Trap a black 'gilly fly' inside a flower until it dies, and you get two wishes.
But the fly's rare; I can't bear to kill one. Then I learn 'gilly dolls' grant wishes too.
You hatch gilly fly eggs inside the doll, and set the flies free. It works! I wish for...
I'm a girl in love with an elf-sorceress who grants me long life and good health, at a cost:
attractive women don't notice me now, forcing fidelity. I didn't plan to cheat anyway...
I'm a cheetah-boy in a tree above my childhood home. Our 'hood's full of cat people, and I
want to stay and marry a catgirl. But Trump is getting so crazy! Gotta choose. Stay or go?
CAUTION: NUDE CHEETAH
I'm on a world inhabited by metamorphosing hobbits, when
H.G. Wells shows up seeking a magic ring Earth needs...
I dream my friend Vera's ordered to just study & sleep--no play, no dates. Then I dream
Vera works with gangs as an armed peacekeeper. I tell her; Vera's shocked, since...
I'm peeking at Pike's Peak with Gregory Peck, as we pack
our way through a Hawaiian jungle seeking my dream-journals...
CAUTION: NUDE HIKER, DREAM PUNS
He turns on the radio, and a moment later a loud horn section rings out.
I wake shocked--for that horn fanfare isn't just in my dream ears...
Suddenly, arbitrarily, Russians, furniture and space gear get me hot. And then,
suddenly, arbitrarily, a highschool class of beautiful girls leave me cold...
CAUTION: SEX-ORIENTATION CHAOS
DAY: An article claims dreams rarely include touch, taste or smell.
DREAM: I bike to work. Get a snootful of diesel exhaust. Think "So this can't be REM."
NEXT MORNING: I bike to work. A fire truck pulls out, and I get a...
A refugee girl crawls into my bed. We become lovers. I pro-
tect her, but... as she recovers, am I holding her back?
CAUTION: ABUSE? OR NOT?
A beautiful herbivore suddenly eats one of its small symbiotes!
But she stops at one. Who or what is this warning me about?...
CAUTION: YUCK, MEAT REALLY IS MURDER
I dream car-paperwork leads to squabbling & accusations.
I wake sick, in pain; tell my friend "No, I can't pick
up your car." But all my friends ignore my "No"...
Two gunmen break in, insist I'm someone else,
and demand I repay a loan I never borrowed...
I'm a Chinese immigrant in northeast Brazil, in the colonial era,
playing in a jazz band (wait, was jazz invented yet?) when...
A serial killer is sure his wealth protects him from consequences,
until I chase him across the desert, flying a light plane...
After studying assertion in dreams, I find I'm a shaman in an
African village, troubled by an irresponsible young rival...
I'm in Heaven, but... it's full of Christians! I fight 29,998
angels, but I want to go right to the top and punch God...
CAUTION: PAGANISM, PUGILISM, PUNS
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?
We're wolf people hiking above Lake Tahoe. Spring came to the shores, but as we climb, we re-enter
winter. Our fur's short; we'll need to grow long coats, and toughen our soles--if that's how you spell it...
CAUTION: NUDE WOLVES; POLITICS
I'm drawing a background--Mt Shasta, meaning ESP or other paranormal stuff. Then I make room
for a portrait of a dream-creature reading. But my eraser smudges! I need new art tools...
CAUTION: NUDE CREATURE
Giant chefs chop food, and occasionally drop crumbs on the floor--a city of ant-size people.
Tiny truckers cut up vegetable slices and bagel crumbs to distribute them all over town...
I'm unbelievably hairy--is it fake? I look like a poodle, with a monster pouf at
the hips, hiding what gender I am. But I'm shedding big hanks. Soon I'll see...
I'm a girl in a college dorm. CRASH! A Concorde jet used our street as a runway and failed to lift off...
I wake & peer out my dorm window. Below, a ruined jetliner. But how'd I know it was a Concorde?
I wake AGAIN--at home. The proof my dream was predictive was a dream itself! Yet that crash...
I'm on a ship off Big Sur that swerves to miss a Navy vessel on a collision course. But
I'm standing at the bow, and spot a periscope dead ahead. Race toward the bridge...
A dream of a shaman named Fred who plotted to use
Bear herself as... a lightbulb. Fred, Fred, Fred...
Our band's touring Titan. Road trip blues: diners, feuds, romance... jealousy.
Have I been overlooking the right girl? For the last billion miles?
I'm a holy man sneaking into a sewerpipe at the beach,
to pop anxiety pills in shame. And do they even work?
CAUTION: CHEMICAL CRUTCHES
My sister gives birth during a killer heatwave. The baby's
dead. I rock the corpse all day, like a chimp might...
CAUTION: GROSS
I'm John Muir reborn on Mars, defending the forests from treecutters,
who try to assassinate me. A year later Robinson's Red Mars comes out...
DREAM: a devil crawls in my window and lies on top of me. I fight back but he's hot--in both senses.
NEXT DAY: my grandma asks "Remedios, what happened to you? Your hair is scorched...
CAUTION: SEXUAL (AND THERMAL) ASSAULT
In her laboratory, a owl-woman draws songbirds,
then distils starlight that brings them to life...
A man breaks into Varo's studio. But he turns out to be part of Varo herself,
who says "I don't want you to wake up," and stifles her till she faints...
A feathered dryad plays panpipes as she eyes a passing troubador, who harmonizes.
But the strings he plays are the hair of a living mermaid-boat. Will he leave her?
A strange being, part woman, part antelope and part angel, with four
bat wings, runs madly through a forest trying to attain flight speed...
"Have you dreamt of flying? I often have." Though her painting shows
a bedroom trapeze act that seems to be summoning surreal spirits...
Sleepless? Not quite. Twisted sheets hide furtive hypnogogic
dreams, tangled in a cloudy orgy, never coming clear...
In my drab childhood home, fierce little girls tear down
the wallpaper to bare fleshy, throbbing things...
In the corridors of a dream hotel, next to a monstrous
sunflower, little girls strip and play with whips...
Girls wrestle, tangled in sheets, competing to climb the orgasmic
pyramid. The ringmaster-referee's the boy Marquis de Sade...
CAUTION: IMPLIED UNDERAGE SEX
In the hotel of dreams, blobby throbbing bodies burst
out of the walls. Even tables and chairs erupt with...
For years I dreamed of neglected pet birds, caged, starved, lonely, dead. But tonight
I lovingly groom my bird-emissary, who'll soon set out to answer a strange summons...
After you died, I dreamed of horses trapped in nets. Months later, in mist. By a year,
in stables, saddled to ride. But only now am I ready to start my journey without you...
A dark room. A grotesque little figure fiercely flings open the drapes; light blasts in on
a naked girl who squirms away from the light like a worm uncovered under a stone...
CAUTION: NUDITY
Balthus, a notoriously shy sort-of-surrealist, never showed his own dreams, but did
occasionally paint those of his subjects, whether real models or imaginary figures...
A guitar tutor strips her student, playing her like a guitar. The girl somehow forgot to wear panties;
someone's either dreaming or acting out a fantasy, but is it teacher, student, painter... all three?
CAUTION: RAPE FANTASY?
Balthus paints a real street in Paris, but populated with bizarre figures
dreamily going about their business, ignoring us and each other...
CAUTION: ASSAULT
Arp dreamt of these 'biomorphic' surreal/abstract shapes
over decades and sculpted them in bronze...
A mysterious picture that seems to be about the atomic bomb, apparently
done before the Manhattan Project was made known to the public...
A recurrent character in her dreams, this 'funny green animal' is a weird blend
of Greco-Roman seahorse and Old Testament angel/devil/beastie...
Mysterious. Evans tiled it simply "A Dream". Does this mandala depict
a feast-table seen from above, or the whole world? And... twin Aslans?
This recurring dream-creature, a white winged horse, appears for years, alongside
Evans's 'green unicorn'. His rendering evolves, but his character's consistent...
As a kid, Evans dreamed Old Testament prophets carried her to a nearby
Union cemetery. "Don't worry," they told her. "We ain't gonna let you fall..."
A crowned woman with an ax and a torch carries out a
mysterious sacrifice. Is this Helen of Troy, or Hecuba?
I was hit by a car. Broken leg, ruptured spleen. Surgery. A few nights later, I dreamed
I floated in a healthy dream body above my broken day body. I beamed health down...
Lucid, I explore a school basement, fly, face my naked self in a mirror. Then a woman with
a gun appears. Threats turn to... flirtation? She says "Go to sleep!" & I do, to find myself in...
I flee pursuers up a skyscraper, go lucid, and fly away. Then I'm at a lecture; Idries Shah
says "It's good Stephen learned to fly, but a shame he didn't realize he had no need to flee...
I lived five subjective years in the far future, with a future wife and child, even
falling asleep and dreaming (nonlucid) dreams & waking into my lucid dream...
PD Ouspensky gets thrown out of lucid dreams when he says his name; Celia Green's test subject gets dizzy;
Patricia Garfield carves her name and causes a dreamquake; but Stephen LaBerge frames a clear hypothesis...
CAUTION: SLOPPY VERSUS GOOD SCIENCE
At age 5 or 6, I was chased by a dinosaur. But I remembered how Popeye
the Sailor got strong from eating canned spinach, so I created a can, and...
Nightly, in lucid dreams, I rehearse the surgery cases I face next day,
and consistently finish faster and with better outcomes as a result...
At age five or six I spent six happy months flying nightly in a spaceship I built
out of a garbage can. It had a glass bottom showing great views of Earth...
I'm a diplomat from the were-kangaroos. In my diplomatic pouch, I grow a Memory Ruby.
Is my personal data vulnerable to theft? Well, no more so than on your human phones...
CAUTION: NUDE MARSUPIAL
Our tabby cat works hard at her ballet barre, but our Persian just
lies around snoozing. Wait, she's not a lazy ballerina, but a...
CAUTION: NUDE CAT
DREAM: to see a film, Colquoon or Colhoun, I take a surreal ride through a multiplex...
NEXT DAY: a friend shows me an article about a 'forgotten' surrealist, Ithel Colquhoun...
My sister turns into a lion-girl who's not my sister. Our family's prone to skin cancer,
but this girl sprawls in the sun all day. Sexy, but her message for me is nonsexual...
CAUTION: LION NUDITY, ANTI-A.M.A. ADVICE
DAY: Working with my overbearing collaborator Amos has become torture.
DREAM: I'm told "You have six months to live." "Good!" I say. "I won't have to work on this garbage..."
THREE DAYS LATER: I broke up with Amos. But then he calls to say "I have six months to live..."
CAUTION: UNSETTLING
I discover a cafe full of near-nude girls in bondage gear. They eye me, amused at my shock.
Mixed feelings: desire for them but fear of bondage--emphatically not my thing. So what is?
CAUTION: NUDITY
Dream: We're civilized bears. Each winter, polar bears migrate south to attack us. We need to fight back!
Day: Hike with my friend Brenda. A brushy clearing just like my dream. She asks "Are there bears here?"
First I try to put a dowel down the exact center of a carboard tube, but this innocuous project
turns inward til I'm blindly sticking tweezers into my own left eye, and aiming for my brain...
CAUTION: ICK FACTOR
In the yard, a moth as big as a cat is crying in grief and exhaustion.
I lift it to flowers so it can feed, but even with help it's nearly too weak...
A mystic lives a solitary life. His best student is more outgoing;
she becomes famous and founds a school. Who was happier?
A shy burrowing owl invites her friend, an easy-going wolf,
over for tea. It sounds very Beatrix Potter, but in fact...
I must rescue Ann Soforth from righteous rapists, then Paul McCartney from a musical curse...
CAUTION: ABUSED CHILD, JAMES JOYCEAN PUNS
1: Quit the Mage-Guild: they churn out spell-regulations. I don't even do spells, I'm a shaman not a mage...
2: Quit the Swim Team: they won't even give me a locker! Anyone can steal my ID and dream journal...
CAUTION: HARSH ADVICE FOR A HARSH ERA
1: A witch gives me flying lessons on her broom, over San Francisco Bay. Cold, windy, hazardous, exhiliarating...
2: I build a fusion rocket in my back yard! Tiny payload, just a test, but this engine'll open up the Solar System...
A chugging in the sky wakes me. Peer out the back window. A slow, chunky UFO trails black
smoke. Down comes an alien bird in a big black hat & cloak. As it cases our home, I stalk it...
I live in a haunted tower with vampires and ghosts. But they're reasonable neighbors,
unlike the tank column of invading Germans; they say they'll exterminate us all...
CAUTION: FASCISTS RETURN
A singer in a nightgown knocks on my door. Opening a briefcase, she says "Here are my sisters."
Inside, a wooden maze--where a rat and a mouse nest. Her sisters! And what's her animal form?
CAUTION: NUDITY
DREAM: Angels ask a circle of us newlydeads, "What's your dream?", wanting quick answers. I fear they'll grant it!
NEXT DAY: On TV, Kelly Corrigan asks a circle of spiritual therapists & ministers "What's your dream," wanting...
TV ads push new, supposedly eco-friendly uses for pigs,
until this truly alarming tampon commercial came on...
Exiled, husband dead, country in ruins, Li stands in dream before the Emperor of Heaven. He asks, kindly,
"Where from here?" She begs only for a wind fierce enough to blow her out of this world for good...
My tiny alter ego cried in hunger. I caught him a fine fish, but a rabbit and a beaver stole & ate it!
CAUTION: COMIC SURFACE, SERIOUS WARNING
Belva missed her granddaughter, who'd recently moved back in with her mom.
She dreamt they were porpoises chattering joyfully, and realized she'd been selfish...
Cayce bought a house while broke! He dreamed he and Jesus were in a Paris cafe. They owed
$13.75. Jesus covered it, and promised Cayce's finances would resolve when the Duke of Windsor
married Wally Simpson. On their wedding day, a letter from Paris arrived, containing $1375...
CAUTION: VERY PRECISE MIRACLE!
Sally needed a pricy operation. Insurance refused to pay. But she dreamed of three numbers.
Gave a friend three bucks, asked him to play her numbers, and went under the knife...
CAUTION: EVIL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
A woman dreamed of a gunman terrorizing the town. Cayce urged her to curb her own rage; the Bugaboo was herself...
CAUTION: MYSTIC SOUNDS FREUDIAN!
DREAM: I find a huge spider in my home. It talks about its mother. I fight to drive it out, but it keeps..
CAYCE: the dreamer's having an affair at work that risks wrecking his marriage and home...
CAUTION: AFFAIR LED TO DIVORCE
MARCH: a bull followed my wife, who was wearing a red dress. I know we must sell all our stock...
APRIL: I'm accused of murder. I'll die by hypodermic. I false-wake & interpret this financially too...
CAUTION: IN OCTOBER, THE CRASH
Giant birds, a woman who looks like a katsina, a blue-winged dog
all come to me at night. So I add them all to my group portrait...
We're kids again. The others enlarge the yard by willing a fence to move. But the new
ground is ugly, dirty. And then Nazi planes strafe us! I worry my little brother's been hit...
CAUTION: FEAR, GUILT; MISINTERPRETATION?
Age three, chased by a witch, I reach the kitchen. Safe! I melt crayons to make a
huge multi-colored ball of wax. Now I wonder if I foresaw my Jungian dreamwork...
My cat Kleina isn't so small any more, and she can talk. But the moon's eclipsed, and
the Black Stag has come, offering carry me away to the Black Moon. I'm tempted...
CAUTION: OVER-JUNGIANIZING?
I meet Rob's exes; all have wounds called witch's marks. Rob is really Pluto/Anubis, dog-headed god of death.
I flee a rapist--Rob? I meet fake Robs; have I ever met real Rob? At long last, I (literally) outgrow him...
CAUTION: CREEPY CONFESSION FROM ABUSER
ACT 1: Age 14. I find photos my dad took of me at 10-12 in a red Chinese robe. Beautiful, but I was pushed to look adult...
ACT 2: Adult, I look in a mirror. I'm bustier & curvier than I thought. I look good now, too--except for this awful rash...
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM-DAD
When I visited Turkey, I had no reaction to their flag until, on a bus tour round a harbor, I saw it fluttering
atop a sailing ship, and panicked! Was this some centuries-old memory of pirates? And if so... whose?
CAUTION: JUNG VERSUS REINCARNATION?
A trusting woman has neat pinstriped advisers. But an elf with a tape recorder has proof
they're crooks. I woke knowing the dream warned against getting an analyst to "help" me...
I want to read beautiful fairytales, but a woman tells me "First you must read the Gospel of Silence".
I turn away into caverns carved of jade. In the deepest chamber, I surrender to a powerful force...
CAUTION: MORE JUNGIAN THAN JUNG
I wanted God's love. I dreamed I got it. An elephant wanted to kiss me! Messy, moist, and just overwhelming...
CAUTION: ELEPHANT DROOL
My father and I watched the thirty men on ladders finishing the walls of our new roofed tennis court. My mother
Blanche came in, shouting "Out, all of you! The roof is going to fall in!" She was so insistent, they all took five...
CAUTION: WILL UPSET E.S.P. SKEPTICS
I loved my dog Darby. Laval the gardener hated him. One day Laval attacked me; Darby
protected me, tearing Laval's shirt. Furious, he told my father Darby'd turned savage...
1912: we watched the Titanic sail by. Mother yelled "She's going to sink!" We were skeptics--until the news came.
1915: she refused to sail on the Lusitania. Shaken by her previous foresight, Father changed our tickets, and...
CAUTION: THOUSANDS KILLED. JUST NOT THE MARSHALLS.
Told that God would smite her for swearing, Joan sneaks down to the beach on a clear night (so God can see
and hear), strips, and screams "BLOODY!" And joyfully concludes "I needn't believe other people about God"...
CAUTION: CONVINCING LOGIC
I keep dreaming of a French girl living quietly in the country, not even allowed into
the village. We must hide! At last I get to see Paris--on the way to the guillotine...
CAUTION: FIRST-PERSON BEHEADING
Among our house guests was the wizard Aleister Crowley. I loathed him on sight. When Mother left the room,
he jabbed my big sister with a pin, saying "With your blood and hair, I have you in my power." Mother burst in...
CAUTION: REALLY BAD ROLE MODEL
DAY: Age 7, touring New York, I ask to ride the subway. Father and I see blood, severed feet--a suicide.
DREAM: I coax the dead man to reattach his feet, grow young again, and meet his beloved daughter...
CAUTION: GRISLY SUICIDE
At age 9-11, I dreamed nightly I had to lead the souls of casualties to the light, or (worse)
back to the trenches, doomed to live on. At last I blurted McAndrew's case to a grown-up...
My father's friend C.G. Lamb was open-minded; to him I confessed "My grandmother Jennie teaches me music."
He had known her, before her death. I played him a stormy piece. His hands shook as he told me its history...
CAUTION: CRYPTOMNESIA, ESP, OR SOUL-SURVIVAL?
My fiancé Graham finds my second sight an awkwardness to suppress.
When I dream his cousin's home is haunted, and it turns out to be true...
CAUTION: PSYCHIC, YET BLIND TO INCOMPATIBILITY
Joan learns her fiancé is dead. No details. She dreams he stands disconcerted over his own corpse--a
gun accident. Soon she learns it's true. Months later, she dreams he's pioneering on a low-gravity world...
CAUTION: STUPID GUN DEATH; ESP?
I'm a sailor on an ocean liner. She catches fire. I'm forced to jump--and I can't swim.
As Joan, I see him land on a tropical island. I have to prove to him that he's dead...
CAUTION: FIRST-HAND DROWNING
I was sketching our archeological finds at Tel Asmar when a deadly dust storm settled in.
Trapped, feverish, I summoned rain. We lived when many in Baghdad died, but the dig...
CAUTION: DUST KILLS 100 IN BAGHDAD
I'm challenged to draw a comic for a dream-anthology. Dream of my friend Heron, two young guys, drugs, a cop, & a
weird guardian dog. Over the next weeks, they all show up, acting out bits of my dream. At least I know what to draw...
During Yugoslavia's breakup, under sanctions, I draw hypnogogic images--like a
frog-man. Get up, draw him, go outside, and a huge dead frog lies on the curb....
CAUTION: CREEPY EVENT, CREEPY TIME, CREEPY PLACE
At an amusement park, I climb a ladder up inside Li'l Wendy, a giant statue of a
little girl. Inside her is an endless hallway with doors opening into other realities...
My brothers & choose soulmates. Guy chose the Girl of the Grapes: he now runs a restaurant; Chris
chose the Girl of the Star: he's a soundman for bands in San Francisco. I chose the Girl of the Heart...
I'm in a quarry in ancient times. Poverty, hunger, frustration. Bad with people, but I know stone.
Or do I? Cut too far--botch my sculpture. My overseer gives me a scolding, scalding pep talk...
In a garage sale, I find a huge Albert Bierstadt painting of a girl and a gryphon
picnicking on a cliff-ledge. I offer $100,000 for it, but it may cost even more...
CAUTION: NUDITY; SPECIES-BENT LOVERS?
DAY: I'm floundering through half a dozen legal, financial, and health crises. And now King Trump is back.
DREAM: I'm a student in a crowded miserable middle school. But the girls start a traveling orgy...
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE
An elf, centuries old but looking about twelve, loves a human in his sixties. People call him a child molester.
So each takes a potion to change their apparent age. Now they look like an old woman molesting a boy!
CAUTION: DISTURBING APPEARANCES
I'm at a pool party in Frankenstein's McMansion. He's gotten lazy--lets AI design his creatures,
endangering their health. Then my girlfriend Spaniela wants to try sex in the pool--in public...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONIST DOG
Gunmen hold the theater audience hostage, but I'm a short girl and I slip out.
On a bridle path I find manure, but the only thing that melts gunmen is mud...
DREAM: I'm nude modeling with two centaurs in an art class of furry kids when a snorkeler bursts
in. We can't communicate. She gets so mad she recklessly fires a speargun, barely missing us...
DAY: She's my doctor! I reported all the symptoms of thyroxine overdose and she dismissed them...
CAUTION: NUDITY, VIOLENCE... AND MALPRACTICE
1: I'm a dog afraid I'll be euthanized. 2: The tiger's stretched to the limit. 3: My computer's full of weird... organs?
4: I won't play dog-soccer just because I'm a dog. 5: That girl's a great CEO, as long as we hide her sex fetish...
CAUTION: SEX SCENE IN #5
I live in a house full of artists--lively, but no privacy. And I need it--I'm in love with our cat! She's big as
a lynx, and literate. My bed conspires to find us a meadow, but a weird sign appears on her flank...
CAUTION: NUDE CAT; POSSIBLE PREDICTION
The flowers spoke in human voices from individual faces. Terrified, I fled home to find
our dog addressing me in human speech, while my own voice came out as barking...
The dream group I've been interviewing in Cairo was in the desert, jamming rods in their
eyes and eating batteries to power their inward vision. "That's how they do it," I think...
I dreamed I quarreled with dream-group leader Shaykh Qusi.
I woke shocked to find two long scratches on my left cheek...
A woman dreamed her dog, who had died, visited--looking upset.
So she checked the dog's grave. It had been bulldozed that day...
Unsure about her suitor, she prayed for clarification & insight. That night,
she dreamed darkness fell on her & her sister. She told him "No", and...
When Salwa was young she looked worldly, but dreamed the Prophet saw
beneath appearances, and led her to a house of angels. Later she became...
Grandma Ppong was stranded on a tiger-infested island. She asked her dreams for help. The Sea-Dragon King said
"Follow the rainbow; the sea will part." She walked to the islet where her family lived! That sea-path still surfaces...
Hafiz dreamed that Gharib, a war hero whose body was lost, wanted a tomb in Suez. Two
dreams guided Hafiz to find his body and move it to the Suez mosque now named for him...
Sirin hungered to understand dreams. He dreamt he met Joseph (who interpreted Pharaoh's dreams).
Joseph made Sirin peer down his throat, deeper and deeper, until Sirin could see Joseph's heart...
1: My unicorn girlfriend and I are in bed. As we near orgasm, idiots bumble in, wanting help.
2: Deal with their demands, shoo them out, go back to bed. As we near orgasm, idiots...
3: Deal with their demands, shoo them out, go back to bed. As we near orgasm, idiots...
CAUTION: SURREAL, BUT PREDICTIVE
I work in a lava library. Lava is edible, so we all sample the product--warily.
But I find I'm healthier if I eat two types, avoiding a starchy third lava...
WAYAN: A woman shows me a bizarre instrument she built--but how does it play? Flutes without holes link lutes with no strings!
MIRIEL: A woman urges me to play a bizarre instrument with flutelike struts: "Bow it like a cello." But it has no strings to bow...
CAUTION: APPARENT TELEPATHIC OR SHARED DREAM
Biking back from the beach, I'm stopped by a weird cogwheeled church-train. A man on board treats a
child angel as his Muse, lifting her over his head. She yells "Enough!" Which turns me insanely horny...
CAUTION: SEXUAL ISSUES
I read mysteries starring a sexy Sixties Mod cartoon catgirl--the
House Cat Detective. I want to meet the model for the cover art.
But is she human, housecat, both, or an AI hallucination?...
CAUTION: UPSKIRT NUDITY
A martial arts class. Teachers act instinctively, and free the advanced students from rules. But I'm
so new I need rules! Classmates who think I'm stupid or willful are wrong. Pure inexperience...
DAY: My doctor sharply upped my meds. Insomnia, sweats, mania, tachycardia. Ask my dreams: "Overdose?"
DREAM: I try to get a dentist to fix the work he botched. A staffer yelling "Nigger!" attacks me with a razor!
A MONTH LATER: The doctor sneers "Symptoms are subjective!" Because uppity patients are just n...
CAUTION: THE N-WORD. OH, AND MALPRACTICE, TOO
DREAM: I'm trapped in a museum-questionnaire--each room's a riddle, like: which meal will cure a sick starship?
A WEEK LATER: I'm stuck in jury duty, filling out a questionnaire bringing back sickening memories of abuse...
Rome never fell. I'm a poor kid. I sign up for a duel against an adult arena fighter.
Poor odds, but I have nothing to lose! Street kids like me die young anyway...
CAUTION: BRUTAL SOCIETY (unlike, of course, ours)
I was up all night listening to Roma music at their annual gathering for
Saint Sarah, in southern France. The next night, I dreamed this song...
When you were having a good dream, but wake up for no reason...
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
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...
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...
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
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
"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...
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
I overhear workmen talking of the devastation of 1914-1918. Pause. Then: "Just so they don't start..."
CAUTION: ANOTHER WAR
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...
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...
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...
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?
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
A Scotsman was playing a not-quite-bagpipe--an inflated man
bristling with pipes, as puffy as Picasso's Baigneuse...
CAUTION: GROTESQUE
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...