THE WORLD DREAM BANK: TOPIC: NOCTURNES

The World Dream Bank:
NOCTURNES

Nocturnes: dreams set at night. Odd how few dreams are, really, given that most of us dream at night and usually the last thing we see before sleep is the dark. You know how much books and TV just before sleeping can influence your dreams. Why not darkness? Maybe it's just that we're diurnal creatures, or maybe it's that we do, after all, experience the dark EVERY night while falling asleep. The constant becomes invisible...

Still, nocturnes happen. Not often, but... to me, dreams acknowledging the night--their own matrix--are special. Like pearls acknowledging oysters; like diamonds crediting clay.

RELATED TOPICS: light - blindness and sight - a dream of the gods ruling day and night - Jungian Shadows - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

The World Dream Bank has 1500 dreams and dream images plus 500 other pages on dreamwork and shamanism, creativity, genius, art, surrealism and fantasy. Unless otherwise noted, all material copyright Chris Wayan, 2001-2006.

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	ANGELUNE: by Wayan; 364 x 481, 1999. Acrylic painting The joyful animal-angel I feel myself to be in my happiest dreams.
	ANOREXIA NIRVANA: by Wayan; 106K, 1993, digital picture-poem of my astral reality. I was anorexic for years; I only mastered it when I saw it was a hunger for the spirit world...
	AS IF WE CARED: by Wayan; 1984/9/17, a psychological sex dream. A burglar-girl and I spy on the neighbors together and we learn a weird Zen lesson on commitment... CAUTION: SEX TALK
	AS OTHERS SEE US: by Wayan; 1993/12/3, a magical flying dream. We're orphans learning to fly by night, when others can't see and define us...
	BELLE OF THE BALL: by Bonnie; 2006/5/2, a sexy ghost dream I’ll win a house if I can survive a night in the Haunted Pavilion! But it turns out I’ve been here before--before I was born... CAUTION: GHOST ORGY
	CENTAUR AND STAR: by Wayan; 640 x 500, 1994. Digital picture. I'm a centaur. I never left Eden. I'm still in the Garden. You are too, every night, in dreams... CAUTION: BREASTS
	THE COMING DARK: by Jenny Badger Sultan, 2002/3/2; dream-paintings about one disaster averted, and another... not. I climb down from a desert cliff before night strands me; but reckless adolescent games in town lead to a crash...
	DIANE DUANE'S DRAGON: by Wayan; 380 x 400. Sketch of a psychic dream, 1994/2/27. A quiet, mysterious dream image that turned out to refer to the future, not the past...
	DIURNAL AND NOCTURNAL WORLDS: by Wayan; 1993/11/8, an epic dream of the multiverse. Round the ring of twelve worlds and their twelve gods, seeking one god who's giving me grief...
	A DREAM SESTINA: by Donald Justice, late 1950s? A nightmare-poem. "But what is wrong with my friends' faces? Why have they changed that way to wood?"
	EGGHOPE: by Wayan; 1995. Digital painting of puzzling nondream vision Night thoughts. Are they eggs? Dreams? Worlds? Phases of the moon? CAUTION: NEGATIVE BREASTS
	FOUR LOVERS: by Wayan; 1992; digital painting based on recurrent dream A recurring dream of a fourway marriage of animal people. I don't think it's symbolic, but predictive... CAUTION: FURRY SEX
	FOXES: by Wayan; 1991. Digital dream-based painting.. Long ago I saw a marvelous Hiroshige print of a fox convocation, lit by moon and foxfires... CAUTION: LESBIAN SPOOKS
	A GLUM BAR: by Wayan; 2000/4/12, the quietest of nightmares. My house is a bar that never closes. You know what a gay bar is. Well, we're the opposite: a.... CAUTION: BAD VIBES
	HUNG BY ELDER: by Wayan; 1997/7/30, a nightmare. A disowned heiress and I sneak onto the family estate, but they'll go pretty far to hide their skeletons... CAUTION: VIOLENCE
	IN MY DARKEST HOUR: by Arlo Guthrie; 1967, a song heard in a dream. A man in a castle plots against his enemies, while his rebel-daughter meets her lover outside...
	A LOST STATION ON THE TOKAIDO: by Wayan; erasable crayon, 1983. A nondream vision. A tribute to Hiroshige's moonlit landscape prints of the lonely roads of old Japan...
	LUNAMOTH (Around #11): by Wayan; 150K, 1998; 2 portraits of a dream-self, one digital, one acrylic Day Me curls up and Night Me unfolds: a girl with dark moth-wings, not angel-white but camouflaged...
	MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF DUSK: by Wayan; 1994/10/10, an initiatory dream.
	MELTDOWN VALLEY: by Wayan; 1993/2/13, a dream of scrupulous balance. A park in San Francisco has melted into a bizarre mutation-zone. Its guardian is a lonely elf-woman... CAUTION: ELF NUDITY
	MOM AND CHILD UNDER MOON: by Wayan; 1984? Ink, 11 x 14", nondream sketch. Slightly based on a print in our bathroom when I was growing up--Picasso or Mary Cassatt?
	MOON BLOOMS: by Wayan; 1997/7/22, a dream on traces of love. Everyone has a personal moon. At first, mine disappointed me, till a bard dumped his trash on it, and...
	MUNCH'S BLUFF: by Wayan; 11x14", 1983. Nondream erasable crayon A sea-scape somewhat in the style of Edvard Munch: midnight-sun madness with a hint of suicide...
	MY GATE: by Wayan; 500K, 8 illus., 1996/5/29; a breakthrough dream. The full moon rose, I turned into Weregirl, did the Moondance, and gnawed open the lock on my heart... CAUTION: NUDITY
	A NIP IN THE EVENING: by Wayan; ink 1980 tinted 2000; daydream image. Like a lot of playful beasts, I like a friendly nip in the evening...
	OH LEAD MY REM SOUL ON: by Wayan, 1991, silk painting of shamanic dream process I rise in animal form, and fly to a world as coherent as this one, guided by a greenhaired girl... CAUTION: NUDITY
	ORBITING MOM: by Wayan; 1997/1/7, an uh-oh dream. I'm trying to get a moontan when my mom appears. My astral body starts orbiting her like a moon. Uh-oh...
	OWLOVERS: by Wayan; 1992, digital painting of vivid daydream. This image bewilders me; my dreams mix sex with warmth, grief, even silliness, but what is THIS telling me? CAUTION: WEIRD ORGY
	THE PROWLER: by Wayan; 1997/2/4, an illustrated dreamtale. My sister hears a prowler. I go out blind in the dark, and learn she's right. But what a strange intruder!
	PYRAMID POWER: by Wayan; 1981/2/2, a dream of love and time. We drive into a zone of perpetual night to see Sweet Melinda, but our time-path splits! Two lives at once?
	RACCOON MOON: by Wayan; 1993/11/22; a short psychic dream. A precognitive dream about levitating snake girls, raccoons, and lunar eclipses. CAUTION: MY SNAKE BREASTS
	REFLECTIONS IN THE POOL: by Wayan; 184K total, 2 panoramas; a 1994/7/2 dream. Night. A mirror-maze of contradictory preachings. But in the secret mermaid pool, I find love. Then... sphinx-angels war in the air! A war of riddles. Can I, a batwinged devil, make peace? CAUTION: SEX, NUDITY, MEAN ANGELS, AND ONE HAPPY DEVIL
	ROAR!: by Wayan; 2000/4/3, not exactly a nightmare... Night. A jungle full of prowling lions and leopards. So naturally, I get up on a rock and roar back...
	SCISSORS AND FOX-FLIGHT: by Wayan; 1996/8/20, a marsupial flying dream. Camping in strange mountains (Australia?), I can't sleep. So I nightwalk, and find I'm changing...
	SOME THINGS ARE DARK: by Edna St Vincent Millay; 1948??, a poem narrated by Nightmare Millay, suffering from nightmares, decides to speak from Nightmare's point of view...
	A STAB OF ANGER: by Wayan; 1997/5/24, a Jurassic Park dream. By a midnight lake, I comfort an abused girl in the mud. But then two figures with long knives appear...
	STARGIRL: by Wayan; 1993. Digital image of altered state I squabble with my body so much! But sometimes, at the moment of orgasm, we dissolve into stars, and become... CAUTION: SEX POETRY
	TAROT: RENUNCIATION (8 of cups): by Wayan; 41K. Tarot card, 3x5", 1978-1981. Giving up a wall of material treasure for the moonlit path...
	TAROT: WAKING FROM A NIGHTMARE (9 of swords): by Wayan; 27K. Tarot card, 3x5", 1978-1981. The card confirming those silly fears are true. The nightmare is real. You're in trouble...
	TAROT: DOGGY (The Hierophant or High Priest): by Wayan; 29K. Tarot card, 3x5", 1978-1981. Some folks are dogs, bullying those below them, fawning on those above. But if the Wizard is a Humbug...
	TAROT: HOKULE'A (the Star): by Wayan; 30K. Tarot card, 3x5", 1978-1981. Hokule'a, the "Star of Gladness", guided Polynesians across thousands of miles of ocean...
	TAROT: THE QUEEN OF FLUTES: by Wayan; 1981/6/19, a brief dream image. I dream I'm giving a friend a Tarot reading, and the card she picks for herself is one I've never seen:
	TAROT: THE UNICORN WELL (the Ace of Cups): by Wayan; 1991. Digital, based on Tarot card, 3x5". The Well of Emotion, guarded by the Black Unicorn, the shadow of all the feelings you deny...
	THIRTEEN PEACE SIGNS IN A TIME OF WAR: by Wayan; early 2002, acrylic sgraffito on wood. The animal goddess of peace, stubbornly raising her sign, my sign, as you all slide into your nice holy war...
	TRINITY: by Nashoba Hostina; 2002?. A nightmare of losing your best friends to love... We were inseparable: the tiger, the fox, and the wolf. Together our magic lit up the darkness around us, until...
	TWO DRUNKS: by Wayan, 1994, color pencil, nondream fantasy. A tribute to Hokusai's sketches. A crane and a fairy were out drinking, and now can't fly home...
	UNICORN ROUND: by Wayan; 2000/9/18, nondream; acrylic on a vinyl record. Yellow fireflies circling round the horn of a reclining red unicorn, in the evening...
	WHAT! MORE?: by Wayan; 300 x 500, ink 1985, digital color 2001. The world needs Zen cards, to balance out the Tarot. Here's my Zen pack--all one of them. One too many.
	WHY COWGIRLS LOVE BROCCOLI: by Wayan; 1987/8/19, a surreal dream of love. I'm a cowgirl in Nevada circa 1900. Below Haunted Mansion, I meet a green lizard-lady in distress... CAUTION: QUEER-POSITIVE
	WOLFWALL: by Wayan; 106K, 1995-1999. Digital image of daydream/trance Drew all night in a trance and only learned at dawn what this flirting otter and wolf were trying to tell me... CAUTION: NUDITY AND SEXUAL THEME