I flew over a forest. I noted the trees were all the same, and told myself to remember this...
I fall in love with a diplomat from a hive mind. Am I luring her into dangerous individuality?
DREAM: Ants invite me to a picnic. But one of the dishes they serve is--other ants!
NEXT DAY: I'm invited to a picnic. And my friend, munching, says...
CAUTION: BUG-EAT-BUG WORLD
An autistic genius gets distracted from her cosmological research, and rants
about non-autistics' monkey-mind distractions, distorting their worldview...
CAUTION: HARSH ON NEUROTYPICALS
My figure-painting class here in San Francisco has a diverse student body, but not THIS diverse...
CAUTION: NUDITY
On a bar bet, we seek God. We reach the Isles of the Blessed, but they're complacent. We want the wild
God, the real God, the Bad Taste God. Onward, pagan questers! Because we want to win our bet.
CAUTION: LAZY-ASS ANGELS
I meet a sex-kitten in the Underground Cartoonists' Bar, but her body language makes no sense to me...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE FLIRTATION... OR IS IT?
My take on IQ, racism, Murray and Herrnstein's notorious book, and the theory of multiple intelligence.
As an (ex)child prodigy it's not theoretical for me: broken hearts, broken trust, broken ribs...
CAUTION: LONG WORDS, RAMPANT ELITISM, GENIUS SHOPTALK
My crazy friend Wayne goes bowling for busses with a black egg. Wait! Crazy? Or... predictive?
CAUTION: GEORGIA O'KEEFFE BEHAVES DISGRACEFULLY
Chapter 8 of UNICORN TAG, though it can stand alone.
A packet of magic soupmix sends me upstairs to a secret wizards' lab.
They've summoned a demon they can't handle: the furious Black Unicorn...
Awkward newlyweds. Not a love match! Can they co-operate to save a woman from the Nazis?...
We all wear magic beltbuckles. Twist one--your body stretches from squat to willowy. Except mine...
CAUTION: SEX, BODY-IMAGE DISTORTION
A perfectionist gardener builds perfect planterboxes while his seedlings starve. And so I left the burbs...
A girl with a magic swimsuit flashes me, as her Iranian fundamentalist aunt glares from beyond the veil...
CAUTION: NUDITY? OR ILLUSION?
A bee-doctor in the city of Propolopolis diagnoses me as having a rare syndrome, Ambition Denied...
I was a wild mare in heat, torn between longing for sex, touch, love...and the fear of being tamed.
CAUTION: HORSE FRUSTRATION
Hong Kong's not devolving to China, but to Faerie. As governor, I have to defend human rights, so...
Everyone's joining the Cult of Blindness. My mother signed up. I'm tempted; it's
the only way to find a decent date in this town. But this fat gatekeeper objects...
The friends of a touchy aviator have to kidnap her just to give her a present... and WHAT a present...
I'm a faculty wife bored out of my mind until two students have sex in my yard. I ignore HIM and jump HER...
CAUTION: SEX
I'm a guard on a train crossing the desert who falls in love with a refugee fox-girl,
despite heavy specist peer-pressure and the archaic Railway Code...
CAUTION: NUDE FOX
With our ignorability spell, our team plans to free the angry Hick from the
Submerged Court. But the Coyote Girls can see us! Will this really work?
The Go-Go Gang, fashionistas, sing "This town is OUR town" and kick a girl who
wore their colors--giving me flashbacks to the kids who broke MY ribs...
CAUTION: JERKS
In a worldwide junkyard full of warring spooks, I finally meet the one whose message I need to hear...
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
A biracial girl doubts her own heritage; a human friend has to confirm the obvious. So what am I blind to?
I was ordered to join Hitler's army. I dreamt a booming voice proclaimed, "This train is going to Hell!" So I...
A Buddhist scroll shows me Hell Cafe, where diners become entrees. But I read the scroll
backwards! You can escape Hell just by walking out, against the traffic flow...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL SOULS
Whenever I run out of ballet class to Japanese without asking my classmate Wendy out, I change sex...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
A woman in prison loves her counselor, but she's a barely literate hooker--she knows he won't love her back...
My dream characters aged and tamed until they sit in a genteel Victorian flat. Then a wolf rappels in...
A children's recital of "Where the Wild Things Are" turns into a riot-orgy. And it feels... political?
CAUTION: WILD THING ORGY
I find myself at a creepy party supporting a dead man who's running for office. And am I Dan Quayle?
CAUTION: HORROR BEYOND HORROR. YOU ARE DAN QUAYLE.
Why'd a spirit-woman come to our reservation to mourn a drowned guy? Her mirrors & candles tell us...
I'm a traveling Zen warrior talking to a circus girl in a barn. Four guys enter--and my life changes forever.
My sister and I are groping toward sex when our mom bursts in. Her scolding's not what I expect...
CAUTION: INCEST ISSUES, PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY
The image got lost, but the words survived, so here's the poetic saga of an ant that left th' farm...
I'm cartoonist Marjane Satrapi. I passively tag along with friends (and a fiancé I tend to forget)
in the Mission District of San Francisco. But they blunder into real trouble...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
Beverly Cleary's Ramona is a popular teen, but she's having a nervous breakdown. And her best friend...
CAUTION: STUDENT-TEACHER AFFAIR
They were swimming in the glowing, molten pool of the Melting Pot, and beckoned me to join them...
CAUTION: SUICIDE SOUP?
I happily meditated alone in a monastery. But when I woke, I saw no way to act on the dream. Then a friend...
A girl and two cybersnakes are clever but murderous. But
when apart, they're not mean at all! Not sin--synergy...
After eating iffy food, I had gut pains all night--but I dreamed of rebels with swords
fighting a fascist empire. Were my dreams siding with the food? Well, no...
How exactly did I acquire a mother-in-law snooping on my phone calls, when I don't have a wife?
At our family reunion's parade, a tropical float goes by with a drag queen
who turns out to be physically female--but still drag! The next day...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM, DRAG OF COURSE
I'm three women at once! We marry a unicorn, a goat philosopher,
and a magic talking cat. But cops raid our furry commune...
CAUTION: INTERSPECIES MARRIAGE, TEEN SEX, BAD COPS
Ow! My body parts grow & shrink... A mad orchestra leader pulverizes me for nonconformity...
The Brady Bunch crams siblings into a waterpipe one by one. I'm next! My bones crunch...
I'm blindfolded, perched on a miles-high needle piercing my big toe. Blood drips down...
CAUTION: GLEEFULLY GROSS
I move hundreds of miles away to escape my family's psychic broadcasts. Pathetic, but... does it work?
A sociologist exposes the smugness of Britain's 1%, but the writer's denial of any innate differences
can be just as pernicious as elitism...
CAUTION: EGALITARIANISM ON TRIAL
When I was battered, I briefly lived on the streets. What struck me was how fragile most of us were...
CAUTION: BRIEF BUT GRIM
I'm scared to show my dream-paintings to my art class. That night I find an large otter in my bed...
CAUTION: SEX
The artcops search-and-destroy our flying band, and my wings are shorn. But ten years later,
songless, apathetic, I climb through my TV--and the women of Vietnam show me a new way to fly...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, ATTITUDE, ALTITUDE
I'm a girl in a Catholic school. But a magazine and my too-small bed combine to change my life...
CAUTION: MASTURBATION, QUEER-POSITIVE, CHRISTIAN-NEGATIVE
I hang my artshow, but cut my palm. So I dream of a palm tree whose only problem is the road it's by...
Martial-arts student Parvati just won't fight the teacher she loves (too much!)--
not even for her final exam. Instead she gets a rotary saw and...
When Perissa, an exhibitionistic centaur, bares her body in a crowded Coliseum,
she also bares a human-supremacist plot...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM, SPECISM
I meet Peter Pan grown up: a stark, fey prince in exile. Why do only I see him and the Lost Children? Oh.
I'm the first man on Planet Cat, falling in love with my guide. And then I'm the Cat, falling for an alien ape...
CAUTION: NUDE CAT
Cultists must wear a burqa and confess their sins daily. So why's their beach such a pickup scene?
CAUTION: NUDITY UNDER FISHNETS
What if comics panels and layouts weren't so square? I try triangles,
pentagons, hexagons, circles, spirals--and some serious stuff pops out...
CAUTION: IDEAS, OCCASIONAL NUDITY, MENTIONS ABUSE
I suspect we child prodigies and geniuses are as unlike the gifted as normal people. So here's a checklist...
CAUTION: BRAIN REQUIRED
I'm a telepathic rabbit defending our world from space-laser attack. We do, but do we modernize too much?
CAUTION: IDEAS
After seeing 150 years of family photos, I dream of being teased by time-traveling cheerleaders, and...
In a bar I meet a guy who claims the Army hired him to try
to inspire crops to grow taller by marching tall soldiers past...
The mayor declares war on bikers, blames us for gridlock! I dream of Rosa Parks' influence and realize...
I'm autistic; a TV host encourages me and another autistic kid to have sex on the air...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX ON NATIONAL TV; SERIOUS FINGER-POINTING
I'm trapped in a post-apocalypse pulp story! Fun for my readers, but not for me! How to escape?
Aliens, hypnotherapy, dancing molars, riots, witches, flying pianos, lettuce... yet there is a point.
At the beach, I meet some gregarious desert-world aliens who think loners are insane...
I love what dancers look like, seen over time, in
stroboscopic photos. Like weird undersea growths...
WARNING: NUDE CAT PEOPLE
I meet a 140-year-old hermit in her black chadoor,
skateboarding down a hill near her sacred dream-spring...
Atop a sea-cliff, I meet a young couple in love. One look at me and they
push me off! When I see I can't save myself, I try to take them with me...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE BARING UGLY TRUTHS
I find a shy sphinx hiding in the corner of a painting in a dull art class. But maybe she's right to hide...
As my friends & I walk in a marsh, we argue. They know humans can't fly--
so I levitate on the spot! But, oddly, they convince me I can't--while I am...
My friend sleeps with an alien. He's ugly, but I don't care. What bothers me is, he eats bits of himself...
CAUTION: SEX, RECREATIONAL CANNIBALISM, PROSTITUTION, THE KITCHEN SINK
Infected glass-cuts scar the vegan alligators in the park. As part of a cleanup, I'm told to EAT one...
I tried to be like my classmates--use tools, control what I made. But I couldn't. It came alive, and...
Lost in the snow, I must give my baby to a stranger or let my dad put him in a box, safe, forever...
Leona's a fighter--she rejects compromisers like her husband,
her friends, that miniature catgirl she's been sitting on...
Lost in a dark maze of machine-shops, I follow Mr. Spock, who's drunk, and talks to tree-spirits...
CAUTION: ALCOHOL AS INSPIRATION?
A street poet preaches a gospel of smallness, until he pokes at capitalism in a slightly too personal way...
I dream I'm a runner named Silky; but straying outside the crowd can get you stomped by giant aliens...
To avoid being stabbed, I flee the Psychodrama Circus. Wisely--the place explodes!
But it's the filling of the sushi roll that really upsets me...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MAKI
I dreamed I drew our dog and me mating, then found the drawing on a gallery wall for all to see...
CAUTION: CARTOON BESTIALITY
I like bad taste. Taste always tasted like another Anglo conspiracy to keep me from having fun...
I'm in Japan, where Rumiko Takahashi tells me of a tragic chicken
who longs to be a lounge singer...
I'm at the court of Jenghiz Khan, as rival priests try and fail to convert the Mongols
to this faith or that. Then a Taoist demigod walks up...
The traditional figure is blindfolded, holding two crossed swords. I used crossed TV antennae...
Some folks are dogs, bullying underlings, fawning on superiors. But when the Wizard's a Humbug...
1: I ask how to fly. "Breathe air from high levels; its light and purity will wash away earth's heaviness..."
2: To join a flying game, you must cut off your own head! Players acquire new heads and can work miracles...
3: I float up to reach a book in a shop. People call the police but I defiantly soar--over Paris, up to the stars...
I'm a tiger from Planet Cat, visiting Earth to run in San Francisco's "Bay to Breakers" race.
I knew racial tensions were high, but why is William S. Burroughs out to kill me? Oh. Because...
I provoke a shooting! Wandering through time, I forget how much some cultures fear witches...
Clarence the sappy angel from It's A Wonderful Life and Milton's Lucifer land on Earth, offering treaties.
Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're fine as is, but the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures
like me and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full palette of feelings. Like the feeling she's fake...
They call it the information highway because we're all supposed to march in formation...
Silicon Valley goes enthusiastically fascist. I hide in a berry patch. They build a shining world, and then...
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 named the Undersecretary for the Arts. I sift through all the grant applications. But
I'm a webtroll; I hang furry pastel pinups in my office. The humans see postmodern irony...
CAUTION: FURRY PINUPS; UTTER LACK OF IRONY
THAT DAY: art nonstop! Put myself down for obsessing. Empty man!
THAT NIGHT: I'm in rural China. Two women tell me their village declared them
dead, killed by demons. So are they ghosts, or just written off by idiots?
MORNING: wait--have I been calling me dead? Oh...
After over-editing a weird poem to Silky, my night mare, I dream that
well-meaning surgeons think a unicorn's a defective horse, and try to dehorn her...
In my dreams, a co-worker tells me HER dreams. Their
focus is so unlike mine! Dream goals really differ...
In our cult, we lie in vats of goo till we grow wings. But we’re feared more than we knew...
CAUTION: SPECIST LYNCH MOB, NUDE IN SCHOOL, LESBIAN FEELINGS, OBSCENE CARROT
I'm a flying fox in England. I see a poisoning and call for help. Ugly knockoffs of
Peanuts characters attack me! The real Peanuts gang defeats them; Snoopy drives
the victim to the hospital, saving her. It really is vital to be... authentic.
CAUTION: PUNS
I ask to see my past lives, and dream of a viewpoint where I can--but this Mormon ranger...
Dodging between all your -isms, I feel like a bird on a battlefield...
I dream I find a few 'extinct' watercats--in a slum! They talk. They say I'm one of them,
brainwashed to think I'm human. I wake, go to a dinner, and hear a tale of... watercats!
For flirting in the astral cafeteria, we all get sentenced to group therapy--
till I catch the lie in my life. What lie? Read the title...
I slay the beautiful dragon attacking us, despite my regret.
And then, as I sleep, glowing eyes advance on our keep AGAIN...
After seeing 'Rear Window', Grace Kelly and I are wolf children in a pack that's quickly evolving into...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, CHILD SEXUALITY, WOLF-SLANDER
Nancy Friday describes a kind of weak guy disturbingly like me--I think chronic illness has...
I visit Earth during an all-female era. I'm a woman, can pass for local--so why do I lie to fit in?
CAUTION: SEXIST SLUR
Most writers search for their unique style. Not me--I struggle to convey unique EXPERIENCES...
Restrain yourself! Or you too may end up on a giraffe
rollerskating down the freeway singing perverted popsongs...