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University Life

A lot of these dreams are set at California colleges--City College of San Francisco, SF State, the University of California at Santa Cruz, but also Stanford University, where I was never a student but worked for a decade. Stanford stands pretty well for academia in general: not exactly an otherworldly refuge, but at least less worldly--on the surface. I found Stanford reflected the surrounding society's crassness, underneath. I came away dedicated to self-education. To libraries and online data that anyone can access, regardless of class, money, age, race, gender, degrees or all the other filters that universities use to force you to accept their rules: you may learn this, but not that. I couldn't find the library I wanted, the library with guides to the deepest inner work. So I built my own! Build your own, too. For the university system is encrusted with far more pernicious vines than ivy.

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ALL-GENIUS CLASS: by Wayan; dreamed 2007/5/2, a dream warning it took a decade to spot
Our gifted class is on a field trip. Our teacher happily explains we're going to wreck a freeway,
tying up traffic for months, to protest crappy gifted programs...
CAUTION: SLOWEST DREAM INTERPRETATION EVER
ART OR PROPAGANDA?: by Wayan; dreamed 2008/2/7, 3 dream-reactions to Philip Pullman's books
There's a rare dream-type that can change reality itself. I study its EEG trace. Can I learn to do it?...
I'm arguing with musicians--what's better, music that serves your goals, or purely great music...
I'm bored in class. Draw sexy furries. The babydykes by me do too! Art'll summon the girls we want...
CAUTION: PHILOSOPHY! OH NO!
AS OTHERS SEE US: by Wayan; 1993/12/3, a socially astute flying dream.
We're orphans learning to fly by night, when others can't see and define us...
AWKWARD ENLIGHTENMENT: by Wayan; 2010/1/13; a dream of spiritual and practical advice
Anxious about a big party, I dream of being crowded. But
a cat-centaur in the crowd attains sudden enlightenment...
THE BARRINGTON BUNNY: by Wayan; 1988/8/30, a world-saving alien-abduction dream
Alien robots kidnap me... and make me the mascot for a college football team.
But my Channel Changer slowly infuses us all with nerdy trust...
BATMAN'S LOVE: by Wayan; 1996/3/26, a dream-epic of love and time.
A New Age graduation party spurs a wild dream of the spiritual odyssey of Catwoman,
starring Alexander the Great, Batman, God, and Rumi the poet (played by Frank Zappa)...
CAUTION: MORAL RELATIVITY
A BEAM OF FLIGHT: by Wayan; 1992/4/19, a dream of love and shellshock.
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!
BANANA MOON: by Wayan; 1998/3/4-12/26, dream-figure painting, acrylic on wood, 3x4'
My figure-painting class here in San Francisco has a diverse student body, but not THIS diverse...
CAUTION: NUDITY
CAT WITH A KNIFE: by Wayan, 2000/6/24, a nightmare of a Jungian Shadow changed by patience
A guy threatens me with a knife. I sit on him and wait patiently.
Slowly he turns into a huge black cat! I set him free in a garden...
CHIMP FINAL: by Wayan; 1984/5/19, a dream about failure.
I'm in school on a chimp scholarship and it's time for my final exam...
CIDER AND WINE: by Wayan; 1974/10/24, surreal undream Aspie reporting
Our writing class meets in this Victorian home. I turn off my filters and describe what I really see around me...
THE CLARK RANGE, OR, THE HAND: by Wayan; 1975/12/1, a surreal lucidity-prompting dream
In the Sierra with geologists, I stick my arm down a drillhole and feel a living hand! Impossible, yet...
CULT OF BLINDNESS: by Wayan, 1984/2/12, a family-dynamics dream with a predictive twist
Everyone's joining the Cult of Blindness. My mother signed up. I'm tempted; it's
the only way to find a decent date in this town. But this fat gatekeeper objects...
DOG HORROR: by Wayan, 2023/1/21; a nightmare--but not the dreamer's!
I'm cold, tired and wet, and I have to take this dog to college. But when I touch him,
he howls in horror. I'm not having a nightmare, I am a nightmare. His nightmare...
DONNA'S FALLOUT: by Wayan, 1972/2/6, 2/26, 2/29 & 3/4: sonnets & watercolors of 4 sex dreams.
When I was 17, an older girl pushed booze at me and came on to me... in front of my parents and teachers!
For months, I had ambivalent sex dreams trying to process what Donna taught me--not all of it negative...
CAUTION: WEIRD SEX; ADULTS BEHAVE BADLY
THE DOUBT: by Wayan; 2007/2/15, an undream trance-painting
Painting an abstract watercolor, I drifted into trance, and found myself climbing a
thorny slope. Deer in the brush. Great peaks around. Had I gone wrong?
DREAM HERDING: by Nancy Potter; 1978/11/8 & 11/11, two comic, surreal dreams
FERRY: the crossing is rough, but I'm warned I must find my own sea-legs...
BUZZ OFF: I step into a family photo, but I'm not welcome in the past...
EFFECTIVENESS: by Wayan; dreamed 2008/6/13, an advisory dreamlet
I'm forced to retake a course labeled Logic. It's not logic. The teacher says "I teach Effectiveness." And proves it:
I lack a prospectus, so he folds the sheet into a paper airplane and sails it perfectly across the room to me...
ERÉNDIRA: by Wayan; dreamed 1984/10/3, a grotesque predictive dream
1: Mimes stage an Orgy For Peace. Shy, I wait my turn. Should've run off with that girl eyeing me!
2: My friend Diane says "Men are selfish!" I pop her safety valve; she vents a great cloud of rage...
Two days later: I go see the film Eréndira; it's full of scenes & lines from my dream...
CAUTION: CHARITY PROSTITUTION BY MIMES
THE ERTHEDNI: by Wayan, 1977/1/8, three transformation dreams, the last with advice
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)
FACULTY WIFE: by Wayan; 1998/1/6, a sexy but disorienting dream.
I'm a faculty wife bored out of my mind until two students have sex in my yard. I ignore HIM and jump HER...
CAUTION: SEX
FEDERALIST SCHOOL: by Wayan; 2013/8/20; a happy advisory dream
A free university just opened in town. The curriculum evolves by natural
selection. Anyone can teach! Should I? Just don't eat the food...
FINAL EXAM, WRITTEN IN BLOOD: by Wayan; 2019/6/16, a dream on systemic bigotry
My classmates stole my pen. My teacher condones it. I am, after all, a hated minority.
They won't even SELL me one. So I write my final in blood--three huge, crude letters...
GARGOYLE GO-BETWEEN: by Wayan; 1996/11/22, a Hogwartish dream.
I'm odd kid out in my wizard school till gargoyles raid us, and I puzzle out their tongue, to become...
HALF SHAMAN, HALF STATESMAN: by Wayan; 1986/4/21, a parallel-world dream: Chapter 6 of UNICORN TAG
I get a scholarship to Shaman U. Some of my classmates are Terran, but I still don't fit in, because...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
HICKOPHOBIA: by Wayan; 1996/5/13; 2-page dream-comix (or plain text version)
Whenever I run out of ballet class to Japanese without asking my classmate Wendy out, I change sex...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE
THE HOMONKEYLUS: by Wayan; 1992/6/15, a looping dream about blinders.
A smiling beauty queen on a float gives birth to a monkey with blinders, then re-absorbs the baby, then...
CAUTION: NUDITY AND ODDITY
INUIT MEDITATION: by Wayan; 1989/11/16, a comically surreal dream.
I'm the first tuna to get a scholarship to Stanford.
Naturally I sign up for a course in Inuit Meditation...
THE IRON WINDOW: by Jim Shaw; between 1987 & Jan. 1995, a grotesque dreamlet
Bearded professors call through an iron-barred window shaped like
a woman's torso, hoping to lure a nude model to fill it so they can grope...
CAUTION: CREEPY
KIOSK: by Wayan; 1994/5/1, a 4-page dreamcomic on the power of song (or illustrated text version)
I'm a sexy singing beast, the Krelkin, trying to lure the Reading Man out of his Moral Kiosk...
CAUTION: NUDITY, INTERSPECIES FLIRTATION
LAMPREYS: by Wayan; 1974/6/27, a dream of assimilation
Pretty much everyone in my school is a bloodsucking alien, but, come to think of it, so what?
CAUTION: SEX, VAMPIRES, SEX WITH VAMPIRES, BUT NICE VAMPIRES
LBJ'S CAGE: by Lyndon Baines Johnson; May-June 1924, recurring teenage nightmares
I found myself in a cage, with only a bench and piles of old books. A mirror showed
I was old and twisted with speckled skin. In horror I said "I must get away"...
LIZARD OR WIZARD? Or, ARACHNOLYPSE by Wayan, 2021/2/10; a cynical magical dream
An idiot wizard lures car-sized spiders into town. I find a spellbook that repels them, but have to hide it
so my community college professors, Gandalf & Saruman, don't take it. For I'm no wizard, just a lizard...
CAUTION: HUGE SPIDERS, HUGE SELLOUTS
MAGIC SCHOOL: by Wayan, 1982/1/26: a waking event and replying dream.
Phyllis Schlafly, killer of the Equal Rights Amendment, provokes a dream of being Captain Kirk
trapped in a magic school with no way out but the graduate exam. Can I learn the lesson of the tree?
CAUTION: POLITICAL JOURNALISM BEFORE THE DREAM. OH NO!
MAMA BEAR'S ADVICE: by Wayan; 1985/12/8, a dream on love-tactics.
A bear-girl seduced by her coyote professor gets a
little advice on revenge from her anthropologist mom...
MILK ADDICTS: by Wayan, 1974/6/2, an early psychic dream.
I'm in what seems to be a village of very conservative Muslims. But they're really alien castaways...
NEANDERTHAL EXTINCTION: by Wayan, 2008/7/30, an academic argument turned horribly personal
I challenge my teacher's claim human historical patterns are universal.
She challenges me by dragging us both back to the Ice Age and...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
A NEVADAN ASS: by Wayan, 2007/5/17, a dream-poem on sabotage in art AND love
DREAM: on a Nevada ranch, I'm a were-horse into mares--when I'm human. And when I'm a stallion?
Why, cowgirls! Always date the wrong species--just to be sure of rejection.
NEXT DAY: I let a class of commercial artists critique my dream-comix. Just to be sure of rejection...
CAUTION: FURRYPHILIA, SELF-SABOTAGE
NIGHTMARE STUDIO: by Gary Panter, 2003, a 5-page comic of his lonely surreal dream world
(plus a 2018/8/31 dream by Wayan provoked by Panter's dream art)
Rather than a dream narrative, this is a tour through Gary's common dreamscapes--
forgotten places, empty streets. Or ones you wish were empty...
THE NOTE: by Wayan; 1976/12/31, a psychic nightmare.
On New Year's Eve, I dream my college no longer welcomes me.
New Year's Day, I wake to find it's true...
OLD HAT: by Wayan; 1988/1/5, a "normal" (i.e. incoherent) dream.
The Goddess gave birth in my workplace. Her fever-dreams become real around us...
CAUTION: BIRTH SCENE, LIBRARIANS' ORGY
ONE FRUIT REMAINS UNEATEN: by Catshall; November 1983, a journal dotted with dreams
My day life as an artist and explorer of the San Francisco underground scene
gets regularly commented on by my dreamlife...
CAUTION: SEX, BONDAGE
OTTERS DON'T FAKE: by Wayan; 1989/10/15, a sex dream that's not about sex at all.
I'm scared to show my dream-paintings to my art class. That night I find an large otter in my bed...
CAUTION: SEX
OUT OF THE IQ CLOSET: by Wayan; 2008/5/7, a dream-outburst on the social minefield the gifted face
I'm silent in class; let our new, inexperienced teacher fumble. At last
I'm forced to answer, and reveal I'm ahead of her. She doesn't take it well...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE SOCIAL DILEMMAS
OVARIES: by "Ann", as told by Gayle Delaney, 1979 or before, a curative dream
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
PAD ON THE FLOOR: by Cory and Wayan; 2020/9/13, parallel, apparently telepathic dreams.
CORY: I'm in a government complex. Tired, but guards harass me. At last they let me nap on a floor pad.
WAYAN: I'm in the Student Union. Need to study, but guards harass me. Yet they let my friend sleep on a...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.
PATH: by Wayan; figures from 1989/10/12 dreamlet invade a waking landscape.
My art teacher said "Draw a spiritual experience." I tried, but that night, I dreamed of sharp-toothed...
CAUTION: TOPLESS MEDITATORS
PERSONAL CHAOS THEORY: by Wayan; 1994/12/4, a spiritual math dream.
My life is a mess, so I take a class on the four flavors of chaos, and find my Strange Attractors are shifting...
PHILOSOPHER: by Wayan; 1992/7/31. Nondream digital picture-poem.
I worked at Stanford too long. I got tired of observing the mating displays of the purple-prose patriarch..
CAUTION: NUDE ACADEMIC GROUPIE
PIE HOLE: by Wayan; 2021/9/12, an Emperor's New Clothes dream with a twist
I'm shyly making love with a classmate, Cynthia. Classmates gawk & point, through
the pie-hole in the ceiling. But our perspective reveals that under our critics' skirts...
CAUTION: UPSKIRT NUDITY
THE POWER OF NON-VISUALIZATION: by Wayan; 2018/4/29, a mystical dream whose teaching worked
I'm listening to a film-talk on Non-Visualization. "Don't wish--don't will--don't visualize.
Just face what you really want, and then don't push..."
CAUTION: MYSTICAL
PRODIGIES' ODDITIES: by Wayan; 1994/2/2, a confession.
I suspect we child prodigies and geniuses are as unlike the gifted as normal people. So here's a checklist...
CAUTION: BRAIN REQUIRED
QUIT THAT LAB!: by Wayan; 1999/5/2, a deductive nightmare.
I'm working alone in the lab at night, when the lab gear wakes up and tries to kill me...
RAIN OF WOMEN: by Wayan; 1999/6/11, a warning nightmare.
Women rain out of the sky. People shrug "Suicides." I don't believe it--and what if one falls on me?
CAUTION: SEXIST BLINDNESS TO VIOLENCE
RHINZL'S SHADOW: by Wayan; dreamed 1984/8/28; two unlikely predictive dreams.
DREAMS: 1: I can't afford language classes. 2: A beautyqueen rigs a stargate; I kill monsters & sell their bones...
NEXT DAY: I'm asked "Why don't you get a language degree?" I can't afford it! I go home & watch Dr Who...
A stunning girl fixes a spacetime portal. Smugglers kill alien monsters & sell their ashes as a drug...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND CREEPY DISPOSAL OF BODIES
SAMURAI LIBRARIAN: by Wayan; 1982/10/20, a dream that dreamwork is samurai discipline
I wrote my dreams each morning no matter what--even if I it made me late for work.
They assumed I was sloppy, lazy, spacy. No; disciplined about priorities!
SELF-CENSOR?: by Wayan; 2022/11/4, an art-dream about dreams themselves
I'm in an art class drawing a dream image--a dog-taur or wolf-taur girl.
But I hesitate to draw her flashing me as she did in the dream. Should
I risk offending half my class, or make her modest and innocuous?
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
SHAKE! 1989/8/11, rev.1995; digital Muybridge tribute by Wayan.
I love what dancers look like, seen over time, in
stroboscopic photos. Like weird undersea growths...
WARNING: NUDE CAT PEOPLE
THE SHAKEN PROFESSOR: by Wayan; 1996/2/11, a dream explaining amnesia and memory.
A great teacher abruptly blanks out. Memory loss is scary, but the empty moment bared a deeper fear:
SING TO MY ALIEN FRIEND: by Wayan; 2017/3/7, a dream-poem on... alienation?
From a crowd in a gym, I sing to my wolflike alien friend. But she can't recognize my voice--
too convincing a falsetto! I slide deeper, but once she heard a girl, she can't imagine...
SOLE RETRIEVAL: by Wayan; 2005/10/6, a punning spiritual dreamlet
Guards in a museum confiscate my goofy purple-warted shoes, then lose them!
I fuss till they find them. For it's vital to retrieve my, uh, soles.
SOUL RESTORED: by Wayan; 2016/12/4, two dreams on deep change
MY SOUL RESTORED: To hide me as I grew up, someone transplanted a shard of redwood-soul
into me, and part of my soul into the tree! But now I'm grown...
RED ROBE OF INITIATION: I came to play music, but I'm dragged to the magic-school portal & draped in...
CAUTION: MYSTICISM
A STAGE FRIGHT: by Wayan; 1993/11/17, a revealing automatic writing-trance
I froze in dance class when I followed anyone else's script. Was it fear? A dragon inside said no...
STAY GROUNDED!: by Wayan; 1988/2/27, an unexpectedly grounded dream.
I'm playing poker with a dragon. But we barely dare move: we're both crackling with thousands of volts...
SUVY & JOHN DOE: by Shawnodese, c.1970; a precognitive warning dream
I dream my friend Suvy introduces me to a man who just took a class I'm considering.
Weeks later she introduces me to him--but just as in my dream, he feels a bit insipid...
THE TEMPLE COAT: by Gayle Delaney, fall 1972, a pastlife dream
A ship-captain insisted some castoff clothes were mine. They fit. As I put on an elegant coat,
I recalled it was made in a past life to disguise me so I could enter a temple excluding women...
THEY DON'T BELIEVE ME: by Wayan; 1989/10/4, an unbelievable dream with 15 illus.
My dog and I are abducted by aliens who turn us into cats. We escape & go feral to survive.
How we got back, and what happened along the way, even my own shrink refuses to believe...
CAUTION: LEWD SQUID AND KLEPTOMANIAC BUGS
THIRD EYE: by Wayan; 2009/3/25, three diverse dreamlets on the same theme: enlightenment
1: Three sisters flash me; one has a third eye in there! Clothed, it's blind. Was she just enlightening herself?
2: In the future, most cars self-drive. I'm the last driver using my own muscles and mind. Can I hold out?
3: A friend charts all of history's wars to prove: democracies don't fight each other. So to get peace...
CAUTION: NAKED EYE
THREE CLASSES: by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1928/12/10; a dream on scientific integrity
I dream I'm teaching my students that those willing to let evidence change their minds are rare.
Climbers seek fame and status, while iconoclasts seek to upset order without regard for truth...
CAUTION: SOBERING FROM A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
THROUGH WALLS TO SEX CLASS: by Wayan; 2017/6/22, a therapeutic/advisory dream
A trusted college advisor says "Slip through cracks in the classroom walls!"
There's no direct route. Yoga to taekwondo to ballet to... a sex workshop!
CAUTION: ABOUT SEX
TRITONIAN FOXTAUR U.: by Wayan; 2016/9/10, a wish-fulfilling dream set on Triton
I'm an exchange student at the Solar System's best university for
the magic arts; my classmates are methane-breathing foxtaurs...
TWO BISHOP APPLICANTS: by Wayan; 1984/11/21, a surreal but mercilessly logical dream.
My mind and my soul both apply for a job in Stanford Cathedral. Their rivalry grows to a shamanic duel...

UNICORN TAG: by Wayan; 1986, a linked series of illustrated dreams.
Animal teachers, mostly equine, drag me (as I scream NO!) beyond plain dreamwork into shamanism...
Chapter 1: The Deer Party: by Wayan; 6 illus.
Chapter 2: Ariane's Honeymoon: by Wayan; 8K
Chapter 3: The Everest Marathon: by Wayan; 1 illus.
Chapter 4: Who'll Be My Love?: by Wayan; 100K, 4 illus.
Chapter 5: Dreamrider: by Wayan; 7K, a nondream interlude
Chapter 6: Half Shaman, Half Statesman: by Wayan; 170K, 4 illus.
Chapter 7: Eight To A Horn: by Wayan; 2 illus.
Chapter 8: Black Magic: by Wayan, 7 illus.
Chapter 9: Misfits On Mars: by Wayan; 300K, 7 illus.
VIVISECTION: by Bob Stickgold, c.1979, a nightmare dismissed as the brain at play
After a class where students are forced to vivisect anesthetized dogs
I dreamed I'd made a mistake; I was sawing open my daughter...
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPY DISMISSAL
WAR BETWEEN LIBERALS & REACTIONARIES: by S. Ramón y Cajal, 1929/5/26; a predictive dream?
There is a war between liberals and reactionaries, but the dream makes no
sense: friends claim to be hit, to be wounded, but I see no bodies, no blood...
CAUTION: ANTICIPATES THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
WHY I LIE: by Wayan, 2016/10/7, a dream on privacy-guilt
In a class, asked to share a bit about myself, I lie. Why? Not only are people like me
illegal, my particular story would be seen as impossible...
WILD MAGIC: by Wayan, 2018/1/8, a dream on finding a place
A teacher drafts me into her magic class to shake up her sheltered wizard-wannabes.
My magic's wild, ignoring spells and rules. I don't think I realized how wild...
CAUTION: NUDITY
WOLFWALL: by Wayan; 1994/1/31. Daydream/trance digital drawing
Drew all night in a trance and only learned at dawn what this flirting otter and wolf were trying to tell me...
CAUTION: NUDITY AND SEXUAL THEME
A WORLD TOO WEIRD FOR WORDS: by Wayan, 2011/1/21, a utopian dream--or is it?
I'm in a college class studying a bizarre alternate Earth where
anarchist co-ops never evolved and (of all things) money rules all...
CAUTION: SCORNS CAPITALISM
THE WRITING CLASS: by Wayan; 1984/3/27, a grumpy dream.
Most writers search for their unique style. Not me--I struggle to convey unique EXPERIENCES...
YOU CHIPHEAD! : by Wayan, 1997/1/31, a sarcastic dream.
Chips are faster than brains these days, so everyone's upgrading--everyone but me...
"YOU'RE INSANE": by Wayan; 2000/5/26, a nightmare warning I've been misjudged
DAY: My dad's sick; my mom nags me to visit, though hospitals endanger me (weak immune system).
DREAM: My parents say "You're insane. We must take control of your life." So I divorce my family...
CAUTION: UGLY FAMILY VALUES
YUPPIE BREAKUP: by Wayan; 1991/5/22, a dream on values--or the lack thereof.
A yuppie idealist discovers her boyfriend's a cheerful opportunist, and they disentangle their lives...
CAUTION: SEX IN REVERSE


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