Far from home, about to wed a man I barely knew, I dreamed I was a lion in an open cage I dared not leave...
After asking "Am I ready to say yes to someone new?" I dreamed I met my old love...
I'm walking up a churchyard path. My hair clings to me, damp. Horses wander. I'm drawn to one graveside...
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...
On my side of the fence, Austrian winter--gray skies, snow. On the other, warm sun, and a frighteningly beautiful
German woman. She invites me over the border, to join her--and the terrified people being dragged off in carts to...
CAUTION: HOLOCAUST HINTS
A lab. The cat doesn't mind a swim in this liquid harmlessly rendering it clear as glass. It catches
a transparent mouse I didn't even see! So now I faintly see a glass mouse inside the glass cat...
I meet King Louis-Philippe, but as I recall his symbol, the cockerel, he transforms to suit.
Now he cannot read the letter presented to him, so it becomes a basket of bird-seed...
A charming street, a peculiar shop... imaginary, or not? Saint-Denys found it
at last, years later, in Frankfurt where he hadn't been since childhood...
Why do I treat dream-figures as real people, even in otherwise lucid dreams?
And if dreams universally suspended disbelief, how did I know, in one
recent dream, that the woman I argued with was another part of me?
I rise out of my body, find I'm invulnerable, visit the moon, with its volcanic rocks, re-enter
my body, "wake" and write the dream--only to wake again and find all my notes gone!...
I trained myself to associate one scent with the mountains, one with an art studio. On a random
night my servant applied both secretly, and I dreamt artist & model burst into a mountain scene...
A comet grows hair, a girl named Rosalie becomes a bed of roses, writing in a beautiful
hand appears on a beautiful hand, and Sylvia becomes a talking forest bird...
A TAILOR'S APPRENTICE: I become her to fight back against his abuse...
DAMSEL ON THE PYRE: I become a girl being burned alive, but get
so distracted by my beautiful body I forget to escape until it's too...
Night street. Two masked assassins attack a woman. I intervene. But I need a weapon!
I picture the Turkish sword on my mantel. The yataghan appears in my hand and I...
I suddenly knew I had to get off the bus and wait for the next. We passed the first bus, on fire...
I was at Thanksgiving dinner when I felt my mother dying two thousand miles away...
I find myself outdoors with my legs spread for a weird creature. I protest, but I love it. Later, after I wake...
CAUTION: SEX
Bob is at the window asking to be let into my house. He is dressed as Santa Claus; but I think he's really...
CAUTION: MURDER ATTEMPT
After the death of her 5-year-old, Adela dreams Alexandrina says "Don't be sad, I'll come back." Eight
months later Adela bears a child identical to the dead girl--and she recalls things Alexandrina saw...
"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
Were the rowdy face-boats really ghosts haunting this old house, harbingers of my future online... or both?
The crystalline figure on the cover of the book in my dream seemed to hold as many answers as its title...
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...
by SAO (Shawn Allen O'Neal); March 2001, a painting of a dream-scene.
In the golden light of a primal Eden, my friends and I flock naked
through emerald glades like wild deer, until the tower approaches...
The Crocodile King & the Geisha Queen, the couple who guard
the bridge over the River Styx, seem to quarrel a lot...
High up a scaffold, I was beating the chaff off a huge seed, unable to stop. I was beating my own heart...
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...
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
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...
Sarashina dreams (again) she needs to leave court life and a spiritual path. Her skeptical mom sends a
priest to the temple to dream for her! But he too dreams the Goddess shows two life-choices--happy or sad...
Three years before her husband died and she was left alone, Sarashina dreamt
Amida Buddha stood in her garden and told her "Later I shall return to fetch you"...
Sarashina adopts a stray cat with oddly refined manners. Her sister dreams the cat tells of her
last life, as the daughter of a high official. The cat does seem to understand human speech...
Sargon, a delivery man, dreams the Goddess drowns the King in a river of blood. He wakes and tells the King...
Samuel Savage dreamt he rode through a graveyard and saw a new monument--for himself!
His death-date was marked: two years in the future. He died September 1772, on that day...
Four guys plot to enslave my girl and kill me; I have lucid powers, and kill them instead.
My girlfriend Attahuah gets poisoned, but...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, DECEIT
Attacked on the ground, in the air, even in space, I fight back effectively.
Not lucid, yet in my dreams I now have real power...
I'm on a trip to who knows where, with my young-again mom, my dead dad, and--who's that guy?
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'm with an Englishman in a taxi who seems rather calm about the fresh blood welling from his crotch...
I find a famous European Veterinarian, but his waiting room's too crowded, so I just leave a bouquet of dolls...
...and wake to find blood on my own thighs. Why does menstruation always come to me as a surprise?
I dreamed I was pulling a scroll out of my vagina and reading it like a tickertape. I was
reluctant to perform the dream--I knew I'd get into trouble!--but I felt compelled...
CAUTION: NUDITY
The Labyrinth of the Madonna's Tears provoked a dream of the Goddess telling me
"My forgotten sanctuaries are all around you now. You have only to see with your own eyes...
First I try to break the sound barrier like my girlfriend. Nope!
Then I fly slowly to her apartment. Nothing flashy, but I make it.
Last, I zoom back to ancient China, where I find a candle-lit shrine dedicated to... me?
Erica dreams that during a protest she's caught in a radioactive flood...
Michael dreams a nuclear forcefield makes his fingertips explode and congeal into weird knobs...
Joanne dreams she meets nuclear mutants with curling black nails great for peeling potatoes...
Scott dreams the world goes silent and white, bleaching out. His hands dissolve...
I'm in bed sleepily petting my cat, when I see my cat across the room! What's on my legs? It's big.
My cat chases it off... through the wall? My room is sealed. Where did it come from, where did it go?...
An Army nightmare suddenly changes--my enemy kisses me, & we start doing every kind of sex...
CAUTION: GAYS IN THE ARMY? DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL!
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 finally admit who I am, and the truth is bitter...
CAUTION: GENDER DYSPHORIA, MENTION OF COPROPHAGY, POSSIBLE SITCOM SPOILER
I found myself in a whole pride of cat-people like me, each one representing some side of me...
I see myself shoot myself. Director-me decides this isn't dramatic enough to wow audience-me, so
actor-me tries again, firing half a dozen times! Maybe suicidal imagery is how I realize no-self...
CAUTION: SEVEN BULLETS IN THE HEAD
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...
Dancers in 18th Century gowns emerged from a curtain with paintings of ballerinas in the same gowns...
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...
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...
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..."
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 dreamed God was naked, selling cigarettes in a nightclub...
CAUTION: MONOTHEISTIC FALL
I'm a hockey player. A woman strips to a bikini, wondering if she's attractive. My erection says she is...
CAUTION: BRRR!
In a flooded room, an indignant iguana scolds me, while
my wife Marnie checks her computer implant for water damage...
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
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...
Sharon Stone kisses David Letterman, and his head starts distorting
as she rants about the film industry's baby-actor monopoly...
After fighting off an electrified Orson Welles, I meet the twelve
vulture-pine-politicians climbing Mt Sinai, looking for librium...
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...
This woman shows me a book of my art. I'm not sure I want to see them--some pieces are from my future...
A coy, giggling giant orange bounces onto a man's bed, trying to seduce him, and...
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
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...
One night I meet a giant talking skunk and its pup, who asks how to walk to Thailand...
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...
Two nude women (drawn Wally Wood style) dance ritually in a
forest, summoning a worm-snake-dragon with a ring of fangs...
CAUTION: NUDITY
I was late for something, so I opened my pocket watch and swallowed a bunch of numbers...
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
THROATS: Men put babies into giant throats inset in a funhouse wall;
SLOT MACHINE: I see a slot machine generating random art-speak phrases...
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.
A woman dreams of her boyfriend recently killed in a car crash. Unremarkable so far. But he
also haunts his ex-babysitter, two thousand miles away, who had no idea he'd died...
I hung the dream-net over my bed. It worked. A blue-winged man with a leg of silver came to me,
drummed, danced, offered to teach me secrets. Awake, I found a blue feather caught in that net...
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing
he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out...
While walking in the country, a vista suddenly terrifies Shelley: he recognizes it from a dream years before...
A black anchor floats in the sky to the east. Impossible cities rise on mountaintops, only to erupt in flame.
The sea rises to drown them. On a plank, I ride the flood. In the ruins, I find angelic statues--who wake...
Even after the Resurrection, a mother and daughter still have issues to clean up...
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...
As a kid, when I had a fever I always had the same nightmare: a high brick or stone wall
shaking apart, faster and faster. This scared me very much. Finally, in my teens, I...
I'm gigantic, stretching from Ceylon to Tibet. Grass grows from my navel to heaven.
Worms crawl on me. Birds flock to me and change color. I climb a mountain of dung...
CAUTION: PIOUS MISINTERPRETATIONS
Patches the kitten, my alter ego, paws at flying fish who are also toast-slices...
I'm nine years old again. But my mom acts like a child--crawls into a hole. I follow, scared,
and find my grandfather packing to leave the Old Country before the Nazis kill us all...
CAUTION: FEAR & PERSECUTION
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
My hometown floods. I swim after some strange fish and find
a scientific community where a scaled baby tells me who I am...
I'm a revolutionary hiding in the woods. I wake to find an erect penis crudely stitched onto my crotch...
I'm an orphaned bat in an alley in a storm. I mistake a broken old umbrella's ribs & flaps
for... my Mom! I unfold Mom, and discover...
CAUTION: LIFE-THREATENING CHILD NEGLECT
I flew joyfully over Sun Valley. But when I landed, I wore a uniform. As I slept in our barracks,
I dreamed--within my dream--of finding two friends in the lake, tangled in a net, long dead. I
"woke" and told a friend my dream. She said in tears "I know someone has to die, but why me?
In Europe, I enter a cave-shrine. Rock walls with... breasts! I suck one. It gives milk. A plaque says...
CAUTION: WEIRD
Ko said "Now we have come to where we die." I thought it looked just like the land we'd been traveling,
and couldn't see why we should have to die. Ko grabbed me and pulled me over the cliff...
CAUTION: DYING IN DREAM
The night before he met his greatest student, Plato, Socrates dreamed he nursed a baby swan who grew...
As I recalled what I'd dreamed the night before, a snake, I looked down and saw my foot was poised to come down on...
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?
Ethiopian records say Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, had a son who stole
the Ark of the Covenant! Solomon dreamt of the theft but didn't check til it was too late...
A huge gold cup was stolen from the Temple of Hercules. Sophocles thrice dreamt Hercules named the thief...
Cilda Spitzer and Hillary Clinton sentence America's bimbos to a shitty fate. But what of their cheating husbands?
I'm the only one who can stop the plot to kill the Pope--but if he keeps shrinking like that, will it matter?
CAUTION: RECOVERING CATHOLIC
Saints and devils in a sunken statuary garden turn too real for comfort; so, creating my own wings, I fly...
I meet the original Adam. He complains Eve neglects him, but he hopes to meet one of his cleverer descendants...
I was in the grave. Worse, a living skeleton was trying to crush my ribs. Though terrified, I fought back, and...
My German friend resolved to commit suicide, so I agreed to poison myself to keep him company...
Hiding in the woods I meet a Cyclops. But I'm not me, I'm the editor of the World Dream Bank...
a writer's dream comically summing up her own fantasy series.
My characters are all dancing together. Roach is flanked by friends--but they turn into elves.
As dragons, elves, tengu & robot mice join in, Roach slowly freaks...
A woman unreachable, in dream, drowning in the bed, fish-gasping, scissoring, while her man oblivious...
She tells me there's a stream under the floor, upstairs. Peel back the carpet, pry up the boards. An icy creek.
Trout. She brings me a fishing rod. But the fish say they're too young to die. I feel such guilt and grief...
I'm chosen to demonstrate crazy sex positions with a Tibetan lama on stage in front of a crowd...
CAUTION: GOOFY SEX
Famine in the monastery. We add weather charts, leather laces
and walking sticks to the menu. Even the ghosts are hungry...
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...
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...
My little daughter and I hardly notice when a truck kills us. Unseen, I calmly observe the alarm of the living...
I dreamed of speckled eggs, Caribbean drug traffickers and of
almost drowning near a sinking boat...
Tracking two cats at night, I watch amazed as they dive in and swim gracefully across a swimming pool...
I felt like my heart was in my stomach. My friend Lyx opened me up & said "It is." She scolded me for eating it...
CAUTION: URP
For three weeks he wakened screaming in fright; he said he "fell in a hole." Then, one snowy day...
Night. A London suburb. A UFO big as a city block looms over us. It's seen all over South England. Yet we go blank--
forget! Though not quite--for years after, Steve has recurring dreams. When he tells me one, I recall the same event...
CAUTION: INTENSE UFO EXPERIENCE
George sees a cart-crash pinning a friend. He yells to bystanders to free the wheel, but they can't hear him...
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
Stevenson's dreams changed over decades: from childhood nightmares into
creative collaborators dreaming whole stories...
After a class where students are forced to vivisect anesthetized dogs
I dreamed I'd made a mistake; I was sawing open my daughter...
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPY DISMISSAL
A woman in Stockwith dreamt she'd drown going to market; but her friends talked her back into the trip.
When she fell in the water, they all stood by as she drowned; not one helping her till it was too late...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
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
I'm back in the suburbs, but decades have passed. My mom's really old & blind.
Yet I insist she should drive the car, not me. She pulls out in front of a huge truck...
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
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...
Should I try to keep Janine out of jail? But outside, she'd gotten back on drugs. That night I dreamed
a huge beautiful snake bit my writing hand, and said "Don't go to court. Stay home and write"...
CAUTION: JUNKIE, RESCUER
Soon after I was given the name Spotted Fawn, I dreamed I was one,
fleeing faceless hunters under the full moon. There's history in this...
Suddhodana dreams of great upheavals; no courtier can interpret the dream.
An ascetic claims the upheaval will be for the good, then... turns into an owl?!
CAUTION: PERHAPS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE
A gigantic herd of buffalo stampede toward me. I panic, then surrender in peace to what is surely my death...
At a snake-weaving party I flirt with my anima, who tells me how the
cake fell off the roof. I think "At last we're really connecting!"...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; two dreams (2016/11/19, 2017/1/18) on dreamwork, memory & amnesia
1: Ruins in India. Fascinating but age-blurred; wish I could see the carvings better...
2: Giving presents at a party, I hand a girl a vertebra from the abyss, encrusted with jewel-like barnacles...
There's a large bear wandering the museum, and somehow I feel good about it...
A man obsessed with blood and death disturbs me, but I have to admit I share his interests...
Next the blood comes home; a surgeon wants to flay my tongue...
Next, witch-children rebel against a bloody flossing ritual and fly away on broomsticks...
A sequence of short dreams full of creatures. They warn I'll face leukemia...
I keep dreaming of awkward but successful transitions into new life, and paint them all in one landscape...
Dreams warning of mania and paralyzing shame alternate with calm dreams of life and growth...
a 2015 painting weaving seven dreams (2014/5/4, 6/9, 7/1 & 9/4; 2015/5/23, 6/26 & 8/25)
A portrait of Clotho, the Greek Fate who spins our life-threads, by a pool woven of my dreams from this time...
I climb down a cliff before night strands me; but in town, risky adolescent games cause a crash...
Trapped on an island, spied on and controlled, we decide to jump off
a cliff and die; but as we jump, a spirit sneaks us off be reborn...
Bodies are laid out upstairs in a dirt bed. Potatoes will sprout.
The plants won't feed on the bodies, but they will support the vines...
I no longer have the text of this dream, but its image anticipated and prepared me for my actual marriage...
My father is supposed to speak, but he falls asleep onstage. I rush up to try and rouse him, but...
The boy and I walk a spiral trail down the mountain to the caves of tears...
A nun-like figure shows me three arcs; two are forms of direct power,
but the third, innermost arc can lead to secrecy and manipulation...
After our trip to Turkey, I dreamed I was dancing in
a heavy black robe like those the Turkish women wore...
I sneak into a dance rehearsal. Huge colorful cloth goddesses dance,
while four fat women wearing only scarves weave round them...
CAUTION: NUDITY
On the anniversary of 9/11, I dreamed a friend was welding nude. In his careful hands, the fire was harmless...
I'm talking to a friend while waiting in line, when a huge fish appears. It turns into an equally huge snake...
A pod of whales in the sky and a circle of children dressed like seed-pods both beg me to interpret them...
I dream my foot has a huge bloody crevasse. But I study it calmly...
In the midsummer dream, I'm at a wedding in the Russian forest;
in winter, I dream I hold an emaciated girl as she breathes her last...
A hulking, intimidating young man is at my door, with two scary dogs. Wait, is that Carl Jung?...
I'm a priestess standing on a stone terrace, holding a ritual axe. Before me kneels a sacrifice to the Goddess...
I meet a girl with a plant growing out of her head...
Someone prays to the spirit of a spring to heal me...
I watch people practice exercises with the ritual feel of voudun or candomble...
At a party, I go hunting for my husband and find him on a terrace facing a Bengal tiger...
In a domed tower, we all look up bewildered by a statue like an ancient herm, floating in mid-air...
A huge white ovoid like a tethered cloud hangs over a city street. We enter it and search for the crew...
I know we will cross the water surrounding the heart of Jerusalem, but not yet...
As we climb down the steep mountainside, clutching bushes to keep from falling,
I ask Laura "Do you want another child?"
I visit a friend's ramshackle cottage--trees grow through the walls. But glorious meadows! Spring at last...
A waterfall leaps from a mountain so huge, steep and distant its base is lost in the haze...
A colorful magic web I saw in a dream and painted; but I've been unable to trace the dream so far in my journals...
I stood in the desert preparing for a contest with a man and his snake. But he cheated! Then my cat Lulu intervened...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares...
Our dream-group's dreams had a lot of imagery in common: circles, groups, meditation. I fused them into this piece...
I met a woman whose art (and her love for the Earth) inspired me to start a series of paintings with creatures hidden in landscapes...
A dragon-woman showed me a cache of art. When I painted her face I recalled seeing it in a dream decades ago in a mirror...
CAUTION: DRAGON BREASTS
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
I climb a huge mushroom-shaped rock rising from a hotspring and prepare to dive in...
At first no one seems interested in my mural-design for the inside of the City Hall dome, but...
We stood meekly in line to be beheaded. I tried to accept my fate and commended myself to God... CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
I swim with my daughter Naomi in a desert pool amid lemon trees. She may be able to help me...
Two friends send energy through me, transforming me. Now that
my legs are detachable, I can sit comfortably on my eggs...
I am given a gift of "Nibbling Fruits" which only I may eat--because I've been feeding everyone but me...
At the beach, wading with my fellow dreamworker Stephanie.
The waves are getting bigger--are they a hazard, or can we ride them?
While visiting a friend in New Orleans in my dream, I saw a pangolin. I was very excited...
At a party I meet a friend I thought was dead. She's become a small talking rabbit made of cake, and I...
CAUTION: UGH
A pigeon with a head like Queen Victoria's keeps fastening onto
my clothing with its beak, and this nagging feels familiar...
I'm shown corn plants growing from skulls, and it seems like I must plant some skull-corn myself...
A huge spiral nautilus needs healing; its coils are coming undone, and if it dies, all on earth may die with it...
by Jenny Badger Sultan, 1999/5/15, 6/12 & 7/14, a painting based on 3 dreams
I'm in the Hypogeum, an ancient Maltese dream-temple. I join some women
staging a ritual; a little girl draped in a web plays the role of an insect...
Mt Everest is snowfree and red; in the next dream I redden a sandstone cave with ochre. I feel uneasy...
In a Scythian church, a painting says:
"Little St Bridget was bound so hard that when they released her she flew"...
I am given a dehydrated package of dried snake to insert in my vagina. Inside it will unfold and come to life...
CAUTION: KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
In a desert, I find a tree with red purselike pods. But they all seem empty,
and I know they should each contain a vivid yellow snake...
A woman up a tree has white flaky stuff camouflaging her.
It cracks and peels like snakeskin. What tree is this, exactly?
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2002/1/19, a dream-painting of a dream about dream-painting!
I'm teaching an art class full of strange masklike beings. We debate art
as spontaneous process, versus art as planned product...
First a lone image on waking, of a woman cradling a skeleton; ten days later,
a nightmare of spiders swarming out of my toilet, covering me...
I'm at the beach, collecting stones to make a gigantic face viewable only from the air...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 1997, a collage on a dream-idea
A phrase from a dream, "the remains of men and women," led to this image
of a black sun in the underworld amid strata of time and the psyche...
It's Thanksgiving but my brother won't come in; he's digging up red earth. In our family he always digs up...
I'm shown a mysterious two-faced carving;
I shush loud people disturbing my therapy;
I'm told of a documentary on the archetypal mother...
I see two gorillas in the field. One waves at me and approaches. I feel excited but a little scared...
Make silhouettes of your beloved vegetables; then listen to the spaces between...
CAUTION: LEWD SQUASH
A dream voice announced "The verdure is accomplished." Green is a healing color for me...
In the next dream we sat round a green pool, talking of healing. But the snails troubled me...
My friend Verity's given a beautiful set of wings. I'm envious until I consider what angel wings imply...
A friend explained she planned to be a human viewfinder, bendng into
an arch for a male spirit to dive through. I didn't want to risk it...
I dream my mother takes over caring for my sick daughter; I feel pushed aside.
When I wake, I try to paint a more positive image of mothering.
For a week, dream after dream has opportunities for patience and letting go of jealousy...
In a camp, women wove mats. I was tempted to try. But it was
months before I learned what they'd really been weaving..
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2000/3/23 & 2000/4/19, twin dreams of carved women
A woman is knifed by the sea. I cradle her, but she's probably dying...
For my intitiation-ordeal, I have to cut designs in my own back! I can't reach, so...
I'm in a ring of seven white-haired women, our arms all interlocking.
When I woke I had fun working out the pattern of those interlinked arms...
DAY: we're preparing for a trip to Malta to see ancient sites.
DREAM: Hiking, I discover a gigantic white snake. It feels like a good omen...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
A friend who's fought lymphoma invites me to sleep in a cave, but I fear a rattlesnake will bite me...
After teaching a class on color, I had a series of vivid dreams
about color, and tried fusing them into one painting...
At the beach, a barrel of huge snails somehow heal my legs.
In the next dream, back on the beach, I give birth to our son...
Elegant, ancient, the tower rose into the clouds. Inside? Smoke & darkness. Workers roast meat...
Elves are making humans grow tree-doors back to Faerie. But are they invasion-scouts, or just going home?
CAUTION: GUNFIGHT, MIND CONTROL
They sneak off from a party to have a thresome, but monsters try to harvest their organs! Inept monsters...
CAUTION: SEX (OFFSTAGE)
Leather boys flap down from the sky, feeding from giant mustard pots. We fight them with honey & boomerangs.
My love and I steal the only onion in the world! To make our getaway we sail off the edge of the earth...
Swedenborg fights a worldly acquaintance, then his dog, who turns into a serpent...
CAUTION: FIGHTING, SCORNS MATERIALISM
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
Swedenborg fights a flying woman over a lake, then is in bed with another. After some
language and privacy problems, all goes so well he thinks they've made a child...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, SEX
Swedenborg meets an executioner who cooks the heads he chops off,
and eats them. Yet in context, the nightmare may be constructive...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
Swedenborg tenderly says goodbye to a lover. A few nights later he realizes his dream lovers
repeatedly represent scholarly fields! An avid scientist, he find research as sexy as, well, sex...
Swedenborg struggles to grasp the King's broken French. He wakes to realize he's trying to learn
a greater King's difficult language. Still relevant today, for he saw the problem's twofold: the
difficult language of images, but also issues the waking mind missed--or wants to deny!
Swedenborg jokes with his cousin's new girlfriend as she grows bigger and
stronger and bigger and... Oh. He needs to study the muscles!
Swedenborg's in bed with a woman, but she has teeth down there. Oh, now and she's not a woman, but
his political buddy Johan! Well, maybe it means not to get involved with women, or men, or... politics?
CAUTION: JUST WEIRD
Swedenborg dreamt of danger on his London trip, twice. Both situations then came true, but he was prepared...
CAUTION: ANNOYING TO E.S.P. SKEPTICS
Swedenborg shakes uncontrollably all night, releasing or discharging some strange energy.
He frames it in religious terms, but it's a phenomenon even secular writers have reported...
CAUTION: WEIRD
Swedenborg cuddles a talking dog who asks after its old master, Swab, and then kisses
Swedenborg, grossing him out. But he wakes knowing just what his doggy pest represents...
Philosopher Immanuel Kant's detailed and deeply ambivalent report on Swedenborg's
three very public displays of extrasensory perception, and their implications...
CAUTION: WILL UPSET E.S.P. SKEPTICS
A boar attacks Swedenborg's late brother, alive again. He tries to help, but the pig
eats his brother's head. That's what you get for drinking, partying, and gluttony...
CAUTION: VIOLENT DEATH
Swedenborg gets in a duel, but his beautiful silver hilt has no sword attached. Uh-oh...
Then he's in bed and realizes he's been sexually boasting...
CAUTION: PHALLIC SYMBOLISM
Swedenborg flies on horseback through a house seeking someone. One room's clean, lit, full of people, but
most are empty and dirty. Longing to meet God is not enough! He's only cleaned up one aspect of his life...
Swedenborg fights a monster but lacks strength. Yet later, on a higher plane, he learns the beast did die...
CAUTION: VIOLENT
My face was leprous white like parchment; my eyes shone with
a cold blue eerie light. I shrieked "Papa, don't you know me?"...
Yes, dreamwork can be heavy, but remember all you can do in dreams...
A cart came by, drawn by a white horse, on its way to the hospital. In that cart was my husband....
CAUTION: ANGUISH, DEFEAT, PREDESTINATION
I dreamed that in four days a plague would hit our reservation and people would start dying.
Four days later it happened just as I was warned---the 1918 flu. And my dream caused it...
CAUTION: NOT JUST SURVIVOR'S GUILT, SEER'S GUILT
I saw my mother standing on the tip of one wing of our plane. She was
dressed in white flowing robes and calling my name, warning me of danger...
A man in a blue coat on a white horse delivered papers from a nearby wrecked ship, signed Stephenson and...
A crane came and spoke to me, reassuring me "I'll be back" even as a great fire burned it. It returned
as a white butterfly. Next morning, as we played hide and go seek, I shut my eyes and counted to...
CAUTION: CIVILIANS MASSACRED
The moon invites me to go flying, but I get tired of magic and just want to go shopping...
A monster's out to eat my dog--and maybe me. We get cornered in the barn...
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...
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...
A English carpenter named Taylor demolishes Netley Abbey despite
dreams warning he'll be crushed by stones falling from a window...
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
Each time, I'm a young Elizabethan man in a grand, new-built country house. In the main room,
I find a man in black by the fire. He comes at me, and as he shoots me point-blank, I wake...
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
As it was revealed that the pianist in Truro Cathedral was T.S. Eliot's illegitimate daughter, her
wretched playing suddenly became beautiful. I knew the dream meant "cleave to the illegitimate"...
EMRICH: I'm in a conference center in "Pondecherry", even though it feels nothing like India...
THOMAS: A woman picks fruit off a tree by a pond and calls them "pondicherries--with an 'i'"...
CAUTION: WILL ANNOY E.S.P. DENIERS
Thordhr dreams a pack of wolves attack him in a trade-booth! He wakes sure the trade-fair will be trouble...
I dreamt again of that mountain east of Concord where no hill exists. I ascended that long
rocky ridge where wild beasts haunted, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity...
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)
Four childhood dreams predicting Gudrun's life; plus a predictive dream by her husband Thorkell Eyjolfson
Gudrun dreams of four treasures: a hood, a bracelet, a ring, a jeweled helm. Her cousin sees them as four marriages...
Two snakes fight as centipedes emerge from under rocks. I tell my friend. Next day her co-worker tells her the same...
Before his daughter's even born, Thorstein dreams two eagles in love with a swan kill one another in rivalry over her...
CAUTION: PATRIARCHAL BARBARIANS
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..."
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...
"What about their dreams? What if they've all been partly dreaming us, and
lacking them, our world becomes as trivial and narrow as our dreams?"...
Alli/Tip could only imagine loving the strange, intense, and unavailable--and Bronte was all three..
Alli/Tip is lured/tricked into a pen full of women, and tries to get out by repeating this ambiguous plea...
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...
Qu'lad, dying of flu in the pandemic, dreamt a wolf told him cold-water baths would save him. He staggered to the river. He lived. He told others.
They lived. The shaman Togumalis dreamt his spirit helper, a squirrel, prescribed the same. A century later, hospital records show why it worked...
CAUTION: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SHOWN AS SUPERIOR
High-voltage traces of our lust and love flowed through our mattress nightly...
until one night when the power surged and overflowed. Then I felt you...
I'm in a small pond. A monster goldfish stalks me. I seem trapped in place, and
wake in panic, sheets drenched--to find my pet goldfish gasping on the floor...
Towers, before he was killed, argued Terman was wrong: geniuses are often isolated and maladjusted...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
A woman dreams of her boyfriend recently killed in a car crash. Unremarkable so far. But he
also haunts his ex-babysitter, two thousand miles away, who had no idea he'd died...
I'm sitting in a car teetering in the front row of a theater balcony. By me, R. is licking a cherry-
flavored sucker. As the film crew yells "Roll it!" my foot slips on the brake and I do...
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...
After my mother died, I dreamed I was a girl living after the Apocalypse. I rode my elk
past cars full of corpses, saw friends die, and never could find a single fertile mate...
A young Tibetan boy approached me with his arms full of the shapes I had been working on for
the past week. To my delight I found the material, textures and colors I had been searching for...
Saigon, 1973. Lost in a fabric maze. I find, wearing Buddhist robes, the skeleton of a dog.
Years later I write of Buddhist monks burning themselves, and build an ominous maze...
CAUTION: SUICIDES BY FIRE
My brother Henry lay in a metal casket. He wore a suit of mine. On his breast were white roses, with
one red at the centre. A few days later, the boilers of the riverboat Henry worked on exploded...
Mark Twain dreams we're cells inside God, and writes of Huck Finn among the microbes.
A century later, unaware of Twain's dreams, Robert Moss...
We went to visit a well-known psychic. As an afterthought I asked about an upcoming race. The answer was firm: "Marco to win..."
We made a lot off her tip. But when I thanked her later, we were shocked to learn she'd never heard me! Then who had spoken?...
CAUTION: WEIRD EVEN FOR SPIRITUALISTS
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
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
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!
He said "Oh, Mom, I had a terrible dream. A car ran me down."
I said we could not live by dreams or we live a life of horror...
The "Amazement Park", as I dubbed it, was a building long as a football field and three floors high; you fly,
suspended, round an oval track, through a galaxy of images teaching that "sharing" is what matters...
I was on a spiral stair. The walls had scrawled messages, not sprayed,
carved or painted but living tissue--and getting fresher as I descended. Whatever was growing them was still below me, and still writing...
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...
I dreamed a big black bird shared our house, and whenever I walked a certain street, I had flashes of raising a corvid. On day,
on that street, I saved a jackdaw hit by a car. Her broken wing has healed; now she flies in and out of our house as she pleases...
I meet my personal demon, and discover it has a personal demon: me! Am I worse than my Shadow?
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, NUDE MONSTERS
WAYAN: I wake deep in the night. From the black square of a curtainless window, eyes are peering in at me...
MARK: I wake to find a black square trapdoor in my bedroom ceiling. From the dark above, eyes peer in at me...
At an amusement park, big 3D letters appeared in the air, saying
"I WANT YOUR DREAMS". Terrified, I dived underground...
Always ask permission to throw rocks at your date. No, not those big ones! Where's the nearest hospital?
CAUTION: SURREAL DATE ABUSE
CHRIS: I find what may be a magic potion, if it has a scroll hidden in the liquid...
MARK: I'm underwater. Spirits dance around me, on top of sunken scrolls...
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.
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...
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..."
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...
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
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...
A graduation parade has a papier-maché cowboy (hollow ego?), a giant
rampaging stallion (unconscious), and a mama cat who calms him (anima)...
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...
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...
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
Two kids I grew up with are dead. We carry their still-smoking corpses by the home of George Bush...
CAUTION: BURNT BODIES
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 panic as statues come alive at the museum, but they're all about energizing a mystical pyramid...
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...
Comics character Doctor Blasphemy, on stilts, bares his secret identity:
poet Allen Ginsberg! But who chopped off his missing fingers?
CAUTION: BLOODY FINGERS
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"...
Soil turns to air for me; I float in the dark between tree roots
and stones, thinking "If only I could remember my name"...
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!'...
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 comics industry degenerates into civil war. We peddle all night to avoid the Marvel...
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
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...
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
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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 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...
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...
Wayan dreams a jet crashes in dead silence. Meanwhile Vera dreams of being ON a jet that...
I dream my friend Vera's ordered to just study & sleep--no play, no dates. Then I dream
Vera works with gangs as an armed peacekeeper. I tell her; Vera's shocked, since...
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...
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...
Vespasian dreamed he and his family would rise only when Emperor Nero lost his teeth.
The next day, a surgeon happened to show Vespasian a tooth he'd just extracted from...
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
Viga-Glum dreamt a giantess came to visit. "She is the spirit-guide of my grandfather in Norway. He is dead...
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
A hummingbird was trapped inside my home. So beautiful. I set it free.
The next Saturday, I found this hummingbird on the patio...
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...
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
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...
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...
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...
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
I was on a plane... It was almost graceful, the plane actually entered the building before everything dissolved into flame...
CAUTION: DEATH. DEATH TWICE.
DREAM: a stranger tells me "The Teacher" won the Handicap. AWAKE: At the track I meet the man in my dream! He
says The Teacher is now called Aldrich. But Aldrich's owner discourages me. A friend trusts my dream & wins £1,000...
A dream of body parts--maybe, impossibly, alive--hung up like drying laundry. Von Trotta inserted it in a film
script to foreshadow a suicide, but seems deaf to any personal warning--as if it's not her dream at all...
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
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
I get painful menstrual cramps, and with them come nightmares of birth. Not always child birth;
once it was five kittens. Most recently the baby was human but encased in a Butterball turkey...
I was one of just three to survive a roller coaster crash. I dreamed of a playful, laughing girl who drove off a cliff.
Dead, she lay on a bier in a surreal cemetery. But she woke and looked at photos of her old self with curiosity...
My scalp had an infection that just wouldn't heal. I tried everything. Then I dreamed I met
a big, black man who advised me to use certain ingredients from Africa...
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
I dreamt my son Walter drowned in the creek by a certain tree. I woke in tears, and resolved...
I dreamt that at 4:35 AM the chandelier over our baby's bed fell, crushing the baby to death. I woke and...
After a day of troubling conflicts over race & art, I dream I'm handed a hot, heavy, mossy head--is it art, or alive?
The goddess of Night is in love with me, but I'm married, and tired, and just full of excuses...
I dream over & over of the same place, time, & woman. We fall in love. Strangely, I'm the one who gets pregnant...
I've been drawing a personification of the World Dream Bank.
Nerdy, but most of your readers are nerds...
I'm in the kitchen making a mess--kneading pasta dough on the bookcase. If my mom comes in and sees...
A giant insect chases me around our gym. A girl tells me it's harmless but I'm sure it's a...
Nearly everyone in my family dreams of a mass murder as it happens nearby. But my dad's sure it's his own
evil id, and my mom clams up, and my sister forgets. And me? I doubt the whole thing for ten years, until...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE VIOLENCE
After he died, I dreamed that the phone rang and when I said "Hello"...
All his guilty dead were coming home, begging to be let in...
And then he was on the outside, looking in at the lone living man...
CAUTION: GUILT, GRIEF, THE LIVING DEAD
As I wrote a poem on Caliban, I dreamt I was him: taken to Shakespeare's England,
shown as a freak, I must escape to save Miranda and Prospero from assassins...
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
A rich man dreamt thrice that hidden in St Berner's Well near his house was a golden collar. He reached in and...
CAUTION: OW
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)
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
I'm Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island. But the theme song repeats endlessly--not the later version with
my name, but the early one dismissing me and the Professor as and the rest. I wake up screaming...
Demons open a trunk full of the horrors I've faced this year, and lay them out, mocking me... but is that all?
I grope for the name of an island. I dream I crash a car on a bridge; it hangs with one wheel over. I wake & recall a friend who moved to Canada.
Breakfast. That island's on the front page. Inside's a photo of that hanging car. A letter comes--the first from my Canadian friend in years.
Each might be coincidence, but what do we call it when coincidence goes on and on?
At ten, I fasted a long tedious time. I dreamed a bird offered me showy gifts, but I kept to my grandmother's advice: never take the
first offer. At last a big, strange bird from the north, a white loon, offered me long life and health; that I accepted! So now I'm called...
My heart began beating like a sledge hammer. I couldn't imagine what was happening, and got frightened...
After my husband's death, I dreamed he pointed at a small black bag I hadn't opened. It held insurance policies...
Twice a condemned man's wife dreamt of a key lost in rubble below a wall. The second time she went out to find it...
As the steamroller flattened me I became quite a lovely stained-glass window...
Wilkins visits his parents in a dream. Only they think he's a ghost, and panic--in the real world...
A pig led me off my path to meet a lady. I told her my true name, and felt something shift...
Thrice I saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer shot in the House of Commons. I nearly went to London...
Dusk. A plain. A troop of swordsmen approach me, draw their weapons...
and toss their spinning, shining swords up to the stars...
Hillary Clinton was trying to seduce me, and doing a pretty good job, too...
In an idle moment I held a pencil and asked the air who'd win the Derby.
'Trigo' meant nothing to me, but was listed at 32 to 1, so...
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
I try to pick a flower in Golden Gate Park. But it fights back--plucks an ear, an eye, my nose.
A half-gardener, half-cop hands me shears. But I turn from the flower at the last minute to cut...
CAUTION: SURREAL VIOLENCE
Night. A London suburb. A UFO big as a city block looms over us. It's seen all over South England. Yet we go blank--
forget! Though not quite--for years after, Steve has recurring dreams. When he tells me one, I recall the same event...
CAUTION: INTENSE UFO EXPERIENCE
He asked abruptly "Did Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Charles have a wreck with a train? I see'd they did..."
I slay the beautiful dragon attacking us, despite my regret.
And then, as I sleep, glowing eyes advance on our keep AGAIN...
I dream I have just six months to live. I go through a dozen phases and moods, preparing for death...
An Arab shows me a stone he calls a book, and a prophetic shell that warns of a flood rushing toward us...
I wanted to be human, but Mom said "You'll always be just a lousy caterpillar." So I slipped inside
a human girl. After some arguments with her boyfriend, I got born as a human-faced butterfly...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX AND MOM
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
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...
A mass breakout of baby chicks. They say "Now we know how, so we'll
go where we choose." And maybe it's about more than chickens...
A bear rips open my wall and guides me into a psychedelic space where I learn to see with new eyes...
I met a great blue eagle waiting to get into a library--but not to hunt books...
In the underworld, soldiers chase fundamentalists in underwear, as leopards stare. The
upside-down elephant plugs the exit. We can only escape if we
I met some little hunchbacks in the woods who showed me a newborn baby growing from the moss...
Wayan: a mother mountain lion got quantum-entangled with farm animals, exhausting her...
Xanthe: my dogs hurt this lion and I had to tend and calm it all night, exhausting ME...
I visit the underworld court of the Lizard King, but I can't leave: he makes me Queen...
CAUTION: MARITAL RAPE (NON-GRAPHIC)
An amber stream recurring in my dreams led me to meet a huge, strange being, Slithy...
I'm a dyke playing baseball in Golden Gate Park. Some guys harass us and run into a tunnel. I follow, but...
Xerxes twice dreams a god orders him to attack Greece. So he asks his uncle to dream of the god to confirm...
Rousseau's painting of a woman on a red sofa in a glorious
jungle really was dream-based--just not his dream...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SLACKING
I see a shop in Kyoto in the early 1900s. The old woman running it is calm,
with precise movements and sure hands. A voice says "That lady is Igort"...
Crazy Jane watches a dancing couple's passionate games, and envies even their hate; to her, it's part of love...
We were as if brother and sister of old in the desert land;
they sold us in slavery together before this life had begun...
After Shaw's Arms and the Man eclipsed my own play The Land of Heart's Desire, I dreamt I was haunted by...
Simultaneous dreams sharing mood & theme not images.
Yeats sees but cannot touch the waterfall he loved so in childhood;
Georgie, the magical white stag in King Arthur...
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...
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...
I'm half-naked at an arty dinner party, talking to a man I really think I ought to recognize... who is he?
CAUTION: TOPLESS JUNGIAN
Awkward newlyweds. Not a love match! Can they co-operate to save a woman from the Nazis?...
Two medieval women poison one another. One dies in my arms; the other may just survive. Why did they...?
CAUTION: MURDERERS
I wish I could be as body-free as my neighbor Jenna, hiking nude under the full moon...
A voice told me, "Human beings have a spark of the divine"...
My friend's ignorant of our local Congressional race. I loathe Pombo
and like his rival McNerney, but can't pronounce his name right...
I'm to be beheaded. Guards chant "It's important to enjoy what you're doing."
I know my spilled blood will create a work of art...
Preston dreams he's a dragon and his girlfriend Katie drew his portrait from his account
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...
Not long after Jake died, I dreamed he took me on a magic carpet ride. Since then, I've been flying...
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
I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering about, content with my lot. Suddenly I awoke and was Chuang-tzu again...
As Roger, I can't get enough of Tina, though I know she lies and steals. After she vanishes with
my leather jacket, I hunt for her. Spot her shoplifting, and I want to catch her, but let go at last...
A fictional niece acting sexy in a shirt, plus... water balloons? I woke, and a friend told me HER dream...
CAUTION: DREAM INCEST, KIDS WITH GUNS, GENERAL WEIRDNESS
I took my cellphone into the shower. I couldn't find the shampoo, and idly typed SHAMPOO in, and...
CAUTION: NOW YOU KNOW WHO STOLE YOUR ODD SOCKS
I wander a sunken maze, meet a playful woman, find a hidden treasure. Meanwhile, my friend Zooop...