Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed...
A quarrel between psychic adepts heats up to a war,
thawing Pluto. What will the ice-tribes wish for?
I was at a dream conference and brought up a recurrent theme
that others hadn't mentioned: multiple antlerlike branchings...
I'm a cartoon flamingo; with my sisters, the frog and the rabbit-squirrel, I meet our Maker--the cartoonist...
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
Our teams search through fountains and pavilions, finding & trading the glowing stones.
None of the magic makes me go lucid, but as we sail toward the finish line...
Plums float through the autumn air, sending us airmail kisses. If we'll accept delivery...
Squirrel Girl and I try to find a private room, but Hal the mad computer in 2001
spies on us and our spaceship captain orders us to clean the ion tubes...
CAUTION: SQUIRREL NUDITY
A graduation parade has a papier-maché cowboy (hollow ego?), a giant
rampaging stallion (unconscious), and a mama cat who calms him (anima)...
Our Star Trek team explores alien ruins covered in cat scratches. Or are they writing? I uncover
Roman letters, Arabic numerals, I Ching trigrams, Chinese characters, Chumash pictographs.
Reading them turns us into cats! One cat lays eggs, but two more try to smash them...
CAUTION: CAT-EGG VANDALISM
I visit Shangri-La, the ancient Tibetan valley of refuge. Unicorns graze. We
drive around on car-sheep. Robin Hood rebels against the Priestess of Gloom.
Pilgrims in silly gauze robes arrive. Or are they just tourists? Oh, well. Toga party!
CAUTION: GAUZE ROBES, NUDE UNICORNS
I'm Liza Doolittle on Mars. With Mr. Wells's Time Machine. Lost, in fact. Can I get home? Should I?
DREAM: Millions of birds were at war, tearing one another apart. It was out of control, thousands and thousands...
DAY: Pinochet's coup took Chile. Alerted by the dream, Painemal went into hiding and lived--unlike thousands...
CAUTION: EXTRAPOLATIVE OR PSYCHIC?
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...
My fiancé and I got along impossibly well. I asked my dreams "Can this last?"
I dreamed we were two redwoods, happy next to one another for centuries...
I dreamed at least weekly I had to view a slide showing something wrong with my fetus.
I assumed the dreams expressed doubts about motherhood--until my miscarriage...
I asked my dreams if I should leave my alcoholic wife. I dreamt we were conjoined flames, green and blue.
I awoke hopeful, and knew I'd stay. For eight months my wife struggled. Now she's been sober five years...
DREAM: I'm in the Arctic facing a hostile mob. I insist "I'm dreaming; you can't hurt me." They try!
I look down at my body, stuck full of hatchets, and say "See?" They slink off, looking sheepish...
TWO DAYS LATER: I'm in northern England. A reporter snaps "Dreams won't help the miners..."
I DREAM I'm in the mansion of my favorite film producer, Otto Preminger. Then I learn it's my home!
I WAKE realizing I'm the producer of my dreams--not some impersonal, instinctive Unconscious...
When I try to play the piano in public I get sabotaged. At last I see a child who says she can't play while she's in pain...
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
I ask my dreams to evaluate my current relationship. I dream I'm vomiting up big maggots, and a mirror
shows smaller maggots eating one eye! In dream group, I ask the maggots who they are, and they say...
CAUTION: GROSS, BUT POSITIVE UNDER THE HORROR SKIN
At college, my sheet music arrives from home, but vanishes when I try to play--or the piano does...
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...
At thirteen, I dreamed a van crashed right at the spot where my best friend always met me after school.
The next day we went to see what'd happen. I suggested we stand across the road just to be safe...
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...
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...