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Habit, Custom, Tradition

Dreams of habits, customs and ruts you get stuck in. And personifications of your habits. Embarrassing dreams, mostly.

RELATED TOPICS: initiative - urges and impulses - oops! - repression - recurring dreams - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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BONK VERONICA: by Wayan; 1997/4/1, 9-page dream-comic on body image
The world's first all-bulemic band, Veronica and the Vomits, provokes a riot at our local punk club. So I go to
Anorexic Bootcamp where models learn self-defense under fire, as calories and fat jokes whiz by...
CAUTION: BARF, HORNY ANOREXIC, FOOD FIGHT
CLASSICAL BIRDS: by Anonymous #58, 1979 or before, as told by Gayle Delaney; a wish-granted dream
I was tired and sad and mired in routine. I asked for a dream to restore my soul.
I found myself under a tree as a chorus of gorgeous birds sang classical music...
CO-DRIVE: by Wayan; 2008/6/24, a dream of escape... through cross-gender cooperation?
I escape a dark cell, cram with friends into a car and co-drive to LA, steering along with a woman in my lap...
CAUTION: EITHER SEX SYMBOLISM, OR SOMETHING MORE SUBVERSIVE
D, D, D: by Wayan; 1988/2/1, trance-poem during automatic writing (done to rewire my brain)
I always wrote some letters strangely--my 'd' was nearly illegible. So I set out to retrain my deep motor skills...
DALMATIAN MARE: by Wayan; 1987/8/22; a dream on hiding and showing off.
I dreamed of South American musical intrigue in a grand hotel. Enter a polka-dot shapeshifter...
DISSECTING PESSIMISM: by Wayan; 1997/4/14, a stubbornly educational nightmare.
A serial killer stalks our office, but our bosses deny it and do nothing.
I kill him. He revives--over and over! A robot I have to disassemble...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
EXPECTING CHANGE: by Wayan; 1998/8/20, a dream on history.
A woman explains why the subjective rate of change has slowed--we EXPECT life to be different...
FIRE-CATS: by Wayan; 1981/10/10; twin dream-poems on over-discipline
For mere disobedience, I EXECUTE a forest-fire-fighting cat! So next
I'm trapped in a security-obsessed job; how do I like it? I flee...
FOOT ON THE GAS: by Wayan; 1982/3/16, a creepy little warning dream.
My car's idling too fast. After hours of diagnosis, I notice a foot's on the gas! But not my foot...
FOX ON THE TRAIN: by Wayan; 2015/1/9, an advisory dream painted & poemed
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
GHOSTS PUSH TOWARD THE SUICIDE DOOR: by Wayan, 1997/8/7, a nightmare that wants a break.
I live in a haunted house where ghosts push you to suicide. But they're as tired of it as I am...
THE HAUNTED CODE: by Wayan; 2017/6/16, a warning dream about denying history
A mail-order warehouse in Kansas sends ghost-infected software out, causing mayhem.
But less than when Kansas exported the killer flu 100 years ago...
CAUTION: DISSES KANSAS & CAPITALISM, FOR GOOD HISTORICAL REASONS
HORSE THIEVES: by Plenty Coups, early 1870s?; a practical psychic or subliminal dream
Thieves stole 100 of our horses. The tracks suggested white men, but that night
my dream Helpers declared them Sioux. We tracked them across Montana...
I TURNED OFF JESUS: by Chris Baker; 2011/2/18; an "oops!" dream
Playing Mario Kart, I stray into a darkness where Earth floats, burning.
And then Jesus speaks up! But I carelessly hit the OFF button...
IT'S A DEAD MAN'S PARTY: by Wayan; 1988/10/18, a nightmare of identity.
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.
LOVE DAY: by Wayan; 1989/3/21, a sitcom dream.
On Love Day you can't mock anyone's come-on, of course; but in the bar "Cheers", Carla's mad at Diane...
CAUTION: PRO-BIGAMY?
MARVIN, CRASH: by Rick Veitch; Feb 1974; a predictive/warning dream
My "friends" pull me away from the girl of my dreams, push booze & pot at me,
and won't even try to climb the rope to success. But Marvin saves Evel Knievel
from a motorcycle crash. Sounds good--until, ten years later, I hear how Marvin died...
CAUTION: GRIM AFTERMATH
MY NINE SELVES: by Wayan, 2023/7/18; a dream hinting at a new phase in life
Strangers ask me about my nine selves, and I find I know exactly what they mean!
The last three are new and odd--calm quiet states that heighten paranormal senses...
CAUTION: MYSTICAL
NOT OUR HAWAI'I: by Wayan; 2008/8/20, a dream poem; Dreamverse #10
My sister & I swim round a weirdly shrunken Pacific. Near Fiji, we blunder too close to the drain...
AN OUTGROWN BED: by Wayan; 1990/10/14, a dream of growth and time.
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
OVERLAY: by Wayan; 1984/2/11, 1995/8/26, and 2004/9/11, 3 dreams shape a 9-page comic on living with ESP
Dreams of translucent fairies, centaurs, robots & gnomes prompt me to cartoon
on transparent overlays to show how dreamworlds overlay ours...
OVERWHELMED YOSEMITE DAD: by Wayan; 1998/9/25, a warning dream.
Mom's vanished, and our writer/bohemian dad's caring for us
alone now. But he's barely coping. And he's me...
PARANOID HABITS: by Wayan; 1994/10/4, a hypnotic diagnosis.
A hypnotist elicits a personality inside me who says he obliges my paranoia by giving me weird luck...
PENTALEMMA: by Wayan; 2002/3/10 to 2006/5/1?, a 13-page nondream improv-comic on deep goals
Hypnotized in therapy, I saw AT LEAST five competing goals tugging at me like gravity fields.
Naturally I drew them. Come tour the Inner Solar System of our desires...
CAUTION: NUDITY (BODY, HEART, BRAIN, SOUL)
PERSONAL CHAOS THEORY: by Wayan; 1994/12/4, a spiritual math dream.
My life is a mess, so I take a class on the four flavors of chaos, and find my Strange Attractors are shifting...
POWER OFF: by Wayan; 1997/6/17, a dream of brainwashing.
Captain Kirk (Starfleet, retired) saves us all from terrorists at a powerplant, but he forgot something...
PRECAMBRIAN SLEUTH, or, MURDER BY ATMOSPHERE: by Wayan; 2013/6/2, a warning dream-poem.
I'm a detective sent to a research station two billion years ago. The ancient atmosphere isn't just anoxic, but deadly...
PSYCHO-EGG: by Wayan; 1994/8/31, a diagnostic dreamlet.
I'm shown a crystal egg with a model of my mind in it. The mapping is unmistakable. How embarrassing!:
RAZOR GHOST: by Wayan; 1974/5/5, a nightmare posing a problem.
A man slowly walled in by neighbors till he died, is now a mad, murderous ghost.
And he's me! Can I exorcise MYSELF?
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
THE RULES OF THE GAME: by Wayan; 1992/11/30, a Gestaltish dream.
The Inner Theater. I'm duelling someone who keeps changing the rules. But so can I... can we make a deal?
SATYR: by Wayan; 1999/4/1, a frustrating wish-fulfillment dream (yes, both).
I'm a faun, the oracle for a Greek village. But my predecessor set up rituals I want to change...
CAUTION: SEX, PAGANISM, SELF-SATYRE
SEX THERAPY: by Wayan; 1998/5/18, a dream on the messiness of healing.
Both of us were abused as kids. Sex is hard. So we go to a therapist who has us act out sex on the floor...
CAUTION: SEX, ABUSE ISSUES
SHADOWS ADMIRABLE: by Wayan; 1993/9/28, a dream on dreams.
A dream-lecturer says Shadows aren't just what we hate or fear, but what we admire yet see as "not us"...
CAUTION: IDEAS
SHEVEK'S TIME-SLIP: by Wayan; 1996/10/14, a chronohomeostatic dream.
Shevek invents time-travel and discreetly alters the past. But the future alters
Shevek's present, to undo his changes! Who's sabotaging him? Or... WHAT?
SLEEPING BEAUTY: by Wayan, 1999/8/22, a warning dream on quitting too soon.
A girl lies dreaming in the street; no one can wake her. At last I yell
"Face it, she's dead!" But is she? I never try a fairytale kiss...
SNOW by Nancy Price; 1948, a false-waking dream about living vs survival
Lost in the snow, I must give my baby to a stranger or let my dad put him in a box, safe, forever...
SOCK PUPPETS OF THE GODS: by Dee and Wayan; 1994/4/14. Parallel shamanic dreams!
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
SONG by Nancy Price; Nov. or Dec. 1948, a transcendent music dream
Numb, sunk in a trance, I only woke when I broke through a wall to light and magical birdsong...
STEP THIRTEEN: by Wayan; 1997/7/8, a rebellious dreamtale.
Two big spoiled realities pester me to take care of them. At last I go on shamanic strike...
HER STINGY DAD: by Wayan; 1998/7/29, a dreamtale on parental ambition-stunting
A single dad loves his daughter, but is so pathologically cheap he's teaching her an unintended lesson...
CAUTION: CHILD NEGLECT
A STIRRING FAILURE: by Robert's wife, pre-1961, a precise predictive nightmare
I dreamed a small plane crashed and burned, but also how the pilot
might be saved. I asked my husband to direct the firetruck...
THE STUTTER: by Wayan; 1995/9/7, a religious dreamtale.
Half our religion-founders were just one guy, repeating till he got it right. Practice makes perfect!
THE TAO OF DENNIS THE MENACE: by Wayan; 1986/4/17, a dream of a wise mentor.
Chased by purple squid from Jupiter, I seek refuge with a guru the Goddess recommends for me...
THE TAPED WOUND: by Wayan; 1997/10/7, a dream on old tapes...
My wound's taped up, but hurts bad. I peel off the bandage. Nothing! Gone. So I check my other body...
TAROT: MEDIA MINDFUCK (2 of swords): by Wayan; Tarot card, 3x5", summer 1978.
The traditional figure is blindfolded, holding two crossed swords. I used crossed TV antennae...
THUMBSUCKER!: by a patient of William Hammond, c.1868, an epic comic taste dream
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
TIAMAT'S REBELLION: by Wayan; 1988/1/1, a dream about neoteny.
That day: I read of a young healer in rural Indonesia harassed by the local mullah.
That night: I dream she leads a revolution on a starship against her elders...
TITAN, or, SATURN'S WEDDING BAND: by Wayan; 1981/3/22, a billion-mile roadtrip dream.
Our band's touring Titan. Road trip blues: diners, feuds, romances. Have I been chasing the wrong girl?
MY TUTELARY UNCLE: by Wayan; 1993/5/28, a shamanic dream.
I'm half Anglo, half Kwakiutl. My uncle the shaman died,
but he still wants to teach me his medicine...
THE 1200-STEP PROGRAM: by Wayan; 1987/12/17, an illustrated dreamtale.
I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones...
CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
UNICORN PROFESSOR: by Wayan, 2024/4/7, a Star Trek dream
DAY: the crew of the Enterprise sings about love & career(ism). DREAM: I'm taking a test at Starfleet Academy.
But my teacher's a gorgeous unicorn, & my answers are filled in! I try to change one but my eraser breaks...
CAUTION: MOCKS LA BERGE'S LUCID DREAMWORK? NUDE PROFESSOR, TOO
THE UNMAKING OF A DANCER: by Wayan; 1994/5/22, a journal extract on dance and health.
Ballerina Joan Brady quit, but ten years later, returned. Her body rejuvenated! So what can MINE do?
WASTE: by Wayan; 1990/5/7, a desert singles poem, 11 images.
A road trip through New Mexico mutates into a tour of my relationship disasters...
WHAT MEN HIDE BEHIND: by Wayan; 1992/11/30, an alarming comic dream
The real pursuit of happiness: she pursues me, and I run in shame and hide! But she's persistent...
WHY PROGRESS IS SLOW: by Wayan; 1991/1/26 & 2/16, twin timetravel dreams
Time-hopping through centuries, I learn how slow
deep social change is. How we cling to the old horrors!
WINDBAG!: by Wayan; 1982/7/24, ink, dream drawing
I didn't even think of "windbag" since it didn't talk a bit.
That bag was all action--full of flying magic...
WOMBERS: by Wayan; 1997/8/23, a journal entry on peace-at-any-price personalities
Nancy Friday describes a kind of weak guy disturbingly like me--I think chronic illness has...
YEATS: by Wayan; 1990/1/1, a nondream poem wrestling with Yeats's dreams & visions
Our dilemma is, now that we have the power to get what we want... what exactly was it we wanted?
ZOMBIE RUSH-HOUR: by Wayan; 1993/12/14, a predictive nightmare.
I'm in an apartment co-op in Silicon Valley where people share their skills--till rush hour begins...


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