In one long night I hike out of Obligation Hell
all the way to Inner-Freedom Heaven...
A man with luminous hair leads me out to a field where all the world's animals but one gaze at heaven...
I learn to fly from Arenna the moon-girl and Crest the dragon, in the House of Deep Memory...
My dead friend Charlie and his sister and I are driving around Lake Erie.
We know it's a dream and he's dead, and yet we're joyous...
I'm a priestess from an island of women; I meet an angel
who charges me to harvest all the dreams of the world...
A party for me and my shadow, to celebrate that we haven't killed each other, just HATE each other...
Anxious about a big party, I dream of being crowded. But
a cat-centaur in the crowd attains sudden enlightenment...
A bear rips open my wall and guides me into a psychedelic space where I learn to see with new eyes...
A black beetle insists I'm not needed or at home in the human world; my lifework is elsewhere...
Chapter 8 of UNICORN TAG, though it can stand alone.
A packet of magic soupmix sends me upstairs to a secret wizards' lab.
They've summoned a demon they can't handle: the furious Black Unicorn...
I was trapped inside a boulder, but as I chanted it melted around me until it resembled a discarded skin...
A champion swimmer tells me how she turned a sexual humiliation into excitement and liberating power...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, SHAME, PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY
I was led into the future, where all the buffalo disappeared, to meet a frail old man by a ranch house...
I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering about, content with my lot. Suddenly I awoke and was Chuang-tzu again...
I'm in a huge colonnade. An army of blood-painted men sacrifice the dove of peace. Their masked leader drinks its blood.
But then I'm carried upstairs to meet... the prophet Daniel! I'm amid the angels, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel...
CAUTION: BLOOD-DRINKING THUGS
I join a circus, but soon all the best carnies sail off to the Blessed Isles. The circus animals pitch in
and carry on--clumsy and lonely. Then a divine herald arrives from the Isles: Donald Duck! He says...
I was tired and sad and mired in routine. I asked for a dream to restore my soul.
I found myself under a tree as a chorus of gorgeous birds sang classical music...
The day after my mom outed me to my dad, I dream a great storm has passed and everything's just glowing...
The book's first two pages showed an ant's awareness, then a human's wider grasp--both mere freckles on reality...
A mystical vision of the Cosmic Egg gets messy when it hatches and the Bird escapes...
I dreamed all the creatures of the world were dancing around a maypole.
My friends and I sculpted a totem pole from the dream...
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 learn from the crows of Oz why loneliness and even tragedy are vital for a living universe...
In the far future, I relive Odysseus' tale. To save my life I must give up realistic hope, and focus on...
CAUTION: CANNIBAL MONSTERS
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...
I meet my personal demon, and discover it has a personal demon: me! Am I worse than my Shadow?
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, NUDE MONSTERS
Troutmet the moon-pigeon, Burtra the blackbird, a talking acacia,
my dead father and my dead gardener all give me afterlife-advice...
Gazing at the moon, Anna finds herself touring the Solar System, meeting all the planetary guardians...
CAUTION: MYSTICAL ECSTASY
At death's door, my friend lets Cerberus devour her, so I can enter
Death's pyramid alive and expose the truth about the afterlife...
CAUTION: FATAL DOG ATTACK
Africa. The elephant seemed attracted to a strange wave of white heat. It faded to nothingness. Suddenly we too were enveloped.
I became flame. I was consumed. I was a thought center, alone in a white void. To create a new life I had only to speak the word...
CAUTION: DEATH
I will a clay cat to come to life, then start healing real cats and dogs and...
I'm an intellectual ballerina trying to stop zombies hatching from stone eggs, but I succeed
only when I become a dragon using touch, scent and visualization to persuade the eggs...
I panic as statues come alive at the museum, but they're all about energizing a mystical pyramid...
A spiral pillow-path leads to an astral portal. But creatures arriving and
departing jam the same path. Squeeze by, hop over, apologize... flirt!
Is this a dream-image of death & letting go? Then why's it look so fun?
My spirit-wife and I spend our last evening together painting. Not with colors--with emotions...
A crowd watches from shore as a great glowing meteor descends into the sea. I fear a tsunami, but...
On our expedition to a singularity, one researcher gets quantum-entangled with it! He could become anything...
On a volcano's rim, watching the lava fountains, I interview a huge blue alien bird who never planned to be a monk...
Hide-and-seek on an alien world ends in a sexy encounter--and a startling insight on BELIEF...
CAUTION: SEX
A fairy woman and a mortal man? Can't work! They're flighty, we're crude. Doomed, right?
Well, some people are so sure of it they decide to help things along a bit. Or a lot...
I'm falling into darkness. I feel like screaming, but 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...
I knew I was on my bed, yet I felt myself falling into a tesseract--huge, crystalline, colorful.
Inside I met an energy being who explained I'm not meant to die yet; this was just training...
CAUTION: UNCONVENTIONAL GOD
In my ballet class, we were learning to leap. But I wanted to FLY. So I went outside alone...
I've climbed a cliff and cower on the brink; but for for the first time I need not
fall or retrace my dangerous path down. I know I'm dreaming, and wake...
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, helping him see he's dreaming. His guide points out 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...
After 25 years I land on my native island of Wyre, to touch an ancient clay figurine, who grows young and wakes...
I dream it's after a great war; I hear the music I must write, and meet the girl I must marry...
I find myself sketching the slope of progress up to the coming singularity, and notice a hidden stability...
High in the Sierra during a thunderstorm, I dream aliens steal the gold, and the sun's
going nova. But Life wants us to conquer space, so we all grow wings...
Two days before 9/11, I dream I'm a child at ground zero, mourning the devastation--and witnessing rebirth.
Landing in Hawaii, I dream of a magical twilit cove I must swim across. The eve of leaving, there it is...
I read Stephen Hawking, and dream I'm in the Quantum Desert, full of bridges, holes & loops--
like the microstructure of spacetime. But it's not counter-intuitive at all--it's HOME!
I can heal people with a touch. But they don't want to be merely restored, but resculpted...
CAUTION: TRANNIES AND FURRIES LEAVE THE CLOSET
I was ordered to join Hitler's army. I dreamt a booming voice proclaimed, "This train is going to Hell!" So I...
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...
Wounded, bandaged, chased by cops, I end up heading a huge children's parade,
marching to Mongolia. No secret what it's about--On The Road was just published...
To reach the Peak of Happiness on the Isle of Dreams, I must pass four Perils--but they're all backwards...
CAUTION: RELIGIOUS NUTS, KNIVES, NUDE ALIENS, BACKWARD PLOT...
That day Frederic, craving irises, fell in the water three times. At night he swam through an iris paradise...
Jacob dreams of angels climbing to heaven. He meets God, who promises
the Holy Land to him and his tribe. Jacob uncritically accepts...
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 was about three. A big, luminous figure said he would be my guardian always. We went horseback riding in the sky...
Deep in the caves, a Voice announces I've gone as far as the human mind can stand. But ahead, I see...
I live two complete lives with the same woman in my dreams, then wake up next to her...
I flew as if part of the air--an otherworldly freedom so exquisite I wonder if it's attainable at all in earthly existence...
Honesty induces a joyful state with lucidlike powers.
So I bike across the Lake of Time, open the book of my future, and see...
CAUTION: SEXY SKETCHES FROM THE FUTURE
Jung (at age three and a half) sees a terrifying god deep underground, and is told "That is the man-eater!"...
Manta Moths pick us off us explorers... or do they? An old scroll spoke of fear leading to transformation...
From the punk clubs of Frisco to the Safeways of Si Valley to the vermilion sands of Mars,
Silky the were-nightmare fights for the Misfits against every cliche in science fiction...
I'm in San Francisco trying to throw Sauron's Ring into the Cracks of San Andreas.
But a sexy sorcerer steals my sense of I! How can you act without a self?
I go lucid and drive my bed to the Nevada desert where I see my next million years. And so far, it's been true...
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...
An alien beach scene--as seen through eyes that see bodies' energy fields more than surface forms...
My day life as an artist and explorer of the San Francisco underground scene
gets regularly commented on by my dreamlife...
CAUTION: SEX, BONDAGE
We're spirits over a volcanic fountain of energy. And some of us prepare to ride the current up to...
CAUTION: ASSUMES MYSTICAL LITERACY
Dreams of translucent fairies, centaurs, robots & gnomes prompt me to cartoon
on transparent overlays to show how dreamworlds overlay ours...
I meet two Peacock Kings bigger than human beings, who chant blessings until I wake with tears drenching my pillow...
Facing death the next day in a Roman arena, Perpetua dreams of the spiritual duel behind the physical one...
As a boy on Martinique, Jean-Luc Picard wished for so much so hard, his angels have to work overtime...
On a cloud in space I met an ape molding a model of Earth, glancing at the original far below. We were much alike...
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"...
We sail to the Isle of the Blest, but God exiles me to Fargo, North Dakota. But God's up to something subtle...
In one night Descartes had three dreams convincing him he had to change the course of his life...
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
I knew the universe worked perfectly. Its existence was joyous, and I was part of it. This was imageless insight,
but to aid recall, I summoned images; I depicted the universe by a flowing circle of stars. And I was one...
After I fled my batterer, I was afraid to love--afraid I'd give up my freedom again for mere kindness...
The glow seemed to come from within her, but I knew it flowed from my own breast. Her eyes fluttered...
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
Numb, sunk in a trance, I only woke when I broke through a wall to light and magical birdsong...
I drum on an ocarina-gong in the dark. My weird music summons a choir of
fierce angels, who send a wave of tingling energy surging through me...
The old man sang in the empty church, then looked at me and snapped his fingers. I was filled with voices...
A gigantic herd of buffalo stampede toward me. I panic, then surrender in peace to what is surely my death...
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!...
On a cruise to Catalina Island, I find friends, a boyfriend and a magical sea of color...
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
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 trail toward Freedom has extra markers, for it's three trails, superimposed! Not all the cues are for us...
My father-in-law looked me in the eye and said, 'Florence, the Lord is my shepherd and we go in peace'...
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'm Pete Townshend of the Who, climbing stubbornly out of Hell by noticing what I don't want...
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 huge wolfhound tore past me. My blood froze. The Wild Hunt was carrying off a soul...
A woman I had wronged set her pit bull on me! Hand in its jaws, I gave in, and we both began crying...
I careen from a sacrificial marriage-altar to the Oracle Harper's secret pool,
into the jaws of Leviathan and the joys of lucid flight, shifting from male to female
and gay to straight--till I meet the Dragonfly People themselves...
CAUTION: STUPID, STUPID SEX CULT!