Michel Leiris was a French writer and Surrealist who wrote his dreams down (if not consistently) for 35 years; he published a selection in his Nuits sans nuit et quelques jours sans jour (1961), translated by Richard Sieburth as Nights as Day, Days as Night in 1987. It has about 100 dreams, plus a handful of surreal waking experiences. Living in the Surrealist circle, collecting art in Africa (his day job was as an ethnographer), then surviving the Nazi occupation, his waking life was nearly as weird as his dreams.

He doesn't bother with much interpretation--at least in the published book. Given the era's Freudian winds, maybe that's just as well--a lot of these look paranormal or shamanic (to him and me); a sort of dream Freud's strictly internal psychology can't really handle. But even without explanations, they're liberating. "Let your freak flag fly"!

This list is chronological, not alphabetical like most in the World Dream Bank. Two entries compare dreams from different years, and are thus listed twice.

RELATED TOPICS: psychic & shamanic dreams - contemporary dream-diarists Carl Jung, Nancy Price, Edwin Muir, Walter de la Mare, Graham Greene, Laura Dale, Louis MacNeice & Edna St. Vincent Millay, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Jack Kerouac -- See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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	LINKED: by Michel Leiris, 1923/3/15; a surreal yet joyful dream I'm dead and skewered on a steel beam. Joy! Friends are here; I hold the hand of my mentor Max Jacob. We rise toward a globe of light... CAUTION: HAPPY HUMAN SHISH KEBAB
	GAUZE: by Georges Limbour and Michel Leiris; 1924/7/27, a dream shared for a moment? My friend Georges was sleeping on my couch. I woke to find him fighting free of gauze that tied him to the sofa. As he woke, it faded away. He'd dreamt of it. I'd seen his dream... CAUTION: JUST WEIRD
	SECOND SIGHT?: by Michel Leiris; 1924/12/8, an apparent predictive dreamlet DREAM: My friend admires the writer Parny; I tout Baudelaire. Odd, since I dislike both! DAY: A man in the newspaper shows his culture and taste by reading exactly two writers...
	BAGMAN: by Michel Leiris; 1925/3/20, a surrealist dreamlet A Scotsman was playing a not-quite-bagpipe--an inflated man bristling with pipes, as puffy as Picasso's Baigneuse... CAUTION: GROTESQUE
	GAZING INTO MYSELF: by Michel Leiris; mid-1926 and 1940/7/12, a dream-theme recurring over decades CYLINDER OF LIME (1926): I find I'm in bed facing a man-size cylinder of lime, who happens to be me... THE GRANARY (1940): I peer through a porthole into a shadowy chamber like a granary--and it too is me...
	BIG CAT: by Michel Leiris; July 1929, a maybe-psychic dream of an unlikely event DREAM: a zoo with ornamental pools. From such a pool, a lion erupts, clawing at his trainer. MORNING: I learn that as I dreamt, a tiger escaped from Amar Circus, camped near my home...
	COFFEE AND THORNS: by Michel Leiris; 1933/9/3, a dream blending past & future? DREAM: A strange tour of underground churches, a banquet table, coffee cups and thorn-branches. DAWN: My wife left a breakfast tray--with teacups and thistle branches! Not quite my dream, but...
	TOADS: by Michel Leiris; Sept.1933, a Surrealist's dream of toad envy By a pool, toads the size of chimpanzees. The finest is bottle-green, with huge eyes like frosted lightbulbs. It occurs to me if I dressed in knickerbockers and wore a felt green cap, I might look like such a toad...
	BULLFIGHT: by Michel Leiris; 1947/3/4 and 1933, dreams of fighting... for funding? 1933: I promised to box in the ring to benefit our museum, but as I face that I'm going to get pulped... 1947: In front of the museum, I duel a bull with wings. But soon I realize it's just an inflatable toy...
	SPINSTER: by Michel Leiris, 1934/3/27, a Freudian orgy-frustration dream A little girl flirts with me as she grows into a teenage ballerina. We join an orgy, but my spinster sister-in-law disrupts it. The sailors don't resent her, but they shoot at the voyeurs in the closet... CAUTION: PEDOPHILIA, ORGY, GUN-HAPPY SAILORS
	A FUTURE A WEEK: by Michel Leiris; 1934/4/2, a dream about prediction My girlfriend and I are fans of a picture story in a kids' magazine. The installments show our future life--all we'll be doing this week... CAUTION: ESP TALK
	ANOTHER WAR: by Michel Leiris; 1934/6/29, a dream worried about the future--with good reason. I overhear workmen talking of the devastation of 1914-1918. Pause. Then: "Just so they don't start..." CAUTION: ANOTHER WAR
	VOLCANO: by Michel Leiris; Sept.1939, a waking day so surreal he thought he was dreaming "I am the Volcano!" the red-bearded man said. His family was certainly hot-tempered enough. Leiris landed on the growing islet of the vent. Lava flowed, the sea was hot, the ground shook...
	GOLDFISH: by Michel Leiris; June 1940, a surreal waking vignette The Nazis advance on Paris. We help refugees at the train station. An old woman has a pet goldfish and a black cat. She can't carry a fishbowl across wartime France, and doesn't want to abandon... CAUTION: DRASTIC SOLUTION
	GAZING INTO MYSELF: by Michel Leiris; mid-1926 and 1940/7/12, a dream-theme recurring over decades CYLINDER OF LIME (1926): I find I'm in bed facing a man-size cylinder of lime, who happens to be me... THE GRANARY (1940): I peer through a porthole into a shadowy chamber like a granary--and it too is me...
	BULLFIGHT: by Michel Leiris; 1947/3/4 and 1933, dreams of fighting... for funding? 1933: I promised to box in the ring to benefit our museum, but as I face that I'm going to get pulped... 1947: In front of the museum, I duel a bull with wings. But soon I realize it's just an inflatable toy...
	FIVE-HORNED BULL: by Michel Leiris; late 1954, a comic nightmare I need money, so I sign up to be the sacrificial bull in a corrida. I've grown the contractual five horns. But at the last moment I won't sign--it's suicide!... CAUTION: WHERE'S THAT FIFTH HORN?

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