Johns dreamt he was painting an American flag. He woke, and did--
mixing pigment and beeswax, coating newspaper strips...
four death-omen dreamlets, one predictive
Every decade or so, I dream a loved one says farewell and walks
down an avenue of trees. I wake to find that person's dying...
In a corrupt world, a talisman called the Rai Dragon offers hope of real change--
IF it can be found, AND used by someone decent-hearted...
A human pinball game played in the dark, with bells for stoppers, sorting people into a Gaussian bell-curve...
Bess painted images that look like abstract symbols
but actually flashed in front of him when half asleep...
A startling deep-blue rabbit with scarlet eyes and red veined ears, floating in colorless air...
I'd been reading Watership Down, the chapter on the Black Rabbit of Inlé...
CAUTION: ART THEORY CRUSHES BUNNY
At the beach, a deaf boy with a strong aura asks "Are you here for the coin?"
He buries horse skeletons in the sand; the bones are carved with symbols...
The crystalline figure on the cover of the book in my dream seemed to hold as many answers as its title...
I keep dreaming of awkward but successful transitions into new life, and paint them all in one landscape...
I meet William F. Buckley and his beloved pet pig. Only
the hog's a live H-Bomb, and the leash is a trigger...
CAUTION: REVOLTING GUY, PET, AND ISSUE
At a snake-weaving party I flirt with my anima, who tells me how
the cake fell off the roof. I think “At last we’re really connecting!”...
In an alternate Judea, I long for a female Christ and her lesbian apostles.
My lust is unrequited, till a small Sex Kitten gives me some wise advice...
CAUTION: CAT NUDITY, BLASPHEMY
Decision by decision, we made our way down immense rock crags. Below, I had to put out a deadly fire,
a fire as solid as wood or stone, with a white staff. What am I really trying to calm?
I meet King Louis-Philippe, but as I recall his symbol, the cockerel, he transforms to suit.
Now he cannot read the letter presented to him, so it becomes a basket of bird-seed...
A mystical vision of the Cosmic Egg gets messy when it hatches and the Bird escapes...
After breaking with the Catholic Church, Greg had recurrent nightmares about its history of atrocities
and cover-ups. Out of this came a series of paintings unlike his famous book covers. This was the first...
CAUTION: MURDEROUS MOB
Hundreds of dusty drawers, clearly not not touched in years. I open one
to find cymbals. Some part of me knows it's a dream and sees the pun...
I lead my daughter up a thorny path; she’s getting scratched. She'd rather stay in that fishing village below...
A dragon's daughter seeking her inheritance defies a sneaky dragon-realtor out to own the world...
I dreamt I was given verbena sprigs--from my mother, I'm told. But am I me, Persephone, or all the daughters given love by all the mothers?
Often while lucid dreaming I find myself exploring a pathway with amazing detail.
Sometimes a doorway seems to be asking me to continue on to a higher level...
One dream-poem in haiku style each day for a month!
Ghosts, snow, penguins, yoga babies, elves who leave their tree...
This dreamer is starting to notice certain subtle signs that all
is not normal and this may be a dream. Well, not that subtle...
I ask my dreams if my dad's influencing my divorce. I dream my dad warns me "You can't ride a
motorcycle." I mount the bike and zoom down the road. I love it. When I park at last, my dad says...
Tarot cards fuse and meanings layer, to warn me I've similarly (con)fused>
real and trance-induced memories during therapy...
CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES
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...
Books are clothes, and always were. A potato makes me lie, and everyone gets it but me.
Sex in a crowd disarms the Mom Squad! And a Mystic Autistic's soul explores my room...
CAUTION: PUBLIC SEX? PROBABLY.
I've always loved curves, color, dreams, sex, texture... and planning, too.
So one day I drew 100 black boxes in ink--no color, no curves, no erasure! And then I began to seek...
I'm in the Gulf of Mexico watching the Creator of North America place mountains, rivers
and ancestors just where they belong. I wake knowing this pious, static view is immoral...
CAUTION: CRITIQUES TRADITIONALISM
God built 3 dials to check: body, soul, and time. But the Holy Spirit's lazy, only checks one! It's up to us...
I was so lonely the potheads on Haight looked good. I dreamed I had the Golden Key, but under a cheap
sodium streetlamp, ALL my keys looked gold! Then I met true gold: a woman meditating until she shone...
CAUTION: NUDITY, HAIGHT STREET STONERS
DEBBIE: I dream of my friend G's new girlfriend C (who I've never met) and tell her "you'll never fill my shoes."
C: I dreamed I met Debbie. She wore green shoes, and said "See these shoes, you could never fit into them"...
CAUTION: WILL ANNOY E.S.P. DENIERS
After seeing The Tempest with a tattooed Miranda, I dream she has a Cutie Mark on her flank--
a logo showing her life-purpose, her life-path. Except she's outgrowing it...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
Driving down a country road, I go lucid. A gorgeous hitchhiker appears. I'm tempted, but I decide to try for something higher than
a sex dream. The car takes off, climbs past religious symbols into a clear sky where I find myself singing a transcendent hymn...
I wanted to steal this pink woolen sweater. I didn't need it;
what I really wanted to steal was middle-class security...
Swedenborg tenderly says goodbye to a lover. A few nights later he realizes his dream lovers
repeatedly represent scholarly fields! An avid scientist, he find research as sexy as, well, sex...
An archeological dig inscribed in the Roman alphabet, Chinese characters, Ethiopian
syllabics and unknown scripts. A carved egg bears news from the future, not the past...
CAUTION: CALLS PROPHECY A LEARNABLE SKILL
My home seemed antiquated but pleasant. I found a stair down to a darker, medieval floor.
A dark stair led down to a Roman cellar. A trapdoor led down to a cave with ancient skulls...
Jung's visions of dragons evolve from fiery destroyers
to thieves who can be forced to give up treasure
to peacful, luminous guardians of the sacred...
One wizardry-classmate summons strange beings; another's learned how not to.
Because some things need to be dealt with alone, where they can't harm......
A goddess in a dream once told me to seek 3 and only 3 qualities in a mate...
CAUTION: NUDITY
The life-loop. A woman bears a child who grows up to become herself, who bears a child who...
CAUTION: SKETCHY NUDITY
In dark, grimy, rainy Liverpool, a friend shows me a park with an islet
in a pond, where a great magnolia tree shines--an oasis of light...
DREAM: a weird-looking guy says he's a Private Nose, who can read my
life history by sniffing my lunch. He gets a lot right--but just as much wrong.
NEXT DAY: My sister takes me to lunch & orders tea-leaf salad. Our waiter is...
Morocco. Horseback mercenaries attack a town. A boy says "Take their lifestyle, and you must remove their brains."
A protective Hand of Fatima dissolves, leaving a finger, a feather, a... vagina. "What a slit!" We burst into laughter...
Humanity in the future desperately needs the magic words from the past to free them. But... "pickle?"
by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares...
Our dream-group's dreams had a lot of imagery in common: circles, groups, meditation. I fused them into this piece...
I rescue some drowning kids by turning into a mermaid, but towing one girl has an unexpected effect...
I dreamed I was trapped in the maze of my pacifist vegetarian feminist anarchist eco-conscience...
I free a friend unjustly imprisoned. On the run, we encounter our Life Paintings. Mine is a beautiful pegasus flying. But on its back is a monkey in a red suit...
Okay, you got your heaven, and your earth, and between, you got...
CAUTION: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
Two boys dream robed figures climb in the window to cut their hair--and find, awake, someone has. While Pliny...
I dream my theatre friends are particles dancing inside an atomic nucleus--
particles that reveal their character, motivations and power. And I'm one too...
I'm a stratospheric bat who finds a flying swastika. Is it creeping fascism?
Or a Hindu blessing? Neither! It's an Octopian frisbee. I return it...
I hung the dream-net over my bed. It worked. A blue-winged man with a leg of silver came to me,
drummed, danced, offered to teach me secrets. Awake, I found a blue feather caught in that net...
I held the strangest and most entrancing object I have ever seen: the very citadel of life itself!...
Our Lady of the Yoyo plays with our yin-yang world, trying to keep the spin going on each bounce...
A grassy hill in a previous drawing of mine suddenly looked like Big Hair, so I tried to grow a body that fit that 'do...
Hypnotized in therapy, I saw AT LEAST five competing goals tugging at me like gravity fields.
Naturally I drew them. Come tour the Inner Solar System of our desires...
CAUTION: NUDITY (BODY, HEART, BRAIN, SOUL)
I don't understand this poem's symbolism or even its style. It came to me whole, in a dream...
What if comics panels and layouts weren't so square? I try triangles,
pentagons, hexagons, circles, spirals--and some serious stuff pops out...
CAUTION: IDEAS, OCCASIONAL NUDITY, MENTIONS ABUSE
"Our resurrection is not entirely in the future; it's also in us, it begins, it's already begun..."
In our steamy future, after the cities drown, I'm hiking through Rainbow Tunnel, when I meet a holy man...
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...
DAY: on the radio Carl Sagan calls those who've experienced ESP or UFOs "proto-fascists"...
DREAM: a flying pewter teapot orbits a round blue vase--like a starship round the Earth...
NEXT WEEK: My mom calls. She's selling that pewter pot after a century in the family...
CAUTION: DISSES SAGAN
In a Scythian church, a painting says:
"Little St Bridget was bound so hard that when they released her she flew"...
Stranded on an island where a marching band drowned, I escape
by paddling across the Pacific using a rusty, er, cymbal...
We need to get down to the sea, but Disney Corporation blocks the way. Wait--we're
dreamworkers! We ooze through the walls, and cheer the parade marching in on the tide...
My sisters get bored with the game of power, so I watch TV--
until it melts, and a terrifying giant rises to chases me...
I was in a gang, but I quit. They stoned me--and the green heron, the green color I called "Sharonne".
The setting (Israel), the green (Islam), and the name (Ariel Sharon?) all hint the dream's political...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, POLITICS
A Goddess-worshiping general gets a visit from her twin daughters who bring a puzzling message...
Silky, my often-animal anima, leads me into a strange pagan church where we get married at last...
Africa. My horse trusted me as we faced lions and fire, but to face the Soul-Board, he must trust himself...
Jung walked against stiff wind and fog, sheltering a tiny light, generating a huge eerie shadow--his other self!
He concluded this was his life-task--to nurture his spark of awareness & rationality in the dark. But...
In hindsight his dream models four key Jungian ideas: Self, Ego, Shadow and Unconscious--at age 18!
CAUTION: REJECTS JUNG'S OWN DREAM INTERPRETATION!
I wake amnesic in a cabin in Alaska, in a dress printed with self-putdowns.
I track down the wizard who cursed me. He turns me into a swan! Worse?
No! His first curse was on a human being, and now I'm a bird. My mind is free!...
I slept late and felt a bit stiff, but until my friends pulled it out of my neck I had no idea...
Earth is never shown from its axis. Polarly, it's a vast wheel, the real Wheel of Fortune...
An alien tiger and his human girlfriend herd me to their house
and show me a cube of raw flesh... but why?
Clarence the sappy angel from It's A Wonderful Life and Milton's Lucifer land on Earth, offering treaties.
Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're fine as is, but the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures
like me and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full palette of feelings. Like the feeling she's fake...
Psychics give me an incomprehensible reading. A book from the tree-library gives only Victorian dating advice.
At last a madman gives me a treasure-box holding a tooth that unfolds into slices carved in unreadable symbols...
I wake up in a weird sexual situation. But I'm still dreaming--I wake again
to find I'm in an even weirder sexual situation. But I'm still...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, (ANTI?)ROMANTICISM
I saw a vast transparent plane inscribed with pictograms and symbols. Through it, at an unknown distance,
lay a second plane of less clear shapes and colors, but with great mass, depth, and unknown currents...
I grope through fog to the Vague House. Fog inside, too. Find a stone carved with an Eye of
Horus, and know it's my anger. Find a bigger stone scarab, and know it's my REAL anger...
I was dead. A weed grew from my heart; then two streams poured out--not
water or blood but experiences. I asked the weed what it was doing, and it said...
I find the Well of Women's Wisdom. Lucky I'm female tonight! A girl sneers "Narrow!" Is it, or her?
I meet a man in a box. A mob wants to attack him. But five white horses defend him! Well, one's really a unicorn. I know each horse is a talent, but only recall one when I wake: clairvoyance...