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Initiative versus Passivity

Or is its opposite... Procrastination?

Taking the initiative in your dreams (or life!) means active decision-making--choice--but often real initiative requires more than grasping opportunities presented--it means going off in an unexpected direction, willing change. Personally I find this as challenging as lucid dreaming--and as rewarding. Try it! Follow a whim or two. In dreams? Or awake, I don't care! In either world, its not easy to charge off in a new direction against others' expectations... let alone your own.

RELATED TOPICS: lucid dreams - opportunities grasped - opportunities lost - urges & hunches - willpower - play - freedom - dares - life-paths - assertion - self-defense - guides - 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.


THE AIR BURUNDI PAINTINGS: by Wayan; 7 illus., 2007/1/20, a dream of art & courage
Weird paintings cover a hill town in Africa, demanding I paint them when I wake.
Paintings on courage, flight... and defying tradition.
AMBITION: by Wayan; 1994/5/25, an odd little dreamlike real-life experience.
My intuition led me to a panel discussion of women artists, just to hear one single sentence...
ANIMANGEL: by Wayan, 1983/10/1-2010/7/22! An ink portrait-poem of my clashing guardian angels
My loud, spiky, tailed angel of change and potential, and
my calm, skeptical devil of gradualism--a star-nosed mole...
BALANCE?: by Wayan, 1984/10/10, a dream about dreams.
Silky, my sentient starship, gives me a scolding about playing it safe...
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...
BAR BET: by Wayan; 1982/4/30, a dream-quest on not settling for less.
On a bar bet, we seek God. We reach the Isles of the Blessed, but they're complacent. We want the wild
God, the real God, the Bad Taste God. Onward, pagan questers! Because we want to win our bet.
CAUTION: LAZY-ASS ANGELS
THE BERKSHIRE BEASTS: by J.B. Priestley, 1927, a failed shamanic initiatory dream
As I tour an English estate, wrinkled green elephantine creatures 20' tall peer at me through huge spectacles.
I'm told "they're only kept now for their singing." I want to hear, but my guide's bored; I let her drag me off...
CAUTION: CONFORMITY STIFLES SHAMANISM
THE BLACK EGG: by Wayan; 1999/3/25, a comic psychic dream.
My crazy friend Wayne goes bowling for busses with a black egg. Wait! Crazy? Or... predictive?
CAUTION: GEORGIA O'KEEFFE BEHAVES DISGRACEFULLY
BLOW 'EM UP!' and POKER FACES: by Wayan; 1992/7/2; two dreams on denial and sabotage.
Would the Revolutionaries in the Basement really blow up the Committee of Idealists upstairs?
CAUTION: MAD BOMBERS! WELL, GRUMPY ONES
BLUE SOUP, NO SPARK: by Wayan; 1985/6/1, an epic dream on outgrowing God
A visit to a world where they fear blue soup ends in death and resurrection, so I'm pissed at my boss--God.
CAUTION: DEATH, REBIRTH, SACRILEGE... JOB BURNOUT
BREAK FREE: by Emily Joy; 2006/5/11, an encouraging dream on the price of safety.
I search for family skeletons, but then a talking plant on TV inspires me to seek the sun and fly free.
But certain velociraptors and barbarian swordswomen object...
CAUTION: DUELS, FISH ABUSE, THE F-WORD
BREAK THE SCRIPT: by Wayan; 1993/6/19-20, two advisory dreams
A sexy encounter with two robotic girls hopping a night train outside Portland...
CAUTION: THREESOME
THE BROADS: by Wayan; 1978/11/19, a dream on self-image distortion.
We all wear magic beltbuckles. Twist one--your body stretches from squat to willowy. Except mine...
CAUTION: SEX, BODY-IMAGE DISTORTION
THE BURBS: by Wayan; 1990/7/1, a true-story poem.
A perfectionist gardener builds perfect planterboxes while his seedlings starve. And so I left the burbs...
CASSANDRA AND OTTER: by Wayan; 1982/3/14, a reassuring nightmare.
I take Cassandra's prophecies seriously, but she can't make sense of my future.
So we go see an otter with a crystal ball. But he's installed a new security system...
A COLONY IN THE HOLLOW HILLS: by Wayan; 1997/8/14, a dream of responsibility.
Hong Kong's not devolving to China, but to Faerie. As governor, I have to defend human rights, so...
COMPLIANCE: by Wayan; 1984/12/20 & 2021/1/9, twin dreams 36 years apart showing cryptomnesia
2021: I dream I'm confessing to friends how I'm over-compliant. I wake, and start transcribing my
1984 journal. Turn the page and find a dream of a horny stallion who's disturbingly over-compliant...
CAUTION: KINKY STALLION
CRYSTAL AND GUNSEL: by Wayan; 1997/7/2, a nightmare--psychic or not?
Gunsel kills my friend Crystal in a flaming aircar crash. But that's not enough--he comes back, and...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
DAWN SAYS 'SCULPT MASTURBATION': by Wayan; 1997/8/3; an advisory dream
I dreamed my sculptor friend Dawn insisted I sculpt a girl really,
um, relaxing. Took me a mere 13 years to act on the dream!
CAUTION: SKETCHED & SCULPTED MASTURBATION
DIRECT ACTION SAVES THE SHIP: by Alder; 2006/11/5; a dream-fable with instant replay.
A bomb's planted on our ship! But when a teen finds it, rather than fetch a responsible adult...
DISTRACTUS: by Wayan, 2004/5/5, a comic sexy diagnostic dream... that baffled me.
Sex in a meadow? A protest march distracts us. But a friend warns me of a disease, Coitus Distractus...
CAUTION: (DISTRACTED) SEX
DOME: by Wayan; 1999/1/31, a dream peeling off a lie.
I'm actress Nicole Kidman, clinging to the dome of City Hall like King Kong, ripping it to shreds! Why?
CAUTION: VANDALISM, REVERSE SEXISM, EXHIBITIONISM
THE DOOMED TRAIN: by Anna Kingsford; Nov. 1876, a galvanizing political nightmare
We were on a train headed for a crash. No one was in the engine. Rather than jump, my friend insisted we try...
DRAGGED TO HER HEART'S DESIRE: by Wayan; 1997/9/16, a dream with a lesson.
The friends of a touchy aviator have to kidnap her just to give her a present... and WHAT a present...
DREAM MILKING: by Wayan, 2000/6/30, a dream warning of overwork... but awake or asleep?
After a hard day getting a "free" bed, I dream my milker comes to drain my dreams.
Wait...did I agree to this? Or does milking drain objections, too?
CAUTION: CREEPY
DREAMING TO SURVIVE: by Christoph Gassmann, 2001/8/13 & 2003/9/2: two lifesaving dreams
A spot on my elbow triggers a dream of being in a suicide clinic, getting the injection, starting to die. Yet
for two years, I put off having that spot checked! Only after a second warning dream do I go in to find...
DREAMISH HEART: by Wayan; 1983/8/15ish; a poem about a subtle way to sabotage dreamwork.
I write, draw, admire & carefully interpret my dreams, but do I ACT on their advice? Not so much...
THE DREAMSUIT: by Wayan; 1992/7/12, a dream on unconscious programming.
An experimental helmet knocks me out. I'm groggy, miserable, till I learn what it did to others...
EMISSARY: by Wayan; 2000/3/22, an astral dreamtale.
I signed a prenatal agreement for weird, uneven luck to turn my life toward art and spirit.
I want to broaden it, but I've lost the contract! So my spirit wife Silky sets out to find it...
ERÉNDIRA: by Wayan; dreamed 1984/10/3, a grotesque predictive dream
1: Mimes stage an Orgy For Peace. Shy, I wait my turn. Should've run off with that girl eyeing me!
2: My friend Diane says "Men are selfish!" I pop her safety valve; she vents a great cloud of rage...
Two days later: I go see the film Eréndira; it's full of scenes & lines from my dream...
CAUTION: CHARITY PROSTITUTION BY MIMES
EVOLUTION'S DULL: by Wayan; 1997/7/22, a science rant.
Evolution is like baseball--a game of inches, efficiency, constraints. Surely we can do better....
CAUTION: CONTAINS THOUGHT
FACULTY WIFE: by Wayan; 1998/1/6, a sexy but disorienting dream.
I'm a faculty wife bored out of my mind until two students have sex in my yard. I ignore HIM and jump HER...
CAUTION: SEX
FAIRY WIFE: by Wayan; 1985/1/17, an epic dream of love and choice.
A fairy woman and a mortal man? Can't work! They're flighty, we're crude. Doomed, right?
Well, some people are so sure of it they decide to help things along a bit. Or a lot...
FALL INTO FEAR: by Brenda Ferrimani; 2001/9/12, a 9/11 nightmare transformed by lucidity
I’m falling into endless darkness. I feel like screaming, but then I remind
myself I’m dreaming. “What is for me here?” I demand. “SHOW ME!” I begin
rising toward the stars. Huge metal discs with alien writing rise with me...
FETAL PAUSE: by Wayan; 2008/8/31, a nightmare-poem, Dreamverse #17
As I write a sad sex dream, a madman curls up fetally in the road outside my window. I'm slow to call 9-1-1, and...
FIRST DATE: by Wayan; 1991/10/20, a true story.
I have weird, bad luck around dating. Finally I go on a picnic with Page, and the Great Fire begins...
FIRST DREAMFLIGHT: by Wayan; 1969/11/11, two dream-results from my first dreamwork experiment.
I never flew in my dreams. I felt cheated. So one day I set out to CREATE dream-flight...
FISHERGIRLS: by Wayan; 2.6M, 42 illus.; 1996/7/15; a sexy dream epic.
I had an epic dream lasting subjective weeks--a true other life. It wasn't Earth and we weren't human.
I was a teenage lemur, sailing with two friends into unknown waters--a rite of passage. One night,
my friends curled round me, I saw I didn't WANT to pass the test, be declared a woman, marry, and have pups.
I loved my girl friends. In a world lacking the very word, I was groping toward queerdom.
Sailing into unknown waters! "Here be dragons," the old maps say. And they were right...
2600K loads slowly? Try it in parts: 1: HOME, 650K, 2: VOYAGE, 1200K, 3: BACK 750K.
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, QUEER TEEN ANGST, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
FLOATING WOLF AND BUTTERFLY: by Wayan; 2010/12/21; a furry advisory dream
The city museum's new levitating sculpture shows a space reef explored by
a floating wolf who needs no spacesuit--vacuum adapted!
FLY WITH ME?: by Wayan; 2024/1/7; a flying dream of course! But an odd one.
DAY: I research a weird Salvador Dalí dream-painting mingling, flight, tigers and sex.
DREAM: I flirt with a talking cat. Want her to fly with me. But she wants something earthier...
FLYING TO SAFETY: by JahaRa2010, c.1982, a dream of flight & teaching flight
Our group's being hunted. We flee into a cave. A gulf ahead that we can't jump. We have to fly.
I know how, and I teach the kids among us quickly enough, but the adults are scared to try...
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?
FRIEND-RING: by Wayan; 2017/1/6, a dream of divine intervention--My Little Pony style
I'm a horse chosen by the gods to join a Friend-Ring--a group mind. That's great for
the street crazies I get to help heal. Not so great for me, injected with madness...
CAUTION: CRITIQUES THE CULT OF FRIENDSHIP
GENNADIUS: by Gennadius, ca. 415 CE, apparently the first recorded lucid dream
Gennadius re-dreams a previous dream, helping him see he's dreaming. His guide points out spiritual implications...
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...
GIRAFFE CAMOUFLAGE: by Wayan; 2020/9/1, a dream of the anti-closet?
A human and a talking giraffe fall in love. But some hunters still shoot animal people.
So he camouflages her with paint. Bright paint. Now she's more visible than ever!
Not that I can criticize his eccentricities. I'm in love with a unicorn songwriter...
CAUTION: FURRYPHILIA
FROM GLIDING TO FLIGHT: by Wayan; 1993/11/15, a gradualistic dream.
Hypnotherapy is hopeless with these blind architects flopping all over the cafe, but my flying has improved...
GRAMPA HAS SPOKEN: by Wayan; 1989/11/26, an oracular dream.
In a worldwide junkyard full of warring spooks, I finally meet the one whose message I need to hear...
GRAVITREE: by Wayan; 2008/3/21, a character-evaluation dream.
Just singing about the antigravitree lightens me. I bound around town. But then I find a diseased antigravitree is
holding me down. It's become a gravitree! Gotta clear out that deadwood, no matter how messy, if I want to fly...
THE GREAT PEACE: by George Antheil; early 1922; two predictive dreams that change a pianist's life
I dream it's after a great war; I hear the music I must write, and meet the girl I must marry...
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...
A HAND AT CARDS: by Loomis C. Johnson; around Dec. 1916, a predictive dream.
I dreamt of a surreal poker hand where one card changed to create a full house. Next weekend, I was losing when...
HEADING FOR A FALL: by Wayan; 1993/11/2, a dream of drastic shortcuts.
I crash my car on the way to therapy. I ask my dream why. And it tells me! Deliberate, but not suicidal...
HER OWN WEAPON: by Wayan; 1983/8/31, a poltergeist-therapy dream.
A woman says she's being stalked, but it's her own poltergeist! Her therapist makes her reach for it...
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
HOLY ZEN MONK: by Wayan; 1978/4/24, a dream of suicide as political protest
I'm a Zen monk riddled with holes from a weird disease the government denies
is real. So as a protest, I stand naked atop a wall and let the air-sharks take me...
CAUTION: SURREAL SUICIDE
I SWEAR by Nicholas, as told to Gayle Delaney, c.1988; a milestone dream
I was in front of the gods on Mt Olympus or in Valhalla. I was scared,
but swore an oath to follow my passions and no longer play it safe...
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...
IMPERSONAL ORGY: by Wayan; 1997/9/18, a temptation dream--or an un-temptation dream?.
At the beach, my friends start a sleepy anonymous orgy... I'm single and frustrated, but is this what I want?
CAUTION: SEX
IN A REHEARSAL ROOM: by Wayan; 1982/10/20, a sexy dreamlet on shyness.
I dreamed my fears faded like ghosts, as we made love in the rehearsal room. But invisible is not gone...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX
IN THE STAR; 1988/9/12 by Wayan; an epic, out-of-body, intrastellar quest-dream
I tour the heart of a red supergiant, where dreaming souls explore
their fears and heart's desires, unconstrained by solid matter...
CAUTION: SWEDENBORGIAN VISION, UNICORN NUDITY
IN WOMEN'S PRISON: by Wayan; 1994/7/23, a dream of faith.
A woman in prison loves her counselor, but she's a barely literate hooker--she knows he won't love her back...
THE INVESTOR DREAMS A WOLF: by Wayan; 1983/10/30, a dream poem.
My dream characters aged and tamed until they sit in a genteel Victorian flat. Then a wolf rappels in...
IT WASN'T EASY: by Wayan; 1983/2/24, a dream of escaping my family's unrealism
An Arabian prince kidnaps my girlfriend and me. We eventually escape his flying palace, but she gets trapped in
Victorian underwear, while I escape feuding politicians by turning myself into a truck tire. NOT a smart move...
CAUTION: BOGUS VICTORIAN SEX-EUPHEMISMS
JACKPOT: by Catshall; 2007/5/29. A dream on sex, art and change--a flood of change!
How did my bondage dream turn into a slot-machine jackpot? And what kind of change is pouring out?...
CAUTION: (CON)SENSUAL BONDAGE
KICK HER: by Wayan; 1994/8/9, a gameshow nightmare.
I'm a blonde gameshow bimbo. Each week, I'm beaten up. Ha ha ha! But my bruises are real. At last, I...
CAUTION: GAMESHOW FROM HELL
LAMIA by Wayan, 1988/11/1 with a nightmare by John Ruskin, 1869/11/1
I ask my dreams about sex, and get... sex on a beach with a sea-serpent girl--a lamia. But she gets queasy--
landsick! Too hot for her up here. Help her back in the sea. What a contrast with Ruskin's lamia nightmare...
CAUTION: SCALY SEX
THE LEMON SEA: by Wayan; 1982/2/22, a dream warning.
I wake up as someone else. I go through her working day, till Captain Kirk comes to take me to...
LION-MEN: by Wayan; 1995/7/9, an eye-opening dreamlet.
I'm a traveling Zen warrior talking to a circus girl in a barn. Four guys enter--and my life changes forever.
THE M9: by David Parkinson, 1940; a dream-designed invention.
Parkinson dreamed his new telephone device got added to an anti-aircraft gun. He told his dream;
guns with M9 units turned out to be so accurate it gave the British hope against the Luftwaffe...
MAN OVERBOARD: by Sir Stephen King-Hall; 1916, a lifesaving premonition acted on
I was officer of the watch in the Southampton. I knew that as we passed an islet a mile ahead, a man would fall overboard...
MASSAGE: by Wayan; 1994/3/31, an advisory dreamlet.
Sit on a bench and massage a total stranger. But soon it's not just a massage: a MESSAGE...
CAUTION: SEX
MEGALITHIC BREAKOUT: by Wayan, 2019/8/29; a half-lucid dream that needed to be
I'm a kid imprisoned in an empty stone castle. Squeeze through a stone slit, and prepare to drop ten feet
down the face of a great stone gate. But I go lucid, and my dream and waking body-senses conflict...
THE MEGARA INN: by an Arcadian Greek c.200 BCE; two dreams that don't prevent a murder but do solve it
A traveler dreams his friend's attacked, but he ignores it. Next he dreams his friend begs him to at least avenge him...
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...
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN: by Wayan; 1992/9/5-6, a literary/diagnostic dream.
I'm in a tribe of post-Crash kids with psychic powers, trying to keep nukes from rising again...
CAUTION: CHILD SOLDIERS
A MISCARRIED LIFE: by Wayan; 1981/2/12, a dreamlet just a century long.
I'm Mattie, a pregnant girl on a Lewis and Clark expedition. I miscarry, and they tell me...
MOOSE: by Wayan; 1984/3/12, a dream on the blessings of curses.
How the Supreme Court gave my brother antlers, and where his soul went: where I'll go, now that I know...
MY MUSLIM MOTHER-IN-LAW: by Wayan; 1995/3/25, a dream on repression.
How exactly did I acquire a mother-in-law snooping on my phone calls, when I don't have a wife?
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
MY RITUAL BEHEADING: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 1996/3/24, painting of a nightmare
We stood meekly in line to be beheaded. I tried to accept my fate and commended myself to God...
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
NANCY AND KIT: by Wayan; 1994/1/3, a dream about mislabeling.
In a psychodrama scene, I try to stop a furious guy from hitting an exhibitionist girl. But I'm bleeding...
NIGHTMARE STUDIO: by Gary Panter, 2003, a 5-page comic of his lonely surreal dream world
(plus a 2018/8/31 dream by Wayan provoked by Panter's dream art)
Rather than a dream narrative, this is a tour through Gary's common dreamscapes--
forgotten places, empty streets. Or ones you wish were empty...
NORASINGH: by Wayan; 1987/1/15, a Tantric Frankenstein dream.
I fall in love with my sculpture of a mythical Southeast Asian creature. Then a mad yogi breaks in...
CAUTION: SEX, TANTRA, AND GENERAL WEIRDNESS
THE OCEAN'S FLOOR: by Cheryl Fish, c.1986, a dream of failure-analysis?
I dream we canoe down a river. You say it's barren because this was once the ocean's floor. You're
protective but not longing. I wake on a beach, puzzled why I still feel for you a year later...
ORIOLE GIRL: by Wayan; 1992/1/23, psychic dream told as illustrated poem.
While conducting a census of fairies in Golden Gate Park, I fall in love
with an abused oriole-girl, and we try to heal one another...
CAUTION: AWKWARD SEX
THE OTTER'S MOM: by Wayan, 1996/5/29; a dream-comic of the future.
A doomed, orphaned ottercub meets the last Tasmanian Wolf, who makes a hard choice I couldn't. Or... did I?
CAUTION: BIRTH SCENE (MARSUPIAL/NON-GORY)
OUR GOVERNOR: by Wayan; 1990/3/28, an anti-death-penalty dream.
I force the governor's chief aide to tour the new prisons for us artists, fags, and niggers.
He's appalled--but how many more noses must I rub in the governor's racism?
CAUTION: THE N-WORD
PARVATI SAWS THE WALL: by Wayan; 2013/6/26, a dream-poem about a Himalayan kook
Martial-arts student Parvati just won't fight the teacher she loves (too much!)--
not even for her final exam. Instead she gets a rotary saw and...
MR. PERCEVAL'S MURDER: by John Williams; 1812/5/2-3, a recurrent predictive dream.
Thrice I saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer shot in the House of Commons. I nearly went to London...
PERISSA: by Wayan; 1997/9/13, a sexy dream-comic (small screen, slow loading? Illus. text)
When Perissa, an exhibitionistic centaur, bares her body in a crowded Coliseum,
she also bares a human-supremacist plot...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM, SPECISM
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...
PESCADERO MONET: by Wayan; 1983/11/4, a happy art-cult dream.
Monet is over 100 now, living in an art colony. I visit him, but my parents come along. Bad idea...
PET ME DARE!: by Wayan; 1996/2/7, a sexy healing dream; 2p. dream-comic (or ill. text)
After whining all day that I lost my anima, I dream I'm petting a cat.
Who purrs, and grows, and grows, and purrs "Pet..."
CAUTION: PUSSY TROUBLE
PINHEAD HEAVEN: by Wayan; 2013/7/12, an absurd dream-poem
I'm in heaven. But... what can you do up here? And it's so small. Where is everyone?...
CAUTION: WE FIND OUT
PISSING MEMORIES: by Wayan; 1999/5/20, a dream on self-sabotage.
I desperately need to pee, but my bladder's full of two kinds of emotional trauma, and each blocks the other!
CAUTION: BATHROOM PSYCHOLOGY
PREGNANT WITH KRYTHA: by Wayan; 1998/2/3, a monomaniacal dream
My best friend and I are shapeshifters; I seduce him, just so my daughter Krytha can be born...
CAUTION: MAMMALIAN NUDITY, PHEROMONAL SEDUCTION, RECKLESS PREGNANCY
PRRL: by Wayan; 1997/1/17, an intergalactic dream.
I'm an ambassador from the Milky Way to the energy-beings
who rule the Magellanic Clouds. Or am really just their pet?
REBELLION: by Roz Chast, 2023 or before, a dream on dreamwork?
I was trapped in a Handmaid's Tale dystopia; I was a mannequin, naked &
helpless. I couldn't even walk. But I hid one rebellious act: I kept a diary...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY, CARTOON DYSTOPIA
RECURRING SCHOOL NIGHTMARE: by Julie Doucet; July 1995, a dream of... oh, read the title!
Trapped in elementary school, Julie is forced to study the alphabet
until she declares "I'm a professional cartoonist, goddammit!"...
THE RED SPHERE: by Madeline; 2006/12/13, twin (diagnostic? psychic?) nightmares
Calmly, I watch a girl trapped in a lab try to escape, and die; and watch a man lose his head to a hungry thing...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
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
RIBBING: by Wayan; 1992/12/25, an assertive dreamtale.
After seeing 150 years of family photos, I dream of being teased by time-traveling cheerleaders, and...
THE ROSA PARKS EFFECT: by Wayan; 1997/7/21, a political dream.
The mayor declares war on bikers, blames us for gridlock! I dream of Rosa Parks' influence and realize...
SALIA AND CHUR: by Wayan; 1989/2/25, a psychic Star Trek dream.
Our starship signs up a strange new woman whose quirks turn out to be fallout from slavery...
CAUTION: SEX, ABUSE ISSUES
THE SEMI-INTELLIGENT ANIMAL PROBLEM: by Wayan; 1986/4/6, a dream of impulse.
The army breeds super-smart animals. Scientists fear they'll
upset ecosystems, if freed. No one speaks for the creatures...
CAUTION: DIRECT ACTION
THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY: by Wayan; 1989/7/8, a comic nightmare, possibly telepathic.
My sisters get bored with the game of power, so I watch TV--
until it melts, and a terrifying giant rises to chases me...
SHARK SENSE: by Wayan; 1988/12/9, a diagnostic circus dream.
I'm a circus tiger, then a performing shark. One day, I block my human partner's high dive... Why?
SHASTA OCCUPATION: by Wayan; 1996/11/1, a dream of telepathic spill-over.
I'm teaching in a wizard's college near Mt Shasta when one astral world decides to occupy another...
SHASTA STANDARDS: by Wayan; 1998/9/19, a dream of social change.
In a future where we gengineer ourselves instead of others, we no longer have to choose lesser evils...
SHOOT ME, I'M LUCID!: by Wayan; 1997/10/17, a predictive didactic nightmare.
I distract a mad gunman in a crowd. I suspect I'm dreaming, but it still seems a bit too noble...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS ON CRAZED KILLERS AT HOME
SHRUNKEN MEN: by Wayan; 1992/2/21, a dream on the masculinity crisis.
Day: Robert Bly's book Iron John, claiming men need male mentors, annoys me.
Dream: the giants co-opted Captain Picard of Star Trek, but we don't need him to rebel...
CAUTION: MOCKS ROBERT BLY
SKYLIGHT: by an Honorable Lady; before 1894, a crimesolving dream (psychic? subliminal? ghost-visit?)
My dead father said a trusted servant was stealing our goods through an unlocked skylight. This proved true...
SLAVES DON'T DANCE: by Wayan; 1999/8/1, a 17-page Shakespearean dream-comic (or ill. text)
Stolen by the Fairy Queen, I'm forced to nurse her great project: creating life! But her synthetic baby is...
SLOW PARK FIX: by Wayan; 1996/9/24, a diagnostic dreamtale.
Infected glass-cuts scar the vegan alligators in the park. As part of a cleanup, I'm told to EAT one...
SOUL-SHARD: by Wayan; 2000/10/5, a rebellious dream
I'm a wolf in an ashram studying astral travel with my spirit-wife. Our souls blend a bit, enraging
our guru, a minor Hindu god, who sends demons to make us stop this spiritual "contamination"...
SPIN-WITCH, or, THE MAGIC LIGHTER: by Wayan; 1985/8/10, a dream on defensiveness.
Leona's a fighter--she rejects compromisers like her husband,
her friends, that miniature catgirl she's been sitting on...
THEY USE ME TO MASTURBATE: by Wayan; 1980/9/18, a two-edged dream.
My sisters and their best friends all use me for sex. Sick, but I discover it's better than I USED to be...
CAUTION: JUST PLAIN EMBARRASSING
THE TIGER WHEEL, by Wayan, 2009/4/25; a dream-poem, Dreamverse #44
A tiger-couple on an ice floe must choose: swim for land, or
ride the current full circle back home, risking starvation?
TIME WARP: by "Erwre Qerwgeqwr"; 2010/2/5, a nightmare recurring 4 times in one night
A timewarp started to swallow my house. It looked normal outside, but everyone inside was in a trance...
THE TORTURER: by Wayan; 1997/7/13, a predictive nightmare
A free-lance torturer chooses me for his victim. He has the right. I bluster, but when I fall asleep at last...
CAUTION: NO PAIN, BUT GORE
TRESPASSERS IN MALANCHAI: by Hyal; Feb 1996, an epic dream with a psychic intrusion.
A maneless lion-boy wins his people's respect. While training, he sees weird trespassers
who seem to be from someone else's dream... and ten years later, he finds that dreamer.
TURNABOUT: by Henry James; 1870s or 80s; a nightmare reversed by sheer courage.
A night-fiend strove to open the door I held shut between us--
until I realized I too was terrible, and opened it to find a great...
CAUTION: THE DREADED PROSE OF HENRY JAMES
WEREMAIDS: by Wayan; 2020/5/14, a species- and gender-bent dream.
I'm a weremaid, able to pass as human but growing a tail in water. I meet a cute but sad girl,
and deduce she may be like me--just in the closet. Worse! Turns out she thinks she's a freak...
CAUTION: DAMAGE FROM CLOSETING
WING IT: by Wayan, 1995/12/29-1996/2/14, a 9-page improv comic.
An art experiment--the only rule is DRAW without preconceptions--
no models, no ideas, no plans, not even dreams. Drawing from the void!
WINGLESS: by Wayan; 1992/2/21; a dream-poem on flight versus guilt
Wingless, I try hard to fly, arm-flapping wild. And I rise! Flight's in the mind.
But I'm leaving my friend behind! Guilt ties me down--till I see...
WOLF EXOGAMY: by Wayan; 2010/12/19; a furry dating-advisory dream
A dream of human and wolf people intermarrying provokes both a sculpture and a more wolfish attitude...
WOLFWALL: by Wayan; 1994/1/31. Daydream/trance digital drawing
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
WOLVES EVOLVE: by Wayan, 1983/11/11, a Darwinian dream.
After seeing 'Rear Window', Grace Kelly and I are wolf children in a pack that's quickly evolving into...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, CHILD SEXUALITY, WOLF-SLANDER
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...
YELLOW SERENADE: by Wayan; 1979/2/22, an absurd dreamtale.
Restrain yourself! Or you too may end up on a giraffe
rollerskating down the freeway singing perverted popsongs...
ZILLIONAIRE'S TOWER: by Wayan; 2012/2/9, a financial climbing dream
My mild yuppie friend Lou climbs a bank tower to reach his rich mentor,
and wins an internship. But as he swears his oath to Get Rich Quick...
CAUTION: DISSES CUTTHROAT CAPITALISM


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