Agassiz, faced with a fossil he had to crack open, was unsure where to strike.
But for three nights he dreamed...
Weird paintings cover a hill town in Africa, demanding I paint them when I wake.
Paintings on courage, flight... and defying tradition.
Such pressures there are on the sick to act well! I implore you, ignore them all...
CAUTION: EXPLODING TEACHER
I met a great blue eagle waiting to get into a library--but not to hunt books...
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...
DAY: I'm preparing a report on our industry; but the numbers seem a bit odd.
DREAM: Someone points out a big inventory generated no sales or income.
NEXT DAY: Awake, I hunt for evidence the inventory's real. And find...
An dreams a scary woman pulls his guts out and fills him up with brush! He wakes, gets gutted in a feud, and then...
CAUTION: BLOODY VIKINGS!
I was led into the future, where all the buffalo disappeared, to meet a frail old man by a ranch house...
On the beach, seated at The Piano, director Jane Campion warns
"Avoid Hollywood, they'll snip away at your vision..."
No more token canaries--the all-canary workforce, that's us. Let's see if these products are toxic...
CAUTION: ANTI-CAPITALIST
I melted down all the vinyl records ever made in New Zealand to create one huge compendium.
I woke thinking "Could I do that for New Zealand comics?"
Like a long molecule floating in darkness, this dream creature could loop and link to itself...
CAUTION: EQUINE NUDITY, LANGUAGE
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...
The jug of chocolate sauce smashed on the floor, forming a dark pattern. Then the scene melted and, like a film
loop, restarted. Horrified, I screamed "Don't touch it!" But the pitcher fell, the sauce made its predestined shape...
Mark Clifton wrote science fiction tales of mutant psychic geniuses--only he wrote from life...
I dreamt the royal coach got stuck in an arch on the coronation route. Awake, I checked the heights of coach & arch...
I dreamed all the creatures of the world were dancing around a maypole.
My friends and I sculpted a totem pole from the dream...
The crane toppled and fell onto the riverbank. I saw the number, but not if the operator got free...
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...
Dream: wild animals race across Paris, but in my hotel lobby, a small creature on my shoulder murmurs "Je t'aime."
Awake, I know those racers from the themepark where I work. But the creature takes me way back--to Paris, 1918...
CAUTION: ONE-NIGHT STAND
A English carpenter named Taylor demolishes Netley Abbey despite
dreams warning he'll be crushed by stones falling from a window...
Months ago, I dreamed of that exact wall--I fell and was hurt. So today I told my foreman
I'd rather work on the ground. But by 11, I forgot. I climbed up to nail in some blocks...
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...
My co-worker Daphne is snappish and stressed. She meditates, seeking the cause,
and becomes a half-newt-half-koi in a giant fishbowl. Up shambles a curious AI...
Swedenborg's in bed with a woman, but finds she has teeth in her vagina. He interprets it not as revealing some
fear of women but as advice about pacing his scientific work. And the surrounding dreams hint he may be right...
CAUTION: ALMOST-SEX
When my first play failed, I tried to console myself by reading Paradise Lost.
But drama and devils don't mix...
Our archivist had had a stroke. When an engine failed, my boss said
"Find its records if it takes two weeks!" Five minutes later...
My new editor starts rejecting my poems. My new new editor rewrites them for me. I feel lucky not to be arrested...
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...
After murdering his mother, Nero dreams he's losing control: ships drift, statues chase him, and his own tomb says...
Evolution is like baseball--a game of inches, efficiency, constraints. Surely we can do better....
CAUTION: CONTAINS THOUGHT
Elegant, ancient, the tower rose into the clouds. Inside? Smoke & darkness. Workers roast meat...
I dream my son the writer's living above our old family store, the one that failed in the Depression...
I'm a film actress, but the producer isn't happy with my legs, so make-up takes them away to be redone...
My Cambodian village was burned, my family murdered. At 12,
I was the oldest survivor; I led a band of kids to the border...
My co-worker flashes a lot. Her boyfriend helps--flaps her skirt up to bare her pussy. What's their agenda?
In a dream-sculptor's studio, I pet her lily-headed cat, who purrs. I think "At least her pussy likes me..."
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM, PUNS, PETTING
Freud and I argue dream-theory while we're stuck in an elevator that projects dream-examples on the walls...
For two years, I sat at the desk in our co-op gallery, and
secretly sketched our bewildered, art-assaulted customers...
Celia Green, lucid dream expert, claims nearly all lucid dreamers keep their waking
bodies, their self-image. But Whiteman & Wayan both have genderbent lucid dreams...
I dreamed of a valuable geode on a gravel bar in a nearby river, a place I'd never been. The next day I went...
Perched on a huge sandpile by the train track, I wrote. Then met a narcissistic
hipster chasing happiness and sex. But this globe's austere and full of hurt...
Gisli had two spirit-wives who told him in dreams how to evade the bounty-hunters after him... for 13 years!
My parents pray for my success, and arrange a great learning opportunity for me. Really.
A huge gold cup was stolen from the Temple of Hercules. Sophocles thrice dreamt Hercules named the thief...
I dream it's after a great war; I hear the music I must write, and meet the girl I must marry...
I was held hostage in India by courteous revolutionaries who avoided spelling out that we were soon to die...
People have asked me if I ever dream that I am 'in' Harry's world. The answer was 'no' until a few nights ago...
A con artist fools me and a waiter. But if my dreamfolk are all me, who's fooling whom?
After a day of troubling conflicts over race & art, I dream I'm handed a hot, heavy, mossy head--is it art, or alive?
A musical prodigy has a gorgeous, unplayable keyboard.
But serious creativity takes a dull, regular, ergonomic instrument...
Elves are making humans grow tree-doors back to Faerie. But are they invasion-scouts, or just going home?
CAUTION: GUNFIGHT, MIND CONTROL
Thieves stole 100 of our horses. The tracks suggested white men, but that night
my dream Helpers declared them Sioux. We tracked them across Montana...
I'm a librarian in an English village hit by fads--new philosophies and lifestyles. I learn what works:
My teacher insists, "You'll be scared too, when you see it." But when he shows us humanity's greatest fear...
CAUTION: UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS
I'm my friend Dawn, at a convention for my job. But I get insulted. I walk
out. Lost in endless parking lots, by a dumpster, I make a bizarre wish...
CAUTION: APPARENT TELEPATHY
My party's a slow disaster. Talk, booze, pot, sex--nothing works out.
What will Mom think? At last, trapped in an office, I get the Message...
Sargon, a delivery man, dreams the Goddess drowns the King in a river of blood. He wakes and tells the King...
Xerxes twice dreams a god orders him to attack Greece. So he asks his uncle to dream of the god to confirm...
They sneak off from a party to have a thresome, but monsters try to harvest their organs! Inept monsters...
CAUTION: SEX (OFFSTAGE)
A car crashes & burns--but the driver bailed! No one to save...
A miner stabs a baby "because everyone not underground is evil"...
Radar O'Reilly from MASH, President Calvin Coolidge and I confuse who's who...
I had a headache and couldn't sleep. I started drawing, and asked for a cure. And a cartoon angel said...
CAUTION: TANTRUMS, MASTURBATION, JUNKFOOD, ANGELIC SCOLDING
Kekule dreamed solutions to the thorniest structural chemistry problems of his era not once but twice...
I dreamed a plane took off northeast, and flipped by the main hangar, killing two men. I forgot the dream until...
I dream of German dirges I don't know. I hum them for a friend, who shocks me by asking
"Have you abandoned any children, or burned a manuscript?" Right on both counts...
I find myself in a vault with tables where half-dissected animals writhe. Hidden in each was a human shape...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
I was working in the library, talking to this woman who announced "I think I'll grow my horn now..."
A spiral dream-instrument I'm building, that's easier to play than a piano or guitar, and a lot snakier...
I wake up as someone else. I go through her working day, till Captain Kirk comes to take me to...
Recycling used paint to lighten pavements could lower continental temperatures a fraction of a degree...
She didn't want to be there. She closed her eyes and went elsewhere. So I painted where she went...
CAUTION: NUDITY
I was working for a London architect. His son thought people shunned him for his limp, but...
Lincoln dreamt his body was lying in state in the White House. A guard said he'd been assassinated. Two weeks later...
Lions trap me in an African cave with only coffee, paper and pens! Is this what it takes to get me to write?
Loewi thought nerve impulses were transmitted chemically, not electrically. But he couldn't prove it, until one night...
Getting rid of lice was easy. Harder was quelling the gossip and rumors from my co-workers and boss...
CAUTION: A LOUSE OF A BOSS
Parkinson dreamed his new telephone device got added to an anti-aircraft gun. He told his dream;
guns with M9 units turned out to be so accurate it gave the British hope against the Luftwaffe...
I was officer of the watch in the Southampton. I knew that as we passed an islet a mile ahead, a man would fall overboard...
Four apparently psychic dreamlets of a gun in a desk, a guy needing to hide,
a canyon with woodpiles & a locked gate, and a blonde girl named Cathy...
CAUTION: SMALL DREAMS, LARGE IMPLICATIONS FOR E.S.P.
The comics industry degenerates into civil war. We peddle all night to avoid the Marvel...
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...
Unfortunately, this is not a dream at all...
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...
I hide a chip of secrets from thugs, fight a running light-gun battle, and hide in my workplace's
crawlways, amid live cables and pipes. As the factory burns, I run a gauntlet of goons. A girl
leads me into the underworld. Fires glow and mutants dance. I marry the leader of the pack.
At first no one seems interested in my mural-design for the inside of the City Hall dome, but...
At the library, my boss says we're restructuring, modernizing. My new job is to...
Natalius dreamed that angels whipped him for joining a heretic cult, and woke to find welts on his back...
Nebuchadnezzar dreams a voice from heaven commands a great tree be cut;
Daniel interprets this as a prediction the king will go mad for 7 years...
At a family picnic, my sisters and I fish for scholarships and grants. They put down my art, my website...
A poem linking the dawn of digital art to early, tinny phonographs, cranky film cameras...
CAUTION: IDEAS
While rehearsing our circus act I mentally saw Nina's ladder breaking loose.
Next day, a supporting ring snapped. Being forewarned, I pulled hard...
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...
The Goddess gave birth in my workplace. Her fever-dreams become real around us...
CAUTION: BIRTH SCENE, LIBRARIANS' ORGY
Malaria nearly kills a talented young artist; he must retrain from scratch. Why? Well, he's not exactly himself...
Why don't I push for more art shows? I asked how I feel at shows of my own work, and this came out...
I slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
Towers, before he was killed, argued Terman was wrong: geniuses are often isolated and maladjusted...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
I'm in my papa's waiting room. I beg him to take a break from his patients now that he's dead, and walk with me...
Pete told me to skip the shortcut. Only after I'd turned the truck around did I realize Pete had died weeks ago...
On a cloud in space I met an ape molding a model of Earth, glancing at the original far below. We were much alike...
A literary agent proposes a novelization offer from a writer I've barely heard of. Twelve weeks later...
Trapped in elementary school, Julie is forced to study the alphabet
until she declares "I'm a professional cartoonist, goddammit!"...
Blake was broke. Couldn't pay to typeset Songs of Innocence and Experience.
But in a dream, his brother advised him...
THAT DAY: My bandmates want to record crowd-pleasing songs. I want to record our strangest ones...
THAT NIGHT: In a woman's art studio, I'm struck by a low, feline, muscular unicorn mare, carved
out of a giant ruby. I ask, and she says "Oh, that's not mine. I found it in the trash"...
I recognized the saboteur. If I had neglected that dream warning we all would likely have drowned...
Astronomer Edmund Halley had dreamed of sailing to St Helena in the South Atlantic, but didn't realize until he arrived how accurate his dreams had been...
I wrote my dreams each morning no matter what--even if I it made me late for work.
They assumed I was sloppy, lazy, spacy. No; disciplined about priorities!
I always kept a guitar and tape recorder by my bed. I wake up and see the tape's run to the very end.
I ran it back to the start and there, in a sort of ghostly version, was...
I smelled scorching paint; my heater was about to burn the house. But I'd moved--my old house was six blocks away...
Sharp seams between realities cross Silicon Valley; I end up in the Dark Castle of the Oracle. When I wake...
Reactionaries smash a paper. To rebuild, the editor must sell
the sacred tiki carvings! But gods don't LIKE being sold...
CAUTION: MORAL QUANDARY
His sewing-machine design failed--until dream-cannibals caught him & jabbed him with weird needles...
CAUTION: OUCH!
A strange transforming thing appeared in the sky--a light, a sheep, a man. It told me to stop burning my head...
My dreams are made of lovely carvable jade. Too bad my tools and skills suit our plastic age...
Closing my eyes I saw an old man and a red-haired girl in a shop. My workmate was writing home...
(by a California model, pre-1961, and by a Texas maid, 1945; two predictive dreams compared)
Predictive dreams rarely hint how far they've peered ahead; they just place you in their foreseen future...
One night I meet a giant talking skunk and its pup, who asks how to walk to Thailand...
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?
Stevenson’s dreams changed over decades: from childhood nightmares into
creative collaborators dreaming whole stories...
I dream the actors auditioning for George Bernard Shaw’s play are blends of human, avian, and lion.
Next morning I find a card from Shaw asking if I'd fancy playing a lion in his...
I dream I'm an otter, and wake into a dream about sculpture--and learn my style's due to my species...
I dreamed a short story--even its title. Not that I read it. No, I lived it, through the eyes of a 5-year-old...
Chased by purple squid from Jupiter, I seek refuge with a guru the Goddess recommends for me...
(A comic frustration dream hiding a warning)
Our tennis game's spoiled by rubber rackets, fierce grandmas,
Good and Evil (those identical twins) and a bully on stilts...
A sex-fantasy dream that shifts backstage and gets real
In Charlotte they want to lynch her just for dancing. I protest. As she leaves town, she tells me...
A workmate said "They feed they lion"; two dreams later, the poem emerged as you see it...
CAUTION: POLITICAL RAGE, SURREALISM
I'm a spirit flying over the dead, blessing them. They're in mass graves, sorted & grouped
only by their life-stages--kids, adults, elders. Wait... is this how to structure my book?
I dreamed my husband's ship headed for India, but a 'tin fish'
sank it with just one casualty--him. I rushed down to the dock...
I saw the Titanic go down and people struggling frantically in the water. After my second nightmare I told my wife...
I'm in Houston, gawking at giant starfishy towers looming through the smog. Their shapes are familiar...
I dreamed a tornado loosened our showroom sign; it swung down to smash the window. I told my husband, and...
Silicon Valley goes enthusiastically fascist. I hide in a berry patch. They build a shining world, and then...
I dreamt of the Du Pont lab where I'd work, and my neighbor's future coffin,
and the hospital where my sister-in-law would get a transfusion...
In an oneirophobic society, it's easy to forget that when you do dreamwork, you're doing basic science.
No funding, no team, no lab coat? Can't be science! Unless they mistaught us what science is...
I'm half Anglo, half Kwakiutl. My uncle the shaman died,
but he still wants to teach me his medicine...
My mind and my soul both apply for a job in Stanford Cathedral. Their rivalry grows to a shamanic duel...
Two photographic developing tanks disappear. I assumed theft
until I dreamt they were in a room I'd never seen, in locker FJA 39...
Ballerina Joan Brady quit, but ten years later, returned. Her body rejuvenated! So what can MINE do?
All I know about humans, I learned in psychodrama. I gawked as caterpillars grew wings. Except me...
Blondie Wiggle builds a Video Igloo. But I'm allergic--TV kills me! A BAD omen for our video project...
CAUTION: TV KILLS (BUT YOU KNEW THAT)
The vulture people are fucking in the city dump. I end up their guest, given putrid food
in their cold stinking house of rancid grease. I'll become a vulture too...
CAUTION: UGH!
I'm a lean loose cheetah who works best in short bursts
and long lazy rests. If I start acting human, I overwork...
I help a brilliant, starving composer turn his family curse into a profitable business...
A dreamer I know dreamt she was fired by a Mr Bleeden. Baffled her, but made shocking sense to me! My dad...
At age 90, the first female high-rise steelworker tells me
why she did it--and why she regrets it now...
An art experiment--the only rule is DRAW without preconceptions--
no models, no ideas, no plans, not even dreams. Drawing from the void!
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!
Thordhr dreams a pack of wolves attack him in a trade-booth! He wakes sure the trade-fair will be trouble...
A dream telling how to acquire mystic power: raw food, no sex, meat, or booze; just meditate in rural solitude...
CAUTION: EXTREMISM
I dreamt the world itself hired me, at a generous salary, to report its great affairs exactly as they happen...
I was sure I'd be wounded, but dreaded being crippled. So I tried on injuries! I settled on a flesh wound in my left shoulder...
A writer's found in his office mating with an ash-covered creature! But could she be his muse?
CAUTION: NUDITY OR NOT? SEX OR NOT? NO ONE QUITE KNOWS...
Most writers search for their unique style. Not me--I struggle to convey unique EXPERIENCES...
"I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it..."
Chips are faster than brains these days, so everyone's upgrading--everyone but me...
Hiding in the woods I meet a Cyclops. But I'm not me, I'm the editor of the World Dream Bank...
DAY: a toxic potluck. Not the first! But this time I say no...
DREAM: I'm a scent-oriented alien, tossing stinkbombs back...