My hometown floods. I swim after some strange fish and find
a scientific community where a scaled baby tells me who I am...
I go on a date who seems bored till she takes me to the Alertness Gym...
I mail some letters that will solve everyone's problems, but a man argues we need problems...
Our gifted class is on a field trip. Our teacher happily explains we're going to wreck a freeway,
tying up traffic for months, to protest crappy gifted programs...
CAUTION: SLOWEST DREAM INTERPRETATION EVER
My intuition led me to a panel discussion of women artists, just to hear one single sentence...
She was headed for a rock wall. The brakes faded; she smelled burning.
Then she woke. Her friends laughed, but she asked a neighbor what to do if...
I’m showing the Royal Society how to levitate. Confidence is the main thing. I teach a hesitant Fellow to lift off...
This giant life-coach says my friends and I aren't self-sabotaging as we suspected;
we just lack certain tools and opportunities. And we're aiming high...
While building the World Dream Bank, I dream a hacker says
"certain remarkable sites get free fast access; you should apply..."
A child prodigy stands out in a chorus line of waterdancers. Her body is a patchwork of young & old...
I learn to fly from Arenna the moon-girl and Crest the dragon, in the House of Deep Memory...
A black beetle insists I'm not needed or at home in the human world; my lifework is elsewhere...
Such pressures there are on the sick to act well! I implore you, ignore them all...
CAUTION: EXPLODING TEACHER
In the canyon behind our home, a steel-clawed birdman taught my brother and me to fly by shouting "NO!"...
I finally admit who I am, and the truth is bitter...
CAUTION: GENDER DYSPHORIA, MENTION OF COPROPHAGY, POSSIBLE SITCOM SPOILER
I DREAM I'm helping my mom make a bed, but the light keeps going out. Each time, her hair changes color!
NEXT DAY I tell my dream to a co-worker. He says it means a romantic dilemma I fear to look at. He's right...
I say Christ’s “blood” is a metaphor for “spiritual perfection.” My mom says "You're killing me; please repent"...
I was led into the future, where all the buffalo disappeared, to meet a frail old man by a ranch house...
Malevolent artwork terrorizes my baby and me! What's to be done?...
Caedmon can't sing. But he dreams an angel makes him try. Soon he's the first great English poet and singer...
A guy threatens me with a knife. I sit on him and wait patiently.
Slowly he turns into a huge black cat! I set him free in a garden...
I finally learn the difference between just getting off the ground
and the mastery of true flight--but there's a heavy price...
Our writing class meets in this Victorian home. I turn off my filters and describe what I really see around me...
Clowns have a point system like chess masters, & abuse their apprentices to get ahead,
just like capitalism--but I think this dream's about the suppression of magic...
CAUTION: CHILD-CLOWN ABUSE
The book's first two pages showed an ant's awareness, then a human's wider grasp--both mere freckles on reality...
A weird little forest god bred me from an ordinary deer into a creature who can
almost pass for human. But World War 2 killed my god, and now I'm growing into...
CAUTION: NUDITY, CROSSBREEDING
I visit a witch-smeller, who judges apprentice shamans.
But when a boy dreams he's a crocodile, she freaks out...
I dream up a shining mall. At a booth selling herbs I meet my mentors, Crone and Sage.
They tease me for building a venue so banal. But I tease right back: "This place shapes you..."
CAUTION: CRITIQUES BUDDHIST PURITY
The wolf and deer people are getting along well--a relief since I like both.
Now, can the wolves learn from the deer how to open their third eye?
A strange book has woodblock prints telling how a princess turns to a deer-centaur
and meets animal-headed forest guardians. But the message is rather practical...
CAUTION: (FURRY) NUDITY
I sold my soul to the Devil. On an impulse, I handed him my fiddle. To my
wonder, he played a sonata of exquisite beauty. When I woke I retained only echoes...
My sister & her new guru tests me psychologically--only it looks like a test to destruction...
CAUTION: EMOTIONAL CRUELTY
Winged things lurk in the shadows. When I focus on them, they attack! Castaneda's teacher watches amused...
In Old Palmyra, I stumble on a dragon-hoard. Wizards and caliphs hunt me--how to get out
of town? Magic carpet? No. I put on a brown coat, borrow a delivery bike, and slowly pedal...
A nun-like figure shows me three arcs; two are forms of direct power,
but the third, innermost arc can lead to secrecy and manipulation...
Egbert decides to go convert the Germans. A brother monk dreams twice that God wants Egbert in Scotland, but he
sails--and nearly drowns. At last he gives in. Another monk sails to Germany. Two years later he returns defeated...
CAUTION: STUBBORN MONK, DEITY, AND GERMANS
I'm forced to retake a course labeled Logic. It's not logic. The teacher says "I teach Effectiveness." And proves it:
I lack a prospectus, so he folds the sheet into a paper airplane and sails it perfectly across the room to me...
The hero Gilgamesh troubles his city till he dreams the gods will send him a best friend & lover, Enkidu...
CAUTION: SEX
1: I'm starving in a lush valley; a cult claims all the food, the water, even the air.
2: I'm drowning in a cage but find a corner with water I can breathe--just barely.
3: I'm a merman with a wise friend who hints I need to leave those who starve & drown me...
CAUTION: DOMESTIC BATTERING (OFFSTAGE)
A gang of young men breaks in. I lure them outside and lock my door. They break in again, and
this time they're scaly, tentacled monsters. But I ask why they're here, and to my surprise...
A time-traveling historian's caught in a moral dilemma: warn an ancient prince
that in her history books he died of a fall? Can you change fate? Should you??
In ancient Britain, as Christianity moves in, I'm a slave--sailing through centuries, but never free...
I dreamed I was one of several soldiers about to be executed. I told my girlfriend the dream.
She asked "What were you wearing?" and I burst out laughing as I saw the pun: "Fatigues!"
A dream of a shaman named Fred who tried to use a bear as a lightbulb. Fred, Fred, Fred...
On the anniversary of 9/11, I dreamed a friend was welding nude. In his careful hands, the fire was harmless...
1: I visit Elrond and Bilbo in Elvenhome, but overthinking traps me in a timeloop;
2: Elrond says he renounces seriousness for joy, and plans a great, inclusive party;
3: I feel unworthy, but set out on a desert quest with Elrond's young apprentice;
4: I meet joyful, drunken, singing elves but hide in a tree, too shy to join in;
5: I meet a nervous elven singer and a dolphin trapped in a tiny pool in my bedroom...
I meet William Blake! He says "The will is given us that we
may know the delights of surrender." While in my bedroom...
THAT DAY: I test my hearing range; it turns out to be more dog than human...
DREAM: To banish a teacher & her giant fly, I summon a musical goddess...
I tell the angel teaching me to fly that I'm not ready to go solo yet--
I'm wobbly, the terrain's unknown. He lets go, and I...
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...
A Jungian figure dispenses Wisdom. Overwhelmed, annoyed, I try to shut him up
by manifesting money out of nowhere. But nothing shuts up the Fount of...
Anna trusts to luck, but her mentor urges her to plan--"Think it out!" And what are these cards?
In the Garden of the Gods, I sit through sun and rain. For gods aren't the gardeners, they're the crop...
Gennadius re-dreams a previous dream, prompting him to notice he’s dreaming. His guide points out the spiritual implications...
I dream my sister has an epiphany--we should relax, blur our boundaries, and just be
sloppy old Geysers of Good. Surprisingly, my financier mentor agrees...
CAUTION: DECLARES CAPITALISM OBSOLETE
I was in the Mission with friends. A giraffe saw me as narrowminded, and lifted me up
to show me HIS viewpoint. No insights--till we topped the roofline...
An abused girl survives grotesque situations to become a job/health counselor with a talking sofa...
CAUTION: BUTT-SNIFFING GIANT
I wake in a suburb with Dire Wolves next door. I'm told an herb will appease them.
But the local herbal expert's a regal talking lily--and can I speak plant-language?
Green Day singer Billie Joe hocked a lugie on me in concert. I felt blessed...
CAUTION: EWWW
If it takes a whole village to raise a child, it also takes a lot of guts to raise a kundalini. Voila!
I want to meet my friends' spiritual teacher, but he cowers, runs from me in horror.
I chase him yelling "BOO!" Why am I acting as his nightmare? I don't know...
I get a scholarship to Shaman U. Some of my classmates are Terran, but I still don't fit in, because...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
A shaman designs a rite to focus the village's healing attention on her client; the rest is just showmanship...
A rabbit shaman makes his student drape dead hedgehogs round her neck til she bleeds. How to free her?
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, ABUSIVE MENTOR
During our final exam, my second sight tells me our dance teacher's really
a Greek goddess in disguise. But she has her own final exam to face...
Hilda, founder of two monasteries, dies in one. Begu, in the other, 13 miles away,
dreams Hilda's been taken to heaven. She tells her sisters. Messengers arrive...
A letter to Miss Hornyhearts compares the writer's lover and husband. Some sharp advice for nice boys...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
In Ireland, in Yeats's stone tower, he leads me up the spiral stair toward a thyme-scented portal...
I fight to save a nest of 50,000 eggs that'll hatch... psychics!
But my friends want to exterminate them! Who's wrong here?
A telepathic unicorn-lion says my true name is Wayan. And my true species? I'm like him!
I wake, change my name to fit the dream, move to a new city. Near my new house,
my dream-name is scratched into the concrete sidewalk...
We're hiking in the Sangre de Cristos when a girl offers to show us how to be a wolf. We're
eager--until she turns wolf, bites us and leaps off a cliff! Furious, we stupidly follow her over...
CAUTION: NUDE FLYING WOLVES
A Himalayan peak boils with warring creatures, but a guru says "They're just your conflicts. Sit, watch..."
Playing Mario Kart, I stray into a darkness where Earth floats, burning.
And then Jesus speaks up! But I carelessly hit the OFF button...
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
Dreamworlders, exploring our waking world, tell me of their home.
Their known dreamworld is just a one little patch on a huge unknown globe...
Not long after Jake died, I dreamed he took me on a magic carpet ride. Since then, I've been flying...
Soon after my friend and mentor James Merrill died, I had recurring, elusive dreams about him...
I find myself in astral China. The Empress is banished, the Jester rules. Wisdom is lost.
We need an Imperial Dragon...
My Aunt Squid advises me to join a lesbian artists' co-op. But I'm a man! Not for long, though...
CAUTION: NUDE SUNBATHING, GENDER BEWILDERMENT
Three unicorns gallop out of the waves...
I'm a psychic circus animal who's just managed to teleport my humanoid girlfriend. It's for our act, but...
CAUTION: PETTING
My bedroom's full of magenta squares with stuff glued on. The room glows pink.
A girl who's an expert on the marketing of such installation art gives me advice...
Then I wake to find my housemate Sarah filling our flat with an installation of magenta...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.
I befriend author Andre Norton--an ageless high-school kid writing enthused fan fiction, forever...
I find my Niche--the stone nook that decides if I'm a journeyman mage! Here comes my prophecy...
A bear-girl seduced by her coyote professor gets a
little advice on revenge from her anthropologist mom...
Four apparently psychic dreamlets of a gun in a desk, a guy needing to hide,
a canyon with woodpiles & a locked gate, and a blonde girl named Cathy...
CAUTION: SMALL DREAMS, LARGE IMPLICATIONS FOR E.S.P.
I try hard not to invade Margaret Mead's privacy, but I need her advice;
after I find a fruit true growing in a forgotten room, she unbends...
While painting a tribute to my hero/mentor Caravaggio, I dream we meet. He talks of his art
as we walk a dark space full of living chiaroscuro scenes we can circle, see from all angles...
I'm cold and dark and disoriented! What am I doing wrong? Nothing--I'm just halfway to Alpha Centauri...
A dragon-woman showed me a cache of art. When I painted her face I recalled seeing it in a dream decades ago in a mirror...
CAUTION: DRAGON BREASTS
Near a mysterious sculpture garden on the moon, lives the blind, bike-riding sage I seek: Moon-Cat...
ALYSE dreams Tim drives a motorcycle-book up a hill, but she doesn't LIKE riding so fast...
TIM dreams a wise woman tested him, but found him unqualified to play teacher to Alyse...
Jeff's stepson Lewis can't memorize the times tables. Jeff sleeps on it, but wakes only with a silly rhyme.
But he chants it, and Lewis adds more rhymes--one per equation. He goes from class dunce to the best...
This woman shows me a book of my art. I'm not sure I want to see them--some pieces are from my future...
a dream-poem provoking a 2008/9/16 dream by Chris Wayan
I was in my mother's closet, trying on her outfits, and trapped in Hamlet, too...
(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...
At the beach I dive into deep water to save my drowning friend Kathy, and find it’s not so clear who’s who...
The older sorceress I'm in bed with plans to marry me off to a younger woman, but I distract her with my tongue...
CAUTION: BEDROOM HUMOR
I'm silent in class; let our new, inexperienced teacher fumble. At last
I'm forced to answer, and reveal I'm ahead of her. She doesn't take it well...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE SOCIAL DILEMMAS
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...
I'm listening to a film-talk on Non-Visualization. "Don't wish--don't will--don't visualize.
Just face what you really want, and then don't push..."
CAUTION: MYSTICAL
a dream of flying, shapeshifting and spiritual advice.
When a flood traps me in my cabin, I dream I meet
an old man who warns me "Let your butterflies go"...
DAY: In yoga class, a sexist teacher and angry student don't question assumptions I know are false...
DREAMS: I flee sexy but underage Easter bunnies, fox-girl marathoners, a witch and a wolf in love...
and a horde of single girls of all ages & species! I run away, because MY problematic assumption is...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, REVERSE SEXISM
Suddhodana dreams of great upheavals; no courtier can interpret the dream.
An ascetic claims the upheaval will be for the good, then... turns into an owl?!
CAUTION: PERHAPS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE
Radar O'Reilly's teddy bear is stolen. He builds spy-planes to find it. One morning the camp wakes to find...
I was just a street rat, but I danced with the princess at a ball, and fell in love. Three rich suitors pulled their blades...
I saw a red screen, as if formed by flowing blood. On it, a hand wrote elliptical integrals.
I knew they were from Lakshmi. As soon as I woke, I committed them to writing...
1: My dad can't see my world. Literally can't see my world...
2: The House of Busyness is unlivable--busy, crowded, noisy...
3: Achievement takes twelve factors; any one can block you...
Only at age 33 did Marc Liblin at last meet someone who spoke his dream language.
He married her, and moved to Rapa Iti, the only place in the world it's spoken...
I'm an abused girl turning tricks to survive. But this is San Francisco: I join a prostitutes' co-op, and meet...
CAUTION: PROSTITUTES WITH SELF-RESPECT, OH NO!
I'm not ambivalent--I'm confused! I live here by the Rift Zone and I don't. I'm single and not. Two lives!...
Blake was broke. Couldn’t typeset Songs of Innocence and Experience.
But in a dream, his brother advised him...
In a bar I meet a guy who claims the Army hired him to try
to inspire crops to grow taller by marching tall soldiers past...
I'm a small child in Finland writing out the meaning of three ancient runes
about trees, ships and elbow room. They seem to hold serious advice...
A Buddhist student, troubled by a corporation marketing a product called
"Satori", summons the ghost of her beloved mentor for advice...
Night. Two moons. I go lucid! Find a knob adjusting the dream's color saturation.
Dial it up--and meet ghosts of pure color, invisible til I luridified...
A sorceror's apprentice describes a medical procedure her teacher plans.
Yow! I sure wouldn't trust anyone to try that on ME...
CAUTION: TALK OF BLOOD AND SEX
I take my friend Neil Gaiman to a park where we sculpt a giant horned head. Months later
we collaborate on a graphic novel. The course of the project's full of echoes from the dream...
I'm in an art class drawing a dream image--a dog-taur or wolf-taur girl.
But I hesitate to draw her flashing me as she did in the dream. Should
I risk offending half my class, or make her modest and innocuous?
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
A Finnish shaman/witch gives me a lesson in night flying; in the waking world
I meet Ram Dass and sense him speak astrally before his body can get the words out...
CAUTION: HIGH MYSTICAL QUOTIENT; IF ALLERGIC, AVOID
The teacher of our sex workshop picks me for a demonstration in front of everyone. Gulp...
CAUTION: WELL WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
My dreams are made of lovely carvable jade. Too bad my tools and skills suit our plastic age...
I find a shy sphinx hiding in the corner of a painting in a dull art class. But maybe she's right to hide...
From a crowd in a gym, I sing to my wolflike alien friend. But she can't recognize my voice--
too convincing a falsetto! I slide deeper, but once she heard a girl, she can't imagine...
Lost in the snow, I must give my baby to a stranger or let my dad put him in a box, safe, forever...
I discover a Sorting Hat, as in Harry Potter--and it moves in with us. Our cat crawls in and plays peekaboo.
She becomes a teenager eager to get drunk at Thanksgiving--like every adult in her life. But she's not
puking drunk like them, so she must be OK! Just as I think I am--I only overwork to exhaustion.
CAUTION: DRUNK TEEN CAT, SEVERELY ALCOHOLIC ADULTS
I’m a wolf in an ashram studying astral travel with my spirit-wife. Our souls blend a bit,
enraging our guru, a Hindu god, who sends demons to make us stop this spiritual “contamination”...
Lost in the rainforest of Olympic National Park, I stumble into the wrong cabin:
the hut of Time herself. Or is she? She asks me to clean up, but spare her web...
In a dark classroom, my shrink was demonstrating atom-splitting
with a glowing ping pong ball. I was glad I wasn't in that class...
I spy on a girl learning magic in a quilted ditch. She lets me join her telekinesis lesson! Can my mind move a balloon?
Then I tour a witch-world where normality's shameful. One kid's not witch or normal--he keeps turning into Donald Duck!
CAUTION: DISNEY = DISABILITY?
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
DREAM: I was a cheetah seeking a book of cheetah rolemodels, but this specist librarian harassed me...
PAINTING: months later, dream forgotten, I painted myself without knowing why as a cheetah stretching...
The Crocodile King & the Geisha Queen, the couple who guard
the bridge over the River Styx, seem to quarrel a lot...
I turn shy with women I like. So I wish for a dating coach, who appears! Then I feel dumb: how come I...
My friend Tanya tries hard to save her marriage, but in her dreams Isidora Duncan,
Carl Jung, even the gods themselves warn her to face their deep incompatibility...
Using the mind's blade humbly, minding ideas and people, clarity's disciple may not see her full power...
True teachers and leaders do exist, with vision enough to make seeds (and people) sprout...
I'm co-teaching a class on ESP. My specialty's sending warnings to my own past self to change the present...
Seeking my lost teacher-bird, I dabble with the time machine in the basement.
Oops! I summon Bigfoot. But the monster rips out her fur...
The Conference on Love has two sexy speakers. One says
"my teacher's stalking me" but she clings to him. Love? Hate? Both?
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM--but what are these two exhibiting?
I was shown what veils the God in us: Blood (violence), Idols (dogmatism), and the Curse of Eve (sexism)...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALISTS (OF ANY FAITH) WILL SEE RED
A trusted college advisor says "Slip through cracks in the classroom walls!"
There's no direct route. Yoga to taekwondo to ballet to... a sex workshop!
CAUTION: ABOUT SEX
At the beach, a biology teacher shows me how bottles smashed on the rocks by jerks lead to
slow death for the tidepool creatures. I'm afraid the warning is both personal AND planetary...
CAUTION: CAUSTIC TOWARD RECKLESS G.O.P. CUTS
After my mother died, I dreamed I was a girl living after the Apocalypse. I rode my elk
past cars full of corpses, saw friends die, and never could find a single fertile mate...
I’m a drug-addicted amateur dramatist. A fat balding businessman and I bring humanity back from extinction, but...
CAUTION: TORTURE (brief), ADVOCACY OF WAR, HUMAN EXTINCTION (offstage)
A strange creature slunk into our yard, carrying a skunk lunch.
But she dropped her fur coat, and I recognized a kindred spirit...
A telepathic unicorn gives me some subtle advice. I wake, and tell a friend, who easily proves my account
is distorted by my own biases. Telepathy's confusing! Wake again. Her correction was part of the 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
My art mentors turn on me! My mom the painter says I'm genetically inferior,
and then my art teacher Verity sits on my head (ow!) and chants...
I dreamt Anacreon the poet reeled with drink and lust--and I am wild and wanton like to him...
My scalp had an infection that just wouldn't heal. I tried everything. Then I dreamed I met
a big, black man who advised me to use certain ingredients from Africa...
I meet my own muse--the muse of all of us, perhaps--scooping water from a sacred well...
I find the Well of Women's Wisdom. Lucky I'm female tonight! A girl sneers "Narrow!" Is it, or her?
I dreamed I was a whale swimming against a Christian ebb tide,
trying to lead humans to a cleaner spiritual current...
CAUTION: HARD ON AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY
A friend who's a sorceror's apprentice shows me his Dark Master's tower. And
his Dark Master's bed strewn with all his stuffed animals! I just can't resist...
I meet a ghost girl and ask her about death. I figure she knows first-hand. And she tells me...
I'm a cowgirl in Nevada circa 1900. In the canyon below Haunted Mansion,
I meet a broccoli-green lizard girl. Naturally I help a lady in distress...
CAUTION: QUEER-POSITIVE
A teacher drafts me into her magic class to shake up her sheltered wizard-wannabes.
My magic's wild, ignoring spells and rules. I don't think I realized how wild...
CAUTION: NUDITY
Biking around blindfolded and half-naked, I fight winds
of self-criticism and self-hatred that only I can feel...
When my friends and I learn to fly, all of Middle Earth turns against us!
Fleeing from Saruman's army, I discover the backstage truth about our world...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, DOOM, PHYSICS! YODA IN THE TUB!
A writer's found in his office mating with an ash-covered creature! But could she be his muse?
CAUTION: NUDITY OR NOT? SEX OR NOT? NO ONE QUITE KNOWS...
I dream I meet my headaches! An ascetic yogi who punishes jokers, flirts and cynics for worldliness...
A hermit spends his life wrestling with shadows. His only disciple becomes famous. Who was happier?
My Zen master keeps asking me koans. But every riddle is about insurance
forms. I always reply "I am thirsty." He asks another. It goes on forever...
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
It's true: after death, angels advise you where to go next.
But what if you get an over-eager travel agent?