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William S. Burroughs

Dreams from William S. Burroughs's My Education: a Book of Dreams (1995). The title's half-ironic: see his dream My Education. The compilation contains entries going back decades, but few are dated or in sequence. Not his thing.

Also here are others' dreams with cameo appearances by Burroughs, such as Kerouac's Like Notre Dame and my own Tiger Tall.

Burroughs was in some ways an advanced dreamworker--often lucid, often flying, occasionally predictive, with magical transformations (especially cat to human or human to cat)--but his dream are mostly set in what he calls the Land of the Dead--gray jumbled cities full of guns, drugs, cops and bureaucrats, where he's lost, hungry, unsure where to go and where he belongs. Yet he says (p.131):

"I am by and large a very happy man. People and critics like to think of me in despair because they hate to think of anyone whose way of life they disapprove of as being happy."
Maybe it's just that his expectations for life are limited. In one undated dream (p.142) he finds himself saying:
"When we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living... it may only be a few seconds... a few seconds of significant action, out of a lifetime."
Curiously, this echoes a writer who superficially seems his polar opposite, but was equally into dreams: Ursula Le Guin. In The Lathe of Heaven (1971) a Dream Machine floods the world with surreal, overlapping realities--pure Burroughs!--until unheroic dreamworker George Orr slogs into the heart of it and turns it off. Later he confides in an alien turtle two meters tall (as one does):
"I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button."

"You have lived well." the Alien said.

RELATED TOPICS: compare to contemporaries Nancy Price or Jack Kerouac--both happier overall, despite Burroughs-worthy nightmares like Nancy's Let there be Light or Jack's Vulture People - dreamwork in general - See also: the full LIST OF TOPICS currently indexed.

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BONGO: by William S. Burroughs, 1990/8/6; a nondream synchonicity
All day I've had a stupid song from 1948 in my head--"Bongo Bongo Bongo." Then I buy Metzger's Dogs.
Start reading. Page 16: "Gordon started singing "Bongo Bongo Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo"...
CATS FORESEEN: by William S. Burroughs, 1991/12/22; a predictive dream
I dream of huge, weirdly marked & colored cats all over. They don't bother my cat Fletch as I expected. Next day,
I read the Audubon Book of Animals and recognize these patterns & colors.The flying fox even looks like Fletch...
CAUTION: WILL ANNOY ESP SKEPTICS
THE DAY AFTER: by William S. Burroughs, btw. 1984 & '94; a black-humor dream poem
I'm in Lawrence, Kansas, watching a TV ad for hemorrhoid cream that won't solve your nuclear war problems...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE; ADVERTISING; HUMAN EXTINCTION
GROTESQUE: by William S. Burroughs, c.1986; a primal dream on emotional abuse
Genteel gay guests first humiliate then torture their hosts--the rich but sick wife, then the weak, gay, parasitic husband...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, MISOGYNY, CRUELTY, SHIT
HEADSHRINKER: by William S. Burroughs, c. 1990? A dream of rage against liars
A CIA man trying to infiltrate a revolutionary group flunks a lie-detector test, so the Headshrinker...
CAUTION: REAL HEADSHRINKER
LIKE NOTRE DAME: by Jack Kerouac, early April? 1953, a bizarre dream
As the train pulled into the cathedral William Burroughs and I saw amid the pews
the Hound of the Baskervilles transform into a great black bird and fly...
THE MONKEY'S HEAD: by William S. Burroughs, c. 1990? A dream of wishes gone wild.
I find a magical monkey's head. It grants wishes--too many, everyone's, they cancel, they clash, it's a wish-flood...
CAUTION: ASSUMES WISHES WORK
MY EDUCATION: by William S. Burroughs, 1959-94, a recurrent dream theme or mantra.
At the airport, I'm told I can't take my flight; I must finish my education first. Decades have passed,
and I still dream of borders and officials who won't let me go until they decide I've finished my...
SIT ON A CLOUD: by William S. Burroughs, 1990?, a big-city flying dream
A thousand feet above New York. I meet two naked angels who say it's their first flight, but I
got no fear of falling anymore; got no body to fall. Sit on a cloud. Just me and my shadow...
TIGER TALL: by Wayan; 1992/7/3, a marathon dream.
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...


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