Flying in a wild wind, I mate mid-air with an alien, get pregnant, change sex, fight the inlaws...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
I dream of a three-floor tower--but the Answer is up on Level Four!
No elevator, no stair. I can't even see it. Yet it's there...
The elevator man in funereal black said in a sepuchral voice "Are you ready?" I decided I'd wait...
DREAM: to stop an idiotic bout of war-fever, I have to take on the power of the Goddess herself...
NEXT DAY: I stumble on a fantasy book, Ariel, full of details straight out of the dream...
THAT NIGHT: I sign the Unicorn Commitment, but personalize the magical contract...
CAUTION: DISSES REAGAN & SOUTHERN MASCULINITY
All the Asteroids were coming together at last to form something bigger. In church,
the dull-eyed preacher hadn't noticed. I led a blind man on toward the new...
Action-painting cityscapes, but seen from far above--in flight. But
she keeps herself out of the picture, so you'd never guess, unless...
I'm a dance teacher, I'm King Kong, I'm a shell-shocked elf, I'm a wild bird flying...
CAUTION: GAY-POSITIVE ROLE MODELS, OH NO!
Humanity's trapped in a Quad, overseen by the Guardians of Blackslime Tower.
Feather by feather, I grow wings, and plot to escape with the Flying Cat...
CAUTION: THE SLIME IS REAGANOMICS
DREAM: a girl peers in my window & flirts with me. But why's she perched on a miniature clocktower?
NEXT DAY: on campus, I spot a girl perched on a ledge of a new miniature clocktower. Oh, that's...
CAUTION: CHILDHOOD TRAINING: "MEN ARE SCUM"
I'm Coyote, keeping the Business Prophet from taking over Dante's Peak. But it turns too personal...
CAUTION: IDIOTIC VIOLENCE
1991: dream of a weird tower like a cantileved skeletal sculpture of a coyote, in San Francisco. Sketch it then forget it.
1993: experimenting with a paint program, I make a peculiar image. No idea it's from a dream...
2020: transcribing old journals, I find the dream-sketches. My nondream experiment... wasn't.
How I cursed Isabella the sofa sorceress, cursed her with a blueberry. And why that stinks...
CAUTION: UNDER THE MAGIC, IDEAS
Happy beer drinkers from the Now invade the Tower of the Future.
Eggheads find idiots as lovable as kittens, and just can't eject them...
CAUTION: ELITIST; DISSES TRUMPISM
I'm in a tower of men, each son on his father's back, down to a patient overburdened ape.
His savanna's full of angry women who can only see him to yell at. Standoff. We can't escape.
I wake saying "Ease off, let the ape breathe. Let me down...
After trespassing in a staff-only part of Faerie, I'm cast out.
Only I'm cast like a seed, meant to grow a new elf circle...
I'm a delicate little ermine-chinchilla whose best friends are all sewer rats.
They push their food and drink on me, and I nibble to be polite...
Lucifer throws firebolts from a Montreal tower; monsters stalk us; next comes the flood...
Elegant, ancient, the tower rose into the clouds. Inside? Smoke & darkness. Workers roast meat...
I fall off a tower, but I can change size. Tiny things fall slower, but they also tempt the local falcons!
Be big & hit hard, or tiny & be eaten? There's a third choice, but I sorta fell into it...
My body is a residential tower sheltering centipedes, basilisks, dragonflies, bagworms,
skeletal cranes; without my blood's heat and the moist caverns of my soul they would die...
I had an epic dream lasting subjective weeks--a true other life. It wasn't Earth and we weren't human.
I was a teenage lemur, sailing with two friends into unknown waters--a rite of passage. One night,
my friends curled round me, I saw I didn't WANT to pass the test, be declared a woman, marry, and have pups.
I loved my girl friends. In a world lacking the very word, I was groping toward queerdom.
Sailing into unknown waters! "Here be dragons," the old maps say. And they were right...
2600K loads slowly? Try it in parts: 1: HOME, 650K, 2: VOYAGE, 1200K, 3: BACK 750K.
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, QUEER TEEN ANGST, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
I live in a huge half-hotel. The only way into the other half is through a fireplace.
It's forbidden. But one woman steps through the fire--do I dare follow?...
In a rough part of San Francisco, I climb to the roof of a tower and jump off, but not to kill myself...
I was the first woman made High Commissioner of Baseball. One day a team of mutants begs a franchise...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM, BAD TEAMWORK, HORNY BEES
old Frisco gone, high-rise condos obscure the view: hives for techie...
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...
I find my city has changed during Covid; a huge Chinese gate or folly near Fort Mason
and a monstrous tower in the central hills, made of Space Needles, umbrellas & balloons...
Next day I read Jan Morris's Hav... and there are my towers.
All the photos of hawk people I can find show them with bizarre genitalia: males
with hawk-heads for penises, and females with nothing. Blank! Then I go to work...
CAUTION: REVERSE SEXISM
I climb a small-town water tower. The tank holds a reedy marsh where sentient herons live! They say
the Heartland below them is a nest reserved for greedy, screechy, flightless, half-grown souls like us...
CAUTION: DISSES SMALL-TOWN VALUES
In Ireland, in Yeats's stone tower, he leads me up the spiral stair toward a thyme-scented portal...
A man in a castle plots against his enemies, while his rebel-daughter meets her lover outside...
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
Soon after my friend and mentor James Merrill died, I had recurring, elusive dreams about him...
Night. A big city. High in a tower, a man in a wetsuit and flippers is
swimming in air--practicing before slipping out the open window...
Huge gold construction cranes loom over medieval castles. Not rebuilding, but
hoisting knights to the heights. I get a ride up, and see a wide timescape...
DREAM: my late mom invades my workplace. "Check in weekly or we'll stop your allowance!"
What allowance? I'm independent! MONTHS LATER: I got sick from overwork. Nearly died.
NOW: I think my dead mom meant: face your limits, check in with mortality, or you'll... check out.
I visit a beautiful artificial mountain with loved ones--but my demons overwhelm me one by one.
CAUTION: SUICIDAL FEELINGS, BODY HATE/FATPHOBIA, IMPLIED RAPE
Dad's human, Mom's a weird owl-lynx, the kid's a baby Pegasus... and I,
W.C. Fields, that fat cynical drunken old actor, am the babysitter...
I was on a steamer run amok, in a boiling yellow incredible sea out of which great pylons rose...
Protestors occupy the Transamerica Pyramid and install a cow as CEO... a Cash Cow?
Marianna escaped her bossy dad, only to end up with a bossy countercultural boyfriend.
In these two dreams she makes the connection, and faces that she's picking Napoleons...
CAUTION: BLOODY BATTLE, BAD SEX
I'm in a vast cavern full of skyscrapers--sucked into the underworld. Rusty steel plates cover
their now-useless windows. In the shadows, horned, fanged businessdevils scurry by...
I meet two witch sisters. Little sister and I magically power a flying saucer. She gives me a tour
of this vast, ruined city. My life here is happy, but it doesn't look good for civilization as a whole...
DREAM: chased by a sniper, I trick him into blowing himself up. Then, in the Watchtower,
I know every name & address in Shropshire, but must hide them till all the snipers are caught...
NEXT DAY: at work I run across a book with every name and address in 17th-century Shropshire...
CAUTION: FATAL EXPLOSION
In a creepy castle on the Rhine, whenever I'm near three women, they blur
into one. A powerful spell! Now where have I seen this effect...?
CAUTION: DISSES PATRIARCHAL RELIGIONS
My friend Stanley is a social icebreaker: blundering in where I'm too shy, and
too thick-skinned to worry much. He is what he is. So why am I mad at him?
A picture-poem experiment: one dream per stanza!
Five short dreams exploring the weight of culture on our animal selves...
The card of revolution! The old towers of strength come down, not via war but obsolescence...
I was a mermaid trying to find Count Coyote's stolen dreams, so I could marry my human girlfriend...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, LESBIAN MARRIAGE, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
That day: I read of a young healer in rural Indonesia harassed by the local mullah.
That night: I dream she leads a revolution on a starship against her elders...
1: Crystal-skulled wizards, dino & lionfolk parade by. 2: I curl up with three skittish beasts. Patience!
3: My friend Mark tries to rape me. I tie him up, seek a restraining order. Will the cops believe me?
CAUTION: RAPE ATTEMPT
My mom had to climb a ladder down the side of the Empire State Building; I'm told she fell and died...
I'm in Houston, gawking at giant starfishy towers looming through the smog. Their shapes are familiar...
Cities are fun when you're a bird--all those updrafts and perches and nests with great views...
I cling alone to the cliffs of Lands End, so when the tsunami hits,
I survive. Had I been in the low, crowded Sunset district I'd be dead...
I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones...
CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
1940s reporters almost trap me in a mob shootout. I shelter in a gender-segregated hotel.
The owner of Wharton Tower shakes the hotel so it swings between its butch & femme halves.
I fall off the Hudson Palisades, but I land safely on the Glass Ceiling...
At age 90, the first female high-rise steelworker tells me
why she did it--and why she regrets it now...
Great towers rise into a fog zone--or is it another world with other rules? And how to draw both levels?
DREAM: I'm in Yellowstone, in a monstrous resort. Local tribes fight white exploitation of sacred land.
NEXT MORNING: I read a Native American critique of racist land-theft in a TV show: Yellowstone...
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