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
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
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...
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...
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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"
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.
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...
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
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...
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!"...
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...
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...
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.
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 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...
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
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...
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
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 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...
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...
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...
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 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...