My hometown floods. I swim after some strange fish and find
a scientific community where a scaled baby tells me who I am...
I'm one of a trio of swimmers in a pool, making out--under the surface only. Must we hide?
I'm near Shiprock with a flying-saucer girl who sees the nearby crags and far snowy peaks
as all the same size and distance... how to teach perspective?
CAUTION: SKINNYDIPPING, GROPING
Canals and locks. American soldiers find an underground village and force everyone to evacuate to
a warship, "for safety". The villagers turn into birds so if it's a trap they can escape. Next morning...
CAUTION: ESP, GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY
I fear falling? The drop increases. Want a softer surface? The rocks turn to dirt, then water.
Want help? Here comes a flying dolphin. Oh, but I'm not dreaming...
A child prodigy stands out in a chorus line of waterdancers. Her body is a patchwork of young & old...
Parasites, Rambo, huge fetus-beets, an exhibitionist and a living statue advise me on my love life...
CAUTION: NUDITY
I swim the flooded tunnels and pass the crocodiles to enter the house of mystics... but now what?
I swim far out in a lake to a business meeting on a dinghy; but that's trivial.
What matters is mapping the murky lakebottom, dive after dive...
Were the rowdy face-boats really ghosts haunting this old house, harbingers of my future online... or both?
A champion swimmer tells me how she turned a sexual humiliation into excitement and liberating power...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, SHAME, PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY
Biking, I stray into the steamy Brundibar Sea. My bike dissolves!
But hot-tubbers explain the Sea manifests what you visualize. Yay! Uh-oh...
CAUTION: MYSTICISM AND HOLOCAUST HISTORY
News of a new national park and a science show on cleaner-fish spur a daydream of dolphins, cats and...
CAUTION: FISH ORGY; MOCKS THE ANGEL MORONI, TOO
DAY: I admire Hannah Hinchman's watercolors of Montana and Vad Yakovlev's digital art of Equestria.
DREAM: I meet & sketch a coyote girl, a whack-a-mole mare, and a leering herder of shadowsheep...
I cross a hostile continent to a magic commune, fall in love with a flying girl who slaps a
soul-spark into my head, and follow an alien goddess leading the Dance of the Sun...
My co-worker Daphne is snappish and stressed. She meditates, seeking the cause,
and becomes a half-newt-half-koi in a giant fishbowl. Up shambles a curious AI...
A woman in Stockwith dreamt she'd drown going to market; but her friends talked her back into the trip.
When she fell in the water, they all stood by as she drowned; not one helping her till it was too late...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
A girl writes a whole movie to get a shy boy to hold her; I stupidly summon a monster dragonfly-bus;
a devil-suited jerk hogs a musical's stage TWICE; leeches crawl from the treasure-box I opened...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY, SEXUAL FEAR/GUILT
There was this giant creature in the water along with a bunch of sharks.
The creature turned out to be nice though, much nicer than the sharks...
I'm in a small pond. A monster goldfish stalks me. I seem trapped in place, and
wake in panic, sheets drenched--to find my pet goldfish gasping on the floor...
"I dreamed you were in the water, Daddy. You kept trying to come out of the water to me..."
A crowd watches from shore as a great glowing meteor descends into the sea. I fear a tsunami, but...
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)
Lucifer throws firebolts from a Montreal tower; monsters stalk us; next comes the flood...
I had to prepare the house for a party, but the basement was flooded. I thought I could
decorate it with some floating flowers anyway, but they kept dissolving or sinking...
A man leads me to a cliff looking down on a canyon. Men dive into the river below, but
often hit the canyon walls. The two of us soar upwards though, across the canyon...
I catch a magical fish and let it go. A friend and I consider higher learning--and we don't mean academia.
My friend lays a lotus in a chair on the beach. A man baptises in sunset water, shining like a certain fish...
"Oh no" she moaned. "I don't want Frankie to go to that camp. He must not go there." She began to cry...
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?
My horse and I dove into a lagoon and sought buried treasure on the sea-floor. What are we really after?
I was half-drowning, holding our son up in the pool, while my husband tried to take a
photo. I kept gasping "Did you get the picture yet?" but he kept saying "Not yet"...
In a California with no Gold Rush, wild deer carry a girl over the San Fernando hills to a secret dream-pool...
Then in a Japantown hotel lobby, that girl floats meditating in a huge aquarium, as local gossips lie about her...
A swimming pool game with color-sorted broken glass. It's social, it's fun! The whole family can play!
CAUTION: BLOODY IDIOTS
I'm at a vaudeville for gods. Cthulhu the squid-god nearly tramples me--and then gets horny...
CAUTION: GROSS GOD, GROSS GOO
Landing in Hawaii, I dream of a magical twilit cove I must swim across. The eve of leaving, there it is...
I watched her dive into the lake... and fail to come up. Her golden cloak
floated on the water. I hesitated just a moment, and...
I meet the mermaid goddess of love in her pool, but when she advises me, I dispute one small point...
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...
That day Frederic, craving irises, fell in the water three times. At night he swam through an iris paradise...
I'm a Japanese werefox, longing to reach the Isle of the Blest; but dare I swim for it?
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
My family has shackled my little sister in the dungeon
in the hot tub full of carcinogenic bubble bath...
CAUTION: INCEST FEELINGS, TOXIC PARENTING
At a dream workshop for kids, James's trickster dream-figures provoked Jessica to dream one chased her;
fleeing, she jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, became a mermaid, and married the trickster...
Wednesday night I dreamed I had to jump overboard... that night there was a wreck
off the Yorkshire coast in a storm and the captain ordered his men to jump into the sea...
Why'd a spirit-woman come to our reservation to mourn a drowned guy? Her mirrors & candles tell us...
I walk through worlds, fight a deadly lake demon, and work magic--but I mustn't go lucid...
I was trapped in a river, trying to swim to shore. But I was in a powerful eddy. No matter which way I swam...
I find myself in astral China. The Empress is banished, the Jester rules. Wisdom is lost.
We need an Imperial Dragon...
A marsh. One figure's wrapped in mummy bandages; another swims--or drowns.
A ruin's being rebuilt. Out in the bay, a faint water-road leads to the open sea...
"Freedom is a gift you give yourself." But it doesn't always involve seahorses or babycarriages covered in quills...
Bennet's daughter dreamt her husband drowned after wading too deep (he couldn't swim). He promised
he'd avoid deep water, but his best friend played a prank, treading water to make it seem shallow...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
While spelunking, I blunder into the Lord of the Underworld's court where dragons swim--and
become one! My human friends stare at me, coiled with my two mates. Do they even know me now?
CAUTION: SCALY THREESOME
My lover's face is shadowed and we are never alone together. Things slip from film-noir to open nightmare when...
CAUTION: SEX, DEATH, GUILT
They were swimming in the glowing, molten pool of the Melting Pot, and beckoned me to join them...
CAUTION: SUICIDE SOUP?
At around one year old, Al dreamed, while in hospital, that he was a merboy
leaping from the sea, trying to figure out how to swim in the air, too...
I rescue some drowning kids by turning into a mermaid, but towing one girl has an unexpected effect...
Agents of Donald Trump with knives trap a mermaid. I jump one of them, and she
escapes, towing me with her. She assumed humans just hate merfolk, but I know...
CAUTION: HARSH WARNING ABOUT TRUMP
DREAM: Gay boys, underage girls & my own sister all mock me, sure I want their forbidden sexual fruit
at a beach where grotesque trees make their own precipitation and salt-dunes spill into saturated, toxic brine...
NEXT DAY: I read Margaret Atwood's The Salt Garden--sex, guilt, and grotesque trees in saturated, toxic brine.
CAUTION: SEXUAL GUILT, EXHIBITIONIST TWEENS, APPARENT E.S.P.
The foul old fossil woman had carved and burnt her own flesh in the name of art;
we washed her till she was reborn young. It was my turn next to enter the water...
We save a mouse from a man who claims he eats them. Later I dream I am the mouse...
by Jenny Badger Sultan; 14 dreams (mostly Jan-Mar 2011) painted on one canvas
A dream urged me to paint a big landscape with cutout movable (magnetic) dream figures
and liftable flaps revealing hidden dream scenes...
I work in a witness protection program. We hide the Muppet on the bottom
of an empty swimming pool, hand him a long straw, and fill it with...
I climb a huge mushroom-shaped rock rising from a hotspring and prepare to dive in...
I lie on the bottom of the pool. The life guard lifts me in his strong arms. We flirt till my legs fuse, ready to go deep;
but he says "It's only a part-time job" and turns away. In day, the highschool pool lies empty, widowed of water...
I love a Naiad who's lost her God. Tragedy strikes us. I'm devastated till I meet the aliens who explain...
I swim with my daughter Naomi in a desert pool amid lemon trees. She may be able to help me...
The sea pours in the house, but Lynette swims and floats in the sun. When the flood ebbs, the
land blooms into paradise. An oracle says "Your mom will die, but you'll help her through it"...
CAUTION: SUBLIMINALLY SENSING ILLNESS, OR PSYCHIC?
My sister & I swim round a weirdly shrunken Pacific. Near Fiji, we blunder too close to the drain...
At the beach I dive into deep water to save my drowning friend Kathy, and find it’s not so clear who’s who...
I'm a spy tracking down coinlike bombs. Fighting a double agent, I fall in love!
So I suggest her gang rob golden-parachute bankers...
CAUTION: POOLSIDE SEX
At the beach, wading with my fellow dreamworker Stephanie.
The waves are getting bigger--are they a hazard, or can we ride them?
Osento is a bath house that my friends all love. But women only. So I dream I change sex just to...
CAUTION: NUDITY, GRATUITOUS HAPPINESS
Ann had inflamed ovaries and faced surgery. She asked her dreams for a second opinion. She dreamt of voices and images saying
"there's plenty of time for all this." She bathed peacefully in a river, meditated, gave easy birth to an infant, climbed a ladder to
her law degree. She woke cured. Her next doctor said "you must've been misdiagnosed; you just thought you were in pain."
CAUTION: SEXIST GASLIGHTING
I froze to death trying to climb an icy peak. But I try again, and this time,
no holds barred. Wow, am I selfish! But alive...
After a rainy hike I'm cold and muddy. In the camp's hot tub, six girls splash and play.
They welcome me, but I feel shy. They slowly become winged ponies! Were-Pegasi...
CAUTION: HOT-TUB NUDITY
I'm a Confederate officer. The only way to save my men is to end the war by
pulling the plug at the bottom of the lake! I dive in, fighting a Yankee, who...
Four women with guns attack me at a public pool. Trapped in the water, can I survive? Only by being ruthless...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
I'm swept off sea-rocks, as my scaly guardian watches calmly--letting me drown in the tears I shed...
CAUTION: DROWNING
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
Lounging in the sun, I do a magical make-over--molding my bones to give myself more room for
intuition, judgment, nerve--all the while feeling shallow & indulgent for self-improving!...
Despite corporate crooks, missiles and floods, Angelina Jolie and I find the lock of mermaid hair...
I'm a raft guide on a circular river that may just be reincarnation. A girl in my
tour group jumps ship: she dreads the white water of rocky relationships ahead...
CAUTION: METAPHYSICS, SEX, WEAK SOULS...
Sunbathing on Saturn's rings with a girl who's preparing for reincarnation--like me.
She's cute, but she chucks litter in the Bay of Rebirth. Maybe not Ms. Right, then...
I search rivers and lakes around the world for someone dead. But the living I meet act as strange as ghosts...
For three weeks he wakened screaming in fright; he said he "fell in a hole." Then, one snowy day...
Five short playful dreams exploring sex. Because too many therapists
get in the habit of thinking all dreams must wrestle with unhappiness...
At the beach, I see a swim team wading in. One girl teases a laggard wader,
not seeing her huge scar. She says "I won't swim till the shark-risk is mapped"...
I'm in a crowd as a man lectures about sharks. He points at me and asks "Shall I throw him in with...?"
Swimming in Spokane, I meet two teenage girls and we have a... shy orgy?
Next day I go to a play... and see the two on stage! I still dismiss the dream
as a fantasy--consciously. But unconsciously I start taking action...
CAUTION: UNDERAGE SEX
1: Purple squid saboteurs flood our cliffhouse. 2: My oyster-ranching girlfriend has a snobby aunt.
3: I wake in a stranger's bondage fantasy--ugh! 4: Shepherds on the sea-floor watch for gliderwolves...
CAUTION: EMBARRASSING BONDAGE DREAM
I find the sketch-journal of a beautiful winged sphinx who left her mythic isle
to explore a great city of crazy bipeds, called San Francisco...
CAUTION: SPHINX SEX, SPHINX ATTITUDE
I went to bed with a stuffed wolf, and found myself in a hot tub with a
cute wolf guy, only now I seemed to be the plush one...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
I dream I'm an otter, and wake into a dream about sculpture--and learn my style's due to my species...
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
I'm a teenage girl diving for treasure. In an eerie coral grotto reeking of sulfur,
I spot a diver in trouble... and wake to find the grotto is real..
(1918 and 1996, twin images of our limited conception of dreaming)
What you call dreams are just the surf-zone between waking and dream!
Swim out past the foam to the dream-deeps and you'll find...
The past. Summer. Sunset. I want to sneak in a final
swim--in someone else's forbidden backyard pool...
Swimming down among the tentacles didn't bother me. I wanted that ball. But I didn't see the BIG eye...
I have recurring dreams of figures broken up by hair the color of the background...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
Tracking two cats at night, I watch amazed as they dive in and swim gracefully across a swimming pool...
On a cruise to Catalina Island, I find friends, a boyfriend and a magical sea of color...
The ship carrying my mom to America sails on, as I drown in the sea;
They strap me down to pull out the pieces of my stillborn baby Obdale;
A family/gang called Thanotos invites me to join them...
CAUTION: MISCARRIAGE, DEATH
On the run I meet a lycan, a pirate, and a mermaid. She causes a flood, and something floats by I just have to grab...
CAUTION: INTERRUPTED SEX
Those Hollywood lovers in the tub seem perfect together, until... oh, read the title!
CAUTION: RACE- AND GENDER-BENDING
Did sex turn creepy because I sensed the madman stalking us? Or did our sin (casual sex) summon him?
CAUTION: CREEPY SEX, CREEPIER PREMONITIONS
I'm the referee, or 'Vartena', of a violent high-school
game of waterpolo. A friend nearly drowns! Next day...
Junk in the attic? Treasures! The cat musicians shift from cartoons to life as I ascend,
til in the ultimate attic--the astral beach--I meet a cattaur made of pure (de)light...
CAUTION: SEX-CRAZED CATS, NEW AGE FINALE
I dreamt my son Walter drowned in the creek by a certain tree. I woke in tears, and resolved...
In a Tibetan monastery on an ancient lakebed, I swim through a vast sunken library.
Books open like sea anemones, letters float to the surface like kelp...
I dream I find a few 'extinct' watercats--in a slum! They talk. They say I'm one of them,
brainwashed to think I'm human. I wake, go to a dinner, and hear a tale of... watercats!
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
After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream
Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
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
I'm holding a pornographic novel, trying to keep it dry, as huge waves
flood the room. The book and I are both going to get drenched...
After his dad's death, a boy dreams he's an orphan facing cannibal witches--every night! Therapy helps;
his recurring dreams shift to a manhunt for a criminal who hides on the ceiling. The dreams shift again, to
a tiger hunt. That is, the tiger hunts you. The boy jumps in the sea. Swimming with sharks...
CAUTION: INTENSE NIGHTMARES, PARENTAL LOSS
We go swimming in a sea full of wrecked tankers. We explore one derelict, but ebb tide pries it off the bank,
out to sea. Do we swim for shore, or wait, hoping high tide will wash it in again? Guess wrong and we die...