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Water

Dreams of the liquid world. Exploring under lakes and seas, living in water, breathing water... or drowning.

It's my experience that such dreams are often precursors to flying dreams--and sometimes to lucidity. Maybe it's just that for a lot of dreamers, water and especially the sea is a symbol for dreaming itself--so breathing underwater can show you're comfortable exploring the dreamworld and that your unconscious welcomes you.

But Jungians can go too far. If you skin dive a lot...

RELATED TOPICS: walking or skating on water - swimming - beach dreams - flying dreams - lucid dreams - mer-folk - underground dreams - the opposite: deserts - falling water: rain, waterfalls, geysers - If you're feeling smutty, there's always wet dreams - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 4000 dreams plus 1000 pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.


ABYSSIA: by Wayan; started 2006/6/6, a webtour of an inverted world
A nondream vision of an alternate Earth where continents are abysses, abysses continents...
ADORABLE CYBORGS: by Wayan; dreamed 2016/10/5, a dream-poem on inner teamwork
A child dreamer and two different kinds of cyborg must cooperate
to free the hostages imprisoned under San Francisco Bay...
AFTER THE FLOOD & THE PIG-EARED BABY ALLIGATOR: by Skiznot; c.1995, an oracular dream
My hometown floods. I swim after some strange fish and find
a scientific community where a scaled baby tells me who I am...
AIDA'S TOILET BOAT: by Wayan; 1993/4/7, a short- AND long-term predictive dream.
A sexy comedian and her troubles down the drain.
A dream that turned out to be true six days later,
and again in a different way six YEARS later...
AL CAPP'S HORSES: by Wayan; 1988/4/12, a dream predicting an odd image, palette and painting style
I dream cartoonist Al Capp switched late in life to painting horses in a weird expressive style;
I wake, write the dream, rush to work to find a painting of horses in a weird expressive style
CAUTION: CAUSTIC TO E.S.P. DENIERS
ALIEN GIRL, SACRED PEAKS: by Wayan; dreamed 2005/11/25, two dreams on long-term goals
I'm one of a trio of swimmers in a pool, making out--under the surface only. Must we hide?
I'm near Shiprock with a flying-saucer girl who sees the nearby crags and far snowy peaks
as all the same size and distance... how to teach perspective?
CAUTION: SKINNYDIPPING, GROPING
ANCIENT RUINS, AND A GIFT FROM DEEP OCEAN:
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...
ANOCHE / LAST NIGHT: by Antonio Machado; c. 1900; a joyful dream poem
Last night, as I slept, I dreamt--illusion blessed!--that I had a beehive, here inside my heart...
APOCALYPSE OF THE MOON: by Carl Linkhart, 1997 or before; dream poem/painting
The far future. The moon falls to Earth. But then... the moon unfalls!
Golden light nurtures a rebirth of our dying ecology & civilization...
BALLOON DIVE: by Wayan; 2007/6/17, a nightmare saying I made the least bad choice
A boy leaps from a runaway balloon, falls 100' into a pond, and floats face-down.
I'm sure he's dead, but when a woman fishes him out...
BEET: Five Dreams One Night: by Wayan; 2013/10/30, Halloween dreams as minipoems
Parasites, Rambo, huge fetus-beets, an exhibitionist and a living statue advise me on my love life...
CAUTION: NUDITY
BEYOND THE BUOYS: by Wayan; 1981/2/12, a short punning dream.
I'm a fairy queen at the beach, chasing a girl who's a strong swimmer. Yep, she swims beyond the buoys...
CAUTION: BAD LESBIAN PUNS
BLUE MER-ANGEL: by Wayan; 2000, ceramic sculpture, 11.5" long.
Seems strange to have no hands. How do dolphins get things done? By not needing to get things done?
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
BOAT MEETING: by Wayan; 1985/4/28; a predictive dream that hints at its own nature
I swim far out in a lake to a business meeting on a dinghy; but that's trivial.
What matters is mapping the murky lakebottom, dive after dive...
BOAT PEOPLE IN THE TUB: by Carl Linkhart, 1998 or before; dream poem/painting
I'm trying to bathe, but there are Boat People in the tub!
And my inner Grandma's spying on me, behind her fan...
BYE-BYE, OLD FILM!: by Wayan; 1981/1/24, a psychic dream, with a 2015/5/22 follow-up.
My friends destroy all my old films and give me a 'new' one--but it's from 1900! Then I wake to find...
CATFISH RESCUE: by Nick Munford, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; a dream of shamanic kindness
I run away. A car nearly hits me and I fall into the lake. But
a kindly catfish drags me to an underwater phone booth...
THE CONCHES: by Wayan; 1996/5/23, a dream on how dreams view the waking mind.
A visit to the Conches, a strange race of molluscs who are people only seasonally...
CONRAD'S CRASH: by Jessie Conrad, 1905?, a clairvoyant or telepathic nightmare
Night. Rain. A hansom cab. The horse slips on the wet pavement, toppling the cab with my husband inside.
I woke sure it happened. Next morning a postman tried to tell me of the crash, but I told him...
CRIMECON 90: by Wayan; 1990/3/27, a dream about capitalism.
I did what I love. The money didn't follow. So now I have to guard a crimeboss at a theft convention...
CAUTION: INEVITABLE CHEKHOVIAN SHOOTOUT
DANCE OF THE SUN: by Wayan, 1972/10/23, an epic mystical dream
I cross a hostile continent to a magic commune, fall in love with a flying girl who slaps a
soul-spark into my head, and follow an alien goddess leading the Dance of the Sun...
THE DAYS WHEN WOMEN WERE BEING HURT: by Anonymous #40, 1996?, a surreal dream
I was big as the world, so whole cars fit in my vagina. But men were selling women
to supermarkets, to be cooked & resold. So I crossed the Atlantic sea-floor on foot...
CAUTION: CAR SEX. NO, NOT SEX IN CARS...
DEATH CHANTY: by E.M. Martin's friend; 1914/9/21, a psychic dream
An endless parade of drowned sailors sing a dirge. The dreamer woke in tears. Then the news arrived.
THE DESTRUCTION OF HAWAI'I; 2004/9/2 by Anonymous #37; a short apocalyptic nightmare
I was a small boy living on Oahu. Out my front door I saw a 20-mile-tall wall of flames stretching across the horizon...
DOG THIRST: by Cecy and Wayan; 1991/10/7, shared or telepathic dreamlets
CECY: In a desert, a thirsty dog jumps out of a tree--the first known dog suicide...
WAYAN: I'm a talking dog. Our owner denies us enough water, so we protest...
DONNA'S FALLOUT: by Wayan, 1972/2/6, 2/26, 2/29 & 3/4: sonnets & watercolors of 4 sex dreams.
When I was 17, an older girl pushed booze at me and came on to me... in front of my parents and teachers!
For months, I had ambivalent sex dreams trying to process what Donna taught me--not all of it negative...
CAUTION: WEIRD SEX; ADULTS BEHAVE BADLY
DON'T GO TO THE MARKET: by a Stockwith woman, June/July 1757; a predictive dream unheeded
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...
DRACULA'S SANDWICH: by Brenda Ferrimani; 1997/8/22, a death/rebirth nightmare-painting
Dinner with Dracula goes well, considering, except for the mayonnaise. But suddenly I'm drowning!
No one sees or hears me. Am I a ghost, am I dead or alive? And how would anyone notice?
DREAM OF ABYSSES: by Marie-Claude Girondé, spring 2007, a dream-drawing.
Girondé dreams she's floating through the oceanic abyss...
ELEPHANT WITH A LOTUS: by Queen Maya, 564 BCE? a prophetic Buddhist dream
After 20 years without a child, Maya dreams devas carry her to a holy lake, wash her...
and then an elephant carrying a lotus flower enters her right side. She knows it means...
CAUTION: DREAM OMITS TINY DETAIL--IMMINENT DEATH
THE ERTHEDNI: by Wayan, 1977/1/8, three transformation dreams, the last with advice
1: I'm starving in a lush valley; a cult claims all the food, the water, even the air.
2: I'm drowning in a cage but find a corner with water I can breathe--just barely.
3: I'm a merman with a wise friend who hints I need to leave those who starve & drown me...
CAUTION: DOMESTIC BATTERING (OFFSTAGE)
EVERLASTING AND PERPETUAL NIGHTMARE: by Shawn King; c. 2009/2/10; two bits of a lifelong nightmare
Lucifer throws firebolts from a Montreal tower; monsters stalk us; next comes the flood...
FANTASTIC RIDE: by Marie-Claude Girondé, spring 2007?, a dream painting.
The dreamer overflows from her egg, spills out to become a waterfall, a stampede of horses...
FIVE ELVISH DREAMS: by Dolores J. Nurss; 2005/6/10-2005/6/19, an incubated lucid-dream sequence
1: I visit Elrond and Bilbo in Elvenhome, but overthinking traps me in a timeloop;
2: Elrond says he renounces seriousness for joy, and plans a great, inclusive party;
3: I feel unworthy, but set out on a desert quest with Elrond's young apprentice;
4: I meet joyful, drunken, singing elves but hide in a tree, too shy to join in;
5: I meet a nervous elven singer and a dolphin trapped in a tiny pool in my bedroom...
FLU PRESCRIPTION: by Qu'lad and Togumalis, 1918 or 19, two shaman's dreams that saved lives
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
FLUID REALITY: by Wayan; 1983/8/8; a magical dream-sea voyage that turned out to be predictive
On my quest I find magic portals, snarky flower-fairies, undersea redcoats,
reassembling bodyparts, living chess, and Nosferatu the Cheating Vampyre...
FOOD CAME BETWEEN US: by Wayan, 1993/4/25, an incubated epic diagnostic dream.
The terror of Navy breakfast, the joy of filterfeeding,
how to marry pudding, and a sniper lunch with kisses...
FORGET THE FLEURS DU MAL: by Wayan; 1983/1/1?, a poem on nightmares.
In the richest regions of the sea, dead stuff wells up to meet the light. Do we have similar zones?
FREE THE HICK? A Dream Left Hanging: by Wayan; 1999/9/15, a shard still bearing a message
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?
FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH: by Roswila, August 2002; a dream-poem illustrating dream reentry
My horse and I dove into a lagoon and sought buried treasure on the sea-floor. What are we really after?
GET THE PICTURE? by Barbara, as told by Gayle Delaney, 1979 or before; a prompting dream
I was half-drowning, holding our son up in the pool, while my husband tried to take a
photo. I kept gasping "Did you get the picture yet?" but he kept saying "Not yet"...
GREEN ANGELS: by Wayan; 1985/9/2, a dream-idyll seething with politics.
I stalk a platoon of levitating surf-bunnies who may be out to bomb a Greenpeace submarine...
GREEN, GREEN, SPIRIT OF THE SPRING: by Jenny Badger Sultan; dreamed 1991/2/3, 1995/8/13 and 1995/11/10
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...
HAENA TWILIT COVE: by Wayan; 1984/10/31, a predictive dream.
Landing in Hawaii, I dream of a magical twilit cove I must swim across. The eve of leaving, there it is...
HELL HALL: by Anonymous #3; c.1920?, a dream of initiatory cannibalism
A revival meeting goes bad--suicides, 'long pig', a hell-pit. If you sup with the devil, carry a long fork!
ICEBERG WRANGLERS: by Wayan; 2015/8/4, an otherworldly dream-poem
Captain Ahab's part-whale students are better ice wranglers than I'll ever be--
wrestling icebergs of possibility round to their best outcomes, in this pea-soup sea...
IGUANA: by Jim Shaw; between 1987 & Jan. 1995, two surreal dreamlets on water damage
In a flooded room, an indignant iguana scolds me, while
my wife Marnie checks her computer implant for water damage...
IN IO: by Wayan, 1981/8/7, a wild otherworldly dream with 3 illustrations.
I live on Io. It's nicer than its photos. At least inside, where the oceans are--where I grow a second head...
THE MERMAID'S DRESSING ROOM: by Wayan; 1993/12/18; a dream on how to evolve.
At Sea-Dragon State Park, I climbed down to the sea serpent's dressing room after the show, and found...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
JESSICA THE MERMAID: by Jessica, mid-1977, dream-provoked dream
At a dream workshop for kids, James's trickster dream-figures provoked Jessica to dream one chased her;
fleeing, she jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, became a mermaid, and married the trickster...
JUMP OVERBOARD: by Graham Greene; 1925/12/11, a possibly psychic nightmare.
Wednesday night I dreamed I had to jump overboard... that night there was a wreck
off the Yorkshire coast in a storm and the captain ordered his men to jump into the sea...
KICK AUTHORITY: by Wayan; 1989/10/25. Early digital painting of a dream figure.
Question authority? Nah. They always have such excuses! Kick authority entirely! Just say no.
THE LADY BATHES IN GRIEF: by Wayan; 1983/5/31, a long-haul psychic dream.
Why'd a spirit-woman come to our reservation to mourn a drowned guy? Her mirrors & candles tell us...
A LAKE DEMON: by Wayan; 1979/11/3, an anti-lucid dream.
I walk through worlds, fight a deadly lake demon, and work magic--but I mustn't go lucid...
LIBERTÉ: by Marie-Claude Girondé, c. 2005?, a dream painting.
"Freedom is a gift you give yourself." But it doesn't always involve seahorses or babycarriages covered in quills...
LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE: by Edward Bennet's daughter, 1757/7/11; a predictive dream
Bennet's daughter dreamt her husband drowned after wading too deep (he couldn't swim). He promised
he'd avoid deep water, but his best friend played a prank, treading water to make it seem shallow...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
LONG ROAD TO HEAVEN: by Edwin Muir; 1920, an epic hypnogogic shamanic initiation
Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in...
MANTA-SQUID: by Wayan; 1986/3/13, a nightmare on the Senoi hoax
DAY: I read an exposé on "Senoi dreamwork"--the Malaysian Senoi people disavow it. Some white guy just made it up!
DREAM: I'm a dream researcher in Malaysia. A manta-squid attacks! Now the "Senoi" focus on my needs makes sense...
CAUTION: TENTACLE-RAPE ATTEMPT
MARS REBORN: by Wayan; 15 pages, 27 photos, 2003/9/22, a tour of a sculpted/virtual world
Mars as it will be 1000 years from now, terraformed. A guided tour with photos...
A MERMAID DISH: by Wayan; 1994/11/13, a parabolic dream
A mermaid friend invites me to see an underwater experiment in the Golden Gate...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
MERMAID, MARE, AND SEA-STAR: by Wayan; 1983/3/23; daydream of sea-love
I was a mermaid summoning a great storm to carry my love to me--and my love was a red sea-mare...
THE MERMAID TOW: by Wayan; 1994/2/17, a rescue-fantasy dream.
I rescue some drowning kids by turning into a mermaid, but towing one girl has an unexpected effect...
MERMAID VERSUS TRUMP: by Wayan, 2020/1/7, one of twin warning dreams
Agents of Donald Trump with knives trap a mermaid. I jump one of them, and she
escapes, towing me with her. She assumed humans just hate merfolk, but I know...
CAUTION: HARSH WARNING ABOUT TRUMP
THE MERMAN'S LOVER: by Wayan; 1991-93; a sex daydream treated four ways.
Four versions of an underwater meeting between lovers, one terrestrial, one marine...
CAUTION: ORAL SEX
MITHRAN'S LAKE: by Wayan; 1988/1/17, a predictive dream justifying personal reserve.
DREAM: Gay boys, underage girls & my own sister all mock me, sure I want their forbidden sexual fruit
at a beach where grotesque trees make their own precipitation and salt-dunes spill into saturated, toxic brine...
NEXT DAY: I read Margaret Atwood's The Salt Garden--sex, guilt, and grotesque trees in saturated, toxic brine.
CAUTION: SEXUAL GUILT, EXHIBITIONIST TWEENS, APPARENT E.S.P.
MOM POPS: by Wayan; dreamed 1983/8/5, a dream of bursting your inner critic
The flood sickens my fuchsia bush. My mom says my fuchsia is hopeless,
but I make up a treatment. When it works, well... read the title.
CAUTION: PUNS, EXPLODING MOM
MUDHOLE: by Hosteen A., 1928, a death-warning dream
I dream my cousin and I ride out looking for his lost moccasins. Suddenly he's swallowed by mud
and drowns. It's so fast. I feel sorry for him but I'm helpless. Two months later, my cousin died...
MUPPET WITNESS: by Bill Tjaden, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; an absurd dream
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...
NEED AN ADVENTURE? by Catshall, 2022/5/18-25, collage-poem on recurrent dreams
For a week the same dream-figures and settings have been recurring:
shapeshifters and sea monsters. What are they hiding? Or guarding...
NIGHTMARE NEXT TO MY LOVER: by Kathleen Spivack; before 1983, an outside look at dreaming
A woman unreachable, in dream, drowning in the bed, fish-gasping, scissoring, while her man oblivious...
OFF DOVER: by Wayan; 2010/9/30, a dream-based mini-sestina (poetic experiment)
I'm biking over the English Channel. So mild & easy after the Greenland-to-New-York run...
OISIN: by Wayan; 2005-2013, 32 maps and images; a nondream virtual world
A model of a moon, half-Europa, half-Mars, with (intelligent?) life in seas under a skin of ice...
ORPHEA: by Wayan; 1995/12/27. Digital painting of a hole in our myths.
Krishna, Orpheus, Kokopelli...why are the mythic musicians all guys? Where's Orphea's head?
OTTER MEDICINE: by The-Fringe, a Crow healer, early 1850s; a shamanic dream with physical effects
I slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
A PILGRIM DREAMING: by Denise Levertov; 1977? a dream poem
A man I loved goes into the Jungian depths, but when his anima appears in the mirror-pool, his nerve fails...
PEAK ANGEL: by Wayan; 1995, dreamlike but nondream digital collage.
A naked angel came and perched on a rock, pointing at a vista that seemed both alpine and undersea...
PIPES AND TIME: by Wayan; 2017/12/21, a dream of the far future that came true next day
A timetraveler shows me a hotspring shrunk to a quarter of its old flow.
Valves? Pipes? Or drought, from climate change? This IS the future.
A day later, a local main breaks, and our water flow shrinks to a quarter of normal...
POOL ASSASSINS: by Wayan; 2017/3/1, a nightmare after hearing of a real assassination
Four women with guns attack me at a public pool. Trapped in the water, can I survive? Only by being ruthless...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
POOL OF TRUTH: by Katherine Metcalf Nelson; 1983/10/1; a dream of shamanic descent
Night. A massive crash on the highway. Bodies strewn. Sickened, I descend a spiral stair to the Pool
of Truth. It gives no answers. Women spout platitudes. I go on, in pain, down past the polar bears...
CAUTION: THE DEAD
PRESIDENTIAL TACO: by Robert Adams, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; a dream farce
I botched President Clinton's taco. And on the way home, I fell in the river.
Luckily, Jesse Jackson happened by and pulled me out, restoring my faith in...
PUFF TIDE: by Wayan; 1993/5/1, a nightmare on indulging rage and tears.
I'm swept off sea-rocks, as my scaly guardian watches calmly--letting me drown in the tears I shed...
CAUTION: DROWNING
PULL THE PLUG ON THIS WAR: by Rick Veitch; 1994 or before; a surreal dream
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 RIVER: by Kathleen Raine, between 1965 & '71; two mystical dream poems on dropping the ego
I tossed the crystal decanter of my self into the river, and watched it float away...
RIVER CROSSING: by Harriet Tubman; mid to late 1850s; a lifesaving intuition
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...
THE ROWAN: by Graham Greene; 1921, a possibly psychic nightmare.
The ship I was on going down in the Irish Sea. It was not till yesterday,
looking at an old paper, I saw about the sinking of the Rowan in the Irish sea...
SEA MASSAGE: by Wayan; 1995/10/3, a puzzling dreamtale.
I can fly and breathe water. So I fly into art-rich mansions, though
not to steal--I earn plenty from undersea massage...
SEA OF TIME: by Wayan; 1989/7/26. Digital sketch of astral dream.
I dreamed I was drowning in the Sea of Time, where dragons asked me questions.
Painful questions...
SHAMANIC CHEW-TOY: by Wayan; 2011/3/16; nested dreams of strange women
Compulsively honest spirit-women with waterjugs invade my friend's house.
I wake to find my girlfriend's obsessing on hair loss. To calm her, I babble about limb loss...
and wake again to find she was a dream too.
A SHELLFISH EPIPHANY: by Wayan; 1996/6/14, a spiritual dream.
Our family of Japanese pearldivers is cast away on an atoll. One day, lonely, scared, I cast away fear...
SIPHONIA: by Wayan; 30 p, 2006-14, a nondream virtual world, in progress; maps, tours
First, suck up 90% of Earth's seas. Now wait 90,000 years for life to adapt. The continents are now
Tibetan plateaus above steamy new Deeps, ruled by giant parrots, ravens and otters...
SIX DREAMS: by Jim Shaw; c.1994, a very busy night!
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...
THE SOLE FISHER OF THE EIGHTH NODE: by Wayan; 1986/9/25, a prescriptive dream.
The pier jutting into the sea of dreams has an 8th chakra at the end, where a lonely woman fishes for, um, sole...
A SQUID STRATEGY: by Wayan; 1997/10/7, a dream warning.
Giant squid start surfacing at popular beaches and eating people. Not the form of first contact we'd hoped...
CAUTION: YOU ARE LUNCH
THE STONE THE BUILDER REJECTED: by Wayan; 1998/10/3; plaster sculpture ca. 9" across.
I love curves, not the chunky forms of this machine-ruled world...
STORM OF HUGE RAINDROPS: by Albrecht Dürer; 1525/5/30, watercolor of a size-nightmare
The first drop struck about four miles away, with terrific force and thunder, breaking and drowning the land...
SULFUR GROTTO: by Wayan; dreamed 1988/8/30, a psychic genderbent rescue-dream
I'm a teenage girl diving for treasure. In an eerie coral grotto reeking of sulfur,
I spot a diver in trouble... and wake to find the grotto is real..
SURF THE SAN ANDREAS: by Wayan; 2008/8/21, 3 short dreampoems, Dreamverse #11
Through twin gates of dream--not ivory and horn any more, but fear and trust...
Three castles on the sea: a Mock Kremlin, a Ship of Toiletpaper, and a Ship of Brick and Beer...
A mad old surfer of the San Andreas Fault, impossibly riding earth-change...
SUTRO RUINS: by Wayan; 1996/8/28, pencil sketch of waking landscape, not a dream.
The ruins of the Sutro Baths in San Francisco were the setting for an otherworldly dream...
SWIMMER: by Wayan; 1992/4/15, a digital sketch of a daydream.
Swimming down among the tentacles didn't bother me. I wanted that ball. But I didn't see the BIG eye...
SWIMMER IN BLUE: by Wayan; 1984/4/26 drawing of recurring dream image.
I have recurring dreams of figures broken up by hair the color of the background...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
SWIMMING CATS: by Starvibes, 2012/1/20, a mysterious dream image
Tracking two cats at night, I watch amazed as they dive in and swim gracefully across a swimming pool...
THIEF OF DREAMS: by Wayan; 1996/11/29, a sexy soul-swap dream; a 22-page comic (or text w/pics)
I was a mermaid trying to find Count Coyote's stolen dreams, so I could marry my human girlfriend...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, LESBIAN MARRIAGE, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
THE THING ABOUT DREAMS: by Julia Wertz, a dream autobiography, 1980-2010
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
TITANIC IMAGE: by Graham Greene; 1912/4/14?, a child's nightmare as the Titanic sank
One image has remained with me for more than sixty years:
a man in oilskins bent double under the blow of a great wave...
TO SAVE HUMANITY: by Roz Chast, 2023 or before, a spit-swappin' dream
Worldwide drought. I have a mutation making me produce lots of saliva, so to keep
people alive, I drool into their open mouths. Gross, but it's take my drool or die...
CAUTION: UGH
THE TOOTH: by SAO (Shawn Allen O'Neal), 2003?, an epic, oracular, baffling dream
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...
TRISKELION: by Kristopher Saknussemm, c.1986, a surreal false-waking dream
Only up close do I see that the map of these mysterious continents is made of moths. I wake
in Polynesia. By the bed, in a jar, floats one of my hands. For no reason, I begin to cry...
TSUNAMI PERSEVERANCE: by Wayan, 2020/1/7, one of twin warning dreams
We flee a tsunami. Inland. Up a hill. Onto a roof. One by one, the flood plucks us away.
Long past hope, I climb a flagpole. As I cling to the very top and the mud rises to my lips...
CAUTION: GRIM PREDICTION
UNDER: by John Collings Squire, c.1917; a surreal dream-poem
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...
VAMPIRE LOVE: by Sarah Binkley; 2013/9/6, a near-drowning sex dream
I volunteered to meet him underground. He held me underwater and slammed into me. I nearly drowned, yet...
CAUTION: ROUGH SEX
WALL TO WALL WATER: by Larry Vigon; 2003/3/18; a surreal, beautiful dreamlet
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...
WAR IN THE RING: by Bruno Oliveira; May 2011, a happy nightmare
War, monsters, plague and bombs are just thrills spicing up
this city rising from a tropical sea on an alien world...
WATER BOOKS: by Marilyn Stablein; 1968, a dream while visiting Nepal... for six years
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...
WAX WALL, PUMA COMA: by Wayan; 2022/8/8, 3 surreal genderbent time-bent dreams
I'm a demon girl out to sabotage a pirate radio station by climbing a tall
wall of glowing wax, carrying a comatose mountain lioness on my back!
THE WEED: by Elizabeth Bishop; before 1946, a dream-poem on death/rebirth
I was dead. A weed grew from my heart; then two streams poured out--not
water or blood but experiences. I asked the weed what it was doing, and it said...
THE WELL: by Denise Levertov; 1960?; a dream-poem
I meet my own muse--the muse of all of us, perhaps--scooping water from a sacred well...
WERTZ!: by Wayan; 2023/10/14, a night of cartoonist-inspired dreams
After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream
Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
THE WHITE SUBMARINE: by Wayan; 1974/7/6, a dream of love and flood.
My girlfriend and I ride out the Great Flood in the White Submarine,
but there are romantic complications. Some things never change...
WHY ME?: by Karen Smith; 1991/7/22; nested flying/oracular/tragic dreams
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?
XANTHUS: by a client of Artemidorus, c.150 CE, a prodromal dreamlet
A man dreamed he was the River Xanthus at Troy. I interpreted it to mean he'd bleed for years, but not die of it...
"YOU'LL GROW OUT OF THAT": by Graham Donaldson, spring 1924, a rescue dream
Wading a river at night, I fall in. I'm drowning! But my friend Edward pulls
me out. "But Eddie, you're dead!" "No" he says. "You'll grow out of that!"...
ZEBRA RUN AND FLOW: by Alan Underwood, 2012/6/12, a scenic dreamlet
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!


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