" leads to some alarming consequences for privacy...
CAUTION: POLITICS
Dr Who, that lovable BBC alien, grows a sappy flower-face and
allies with Death. An alarming turn-around! What's he up to?
CAUTION: GOOD DOCTOR GOES BAD?
A house with a fire-ghost infestation. Worse than termites!
And the ghosts tell me it's all my fault....
My sister Althea meditates. Her aura gets so quiet that
I mistake her for furniture! I'm that blind to the physical...
CAUTION: ABOUT AURAS
I read Stephen Hawking, and dream I'm in the Quantum Desert, full of bridges, holes & loops--
like the microstructure of spacetime. But it's not counter-intuitive at all--it's HOME!
I'm a fight promoter. But my biggest deal ever is growing out of my control.
Mammoth versus Rex, sure. But now it's a four-way bout--schoolbus, whale...
CAUTION: CRASS ACT
We drive into a zone of perpetual night to see Sweet Melinda, but veins of light burst
across the landscape, and our time-path splits! I'm living two lives at once...
The army breeds super-smart animals. Scientists fear they'll
upset ecosystems, if freed. No one speaks for the creatures...
CAUTION: DIRECT ACTION
A "friend" gives me her TV. No wonder! Turns out it's haunted
by a small-minded devil who cheats on all his deals...
DREAM: a weird footbridge of twisting tree-branches; with steps made of wood-cased stereo equipment!
NEXT EVE: a birthday potluck with a twisting papier-maché trees. Steps lead up to a treehouse full of...
You say you're leaving me. I go to grab an ice pick to stab you, but my hand
freezes to the ice block on the stair--I dare not even dream of murder. Since...
CAUTION: RESPONSE TO SPOUSAL SUICIDE
After too much TV, I dream I'm plotting against a regime of suave, treacherous magical beings. But
a unicorn sorceress suggests I enlist the robots. She's right--they find plutocratic thaumocracy ugly...
CAUTION: ANTI-CAPITALIST
I wander New York City, a homeless ageless child, unnoticed--unless I climb stairs. Then people panic--see a huge cat!
But today I meet a crew lugging big paintings, who seem blind to cat or child. I think they're art thieves, mid-heist...
CAUTION: SHAMANIC INTERPRETATION
I've gotten used to the second penis I grew, though it limits who'll want me.
But this morning I woke with a third. And am I sure the sprouting's done?
CAUTION: HORNY
My uncle Mac has a secret scheme to free us all from the Rat Race, but
his dancing mouse-headed robots (and climate change) get out of hand...
On terraformed Mars, we set out to climb Mt Olympus without
oxygen masks. The first miles are OK, but the air thins until...
CAUTION: ANTICIPATED DEATH?
I'm in a loading dock with the door pulled halfway down, so I have to look between my legs
to see the mythical dancers outside--upside down. Wait, why am I hiding in here? Go join...
CAUTION: MOCKS PLATO; NUDE CENTAUR, TOO
A disintegrating board game reminds me to take time to enjoy things beyond work and activism...
CAUTION: NUDITY, TRANSGENDER, ASTROLOGY
The time-caves under Golden Gate Park lead to supervillains, magical girls, miniphants,
bamboo thugs, adorable dinosaurs, and... pandemics. But is there a way back home?
I'm cold, tired and wet, and I have to take this dog to college. But when I touch him,
he howls in horror. I'm not having a nightmare, I am a nightmare. His nightmare...
DAY: I see Avatar: the Way of Water. Two films in one: Blue Lagoon alternates with Mad Max...
DREAM: As an oracle, I have to go topless so the magic mini-ravens can perch on my nipples...
CAUTION: BRR, OW!, BREASTS, and SNIPING AT JAMES CAMERON
DAY: I admire Hannah Hinchman's watercolors of Montana and Vad Yakovlev's digital art of Equestria.
DREAM: I meet & sketch a coyote girl, a whack-a-mole mare, and a leering herder of shadowsheep...
A raven summons a levitating mirror that shows her face as a human, and
tries out moods & expressions based on Tarot cards plucked from a tree...
I'm in an art class drawing a dream image--a dog-taur or wolf-taur girl.
But I hesitate to draw her flashing me as she did in the dream. Should
I risk offending half my class, or make her modest and innocuous?
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
A Bengal tiger slips into my room. Others panic and want to call the police, but I feel protective...
A book about the psychology of creatures with different sensory arrays
persuades me that all of us creatures build models of one shared world,
for understanding your neighbors vastly ups your odds of survival...
I'm in an alien empire dominated by big lizard-bugs. Humanoids are second-class, but
they're trusted with weapons--I witness a human squad executing a lizard for dissidence...
CAUTION: REPRESSION, OR IMMUNE SYSTEM?
DREAM: Landsmen betray their mermaid lovers in a harbor full of towers that seem tilted and broken from under the sea.
NEXT MORNING: My boss asks me to track down a new translation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.
AFTERNOON: I find a book on IQ tests that include spatial questions full of broken geometric shapes--familiar shapes...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
I'm scheduled to fly the first antigravity ship to the moon--if I can just get to the pad on time...
After an impatient bookseller puts me down, I dream I'm licking a girl who nothing pleases...
DAY: I hear Angela Duckworth (writer of Grit) talk on positive thinking. She thinks we're our own worst enemies.
DREAM: I test my grit an African savanna--and outbluff lions! Unfortunately, that Siberian tiger won't be bluffed...
CAUTION: TROUBLING ASSESSMENT OF... PUTIN? BULLIES IN GENERAL?
DREAM: a weird-looking guy says he's a Private Nose, who can read my
life history by sniffing my lunch. He gets a lot right--but just as much wrong.
NEXT DAY: My sister takes me to lunch & orders tea-leaf salad. Our waiter is...
MIKE'S DREAM: A volcano erupts. The lava pours into my hotel...
WAYAN'S DREAM: Our hill erupts in flame from a gas explosion...
A woman--Gaia?--leads me up Mt Diablo. Nature preserves--grass, oak, pine. But... all silent. The animals are gone...
CAUTION: ECO-RAGE
I meet two women: I lose my usual shyness around playful, sexy Lujenda, but I feel
surprisingly shy around her brilliant cousin Lumina! I may have unfinished business...
Twenty-four panels of improvised comics in unerasable ink,
letting the shapes and themes in each panel suggest the next...
I meet a dancer who plays a stick figure on stage. She smokes
a cigar. I ask her how many a day she smokes, and she answers...
The beauty parlor on the edge of the canyon crawls with rattlesnakes.
I float in the air above, but even up here, knots of levitating snakes...
A graduation parade has a papier-maché cowboy (hollow ego?), a giant
rampaging stallion (unconscious), and a mama cat who calms him (anima)...
On the bridge between waking and dreaming, a jet plane duels a T. Rex. But
the jet strays into dream space, becoming a pterosaur--and soon, Rex lunch...
I go to work at the factory, clock in, strip naked, and build my... self! Myself as art.
A long slow job, but when my workmates ask, I'm admit I'm happy with me at last...
I'm trying to jam together my dream diary and my first comics. My grandmother's
skeptical. But at last, with an audible 'click', dreams and comics suddenly merge...
My "friends" pull me away from the girl of my dreams, push booze & pot at me,
and won't even try to climb the rope to success. But Marvin saves Evel Knievel
from a motorcycle crash. Sounds good--until, ten years later, I hear how Marvin died...
CAUTION: GRIM AFTERMATH
Bums tap on the diner window. I tell them to buzz off, until I really look at
the latest--a shaman dressed as a huge pigeon. He's no panhandler!...
I'm a bike courier. I take a packet of fifty potent dreams
up Dream Street and deliver them to the year 1980...
Three dreams set on Abenaki holy ground, of weird shamans--one ashen, one pumpkin-headed, the
third goofy-faced--lead me to visit the site. Where I find the river's washed up that third shaman's face...
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
The House of Comics has a shabby annex jammed with self-publishers.
We make a human ladder and climb out a high window, but I don't fit;
as the tenement collapses, I must smash the windowframe to free...
Two kids I grew up with are dead. We carry their still-smoking corpses by the home of George Bush...
CAUTION: BURNT BODIES
The comics industry degenerates into civil war. We peddle all night to avoid the Marvel...
We need to get down to the sea, but Disney Corporation blocks the way. Wait--we're
dreamworkers! We ooze through the walls, and cheer the parade marching in on the tide...
Soil turns to air for me; I float in the dark between tree roots
and stones, thinking "If only I could remember my name"...
I grope through fog to the Vague House. Fog inside, too. Find a stone carved with an Eye of
Horus, and know it's my anger. Find a bigger stone scarab, and know it's my REAL anger...
I'm biking around a railroad switch-yard. Slowly realize
they're life-paths. People start following me out...
Two child artists mail themselves to me in their paint kit, and
start a painting orgy that gets messy in more ways than one...
CAUTION: PEDOPHILIA, OR MAYBE PEDOPHOBIA
Both my friends can become birds and soar; but all I can manage
is angel wings--barely enough to hold up solid-boned me...
After a class in nonverbal communication, I meet
Richard Nixon under embarrassing circumstances...
As I hike across the tundra to win a bet with God, I realize I've been subtly betraying my dreams...