series
stringlengths
1
19
description
stringlengths
7
33
dreams
stringlengths
5
23k
gender
stringclasses
2 values
year
stringlengths
1
19
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I am adding salt to a waterbed to keep it from leaking or spoiling--but the bed is outside--larger than a king-size bed and above a neat green lawn that extends about four feet from the platform of the bed on all sides. The bed is about five feet above the ground. When I have added about ten tablespoons of salt, I feel it is enough. Suddenly the water of the bed is a quivering jelly mass about a foot high, greenish grey and beautiful on its plywood foundation. It is above me when I step to the sidewalk to admire it. Since it has no covering of rubber or plastic, I fear it will trickle from vibrations of busses or if I touch it--a flood is possible. I think about trenching the grass with a V to the street so not all of grass will be killed from the salt water--sacrifice some grass to save the rest. Nothing happens except it gets smaller, down to four inches from evaporation when dream ends.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm with my friend Jean and I have a sack of objects--it is a clear plastic sack and I can see the inside--rocks, rolls, buns, washers, bolts, and little blocks of wood that children build with. Jean has on hiking boots of high, old-fashioned buttoned and laced ladies' boots of 1890-1915. She has golf clubs. We have a bet. She says I can have all of something valuable, vague but desired, if I can get all into one boot in one stroke. I know it is impossible , so I negotiate. We finally agree that if I can get two objects into one boot in one stroke, I win. She takes off the boots and lays them on their side. I watch her and then study the boots to see which has opening at top easiest to enter. I take two little rocks out of the sack, round and about same size as golf balls. I get ready to swing the golf club when the dream ends.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm in a railroad yard, new to me, and a strange engine is on the ground beside the tracks. It has skis on front (making it look like a large snowmobile). The drivers and wheels behind are normal. They lift the entire engine up in the air with a large crane, slowly. I'm standing and watching and have one hand on the high rail and a right foot on the lower (impossible; well, that's dreams). I scream and pull out by fingers and toe of shoe before being crushed. The skid in both places is flexible so I escaped without injury. The engine, safely on the tracks, is oiled by a lazy guy who seems to oil empty holes and nuts and bolts that don't need the oil. No interest in his job at all, as if in a trance. The engine then goes up an (impossible) incline to check the power on inclines. There is an iron weight, pear-shaped, with pointer on end and a dial from 1 to 10. It is on 4 when dream ends. It's all very exciting to see the engine at a 45 to 60 degree angle up in the air on the rather flimsy rails.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
There was a convention of all the nations of the world for a "Walking on the Water" contest. Before it officially began, a man with seven silk top hats walked briskly down the dock and onto the water. He slowly sank. Each hat was carefully labeled (starting with his head, Historian, Artist, Scientist, Economist, Literary Man, Political Man, and on top was "Walker on Water." After he sank, one hat floated, the "Walker on Water" and beside it rose to the surface and floated was his pair of sandals. Similar to old stories in the Bible and other primitive lit; in an odd way, this man had won the contest!
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm at a football game or music festival with Emma and my mother and father. It is in a Greek-type amphitheater so the top seats are ground level. There I'm to meet our friends Nancy and Joe. We are early. I wonder if we are in the right place and they know where to come. Then I see them standing above us. I go up alone. Nancy has on a see-thru blue blouse (light and airy) and a Navy-blue skirt. She has dark brown hair--between chestnut and brunette. It is sort of upswept, a little like Gibson Girl. Joe is thin and sharp-nosed, a little like William Powell in Thin Man series--no hairline, mustache--both look about 35 to 40. He speaks first, "I'm hungry." And I said, "Go to an Eastern Airline cafeteria. If line is too long, break in at front, if no line, start a new one." Nancy looks at me and says, "So this is what professors are wearing these days." I have on a brown suit and tie. Mother and Dad have extra seats. I slow down as we enter so Joe sits next to Emma, Nancy next to Joe, and I on the outside next to Nancy. I have to find out where they are staying, how long, when they can meet for dinner. Nancy is cool and correct, not revealing plans.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm at the Retreat Center and most of the people around me are old acquaintances. At a meeting in the open, I sit fairly close to the speaker, but off to one side, alone, my own brown wooden table to write on. Later I'm aware of my strength and radiant good feeling and good looks. Young people, about two boys and two girls, all about 20 years old, say I look "strong and rugged"--not patronizing to old, but straight stuff. I look down and see my Golden Sweat Shirt and smile at the illusion of bulging muscles--it's a baggy monster that disguises my modest muscles. I say nothing to them. A woman is near me--tall and thin and good-looking with shoulder-length hair, a composite to two women I know. We get friendly in a hurry, and she takes off her shoe--we are on the floor on a rug by then, but people still all around us. I kiss the top of her foot, gallantly, not silly or parody. She agrees to meet me later. I sit there a long time alone. A fat child, with dark skin, like mulatto or Mexican comes up and says, "Marilyn is called away, so she can't meet you at 2 PM by the Gate." She mumbles and is shy, so I ask her to repeat it. I had heard it right the first time. I was dimly aware I may have forgot the time and place for our assignation. I think about my overtures to the woman and feel I merely want to get naked with her, even if no sex. I feel she will ask if I'm married. I'm resolved to tell her the truth, but will still feel like a cad.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm in a rooming house. The landlord (who has reddish hair like my father and tiny blood spots from a morning shave) said to Samuel Beckett (the fierce Irish playwright and Nobel Prize winner), "Move that bike from the front yard--no bikes to be in sight from front--a new city rule to make the town neater." Beckett said, "I'll not move--here for many years and I'll not change for a stupid new law." Landlord starts out, but door to front locked with a cheap lock on inside. As he fumbles with it, he says, "I'll have to fill our 15 pages of forms and get it from where it is impounded."
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm walking across a field, undulating and tall grasses. My friend Patrick comes up to me and looks handsome with fine forehead. He smiles and is immediately not as handsome--teeth uneven and sharp like little fangs of a snake or devil. He comes close and wants to kiss me. I'm shocked because I know he's dead. He's a ghost, handsome as he looks. I turn my head, for fear of what I'll see when he becomes a corpse or skeleton again. He whispers in my ear, "I want to suck you, go down on you. And you do the same to me." I want to break away, but he holds me strongly in a grasp, as I continue to look away and keep eyes closed. Then I break his grasp and I wake up, holding myself with crossed arms and a pillow against my stomach and groin, lying on left side.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
Marilyn Monroe is being interviewed. She loves drugs: "I like J&B; Scotch, uppers, downers, and cocaine." Then a photograph shows first from knees to navel--she's wearing a slight bikini bottom. As experts talk about her, one says, "She uses drugs like groceries." Then the photograph is full-length, and I look at her from waist up, as closely as a doctor looks at an X-ray. Her breasts are big and beautiful at a glance. But on a closer look, they are squarish and lumpy. Instead of a nipple, she has three, like end of a Norelco shaver, with each circle smaller but almost as flat. Not sexy at all. Her breastbone just below her neck is a triangular plate just below the skin--all the skin in the upper area from navel up is transparent, like glass or a film negative or a thick plastic where you can just barely see what it wraps. The plate with a button shape in each corner seems to be silver. Below all her skin I see blood vessels as faint blue and nerves as white wires.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
A car in front of a friend's house. I sprinkled a bit of gasoline on front seat, using a plant watering squirt jar. Just as I finished putting this on the seat, Emma walked up, and started to get in, and smelled the gasoline, and asked, "Did you do this?" I confessed I did. I opened door on house side and rolled down windows, so it would air out and evaporate. And we walked toward home silently, I am shocked (in the dream) about my primitive jealousy for not being asked to read my poetry at the car owner's celebration.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm at a small but full-serviced post office near my home. I'm at a tall table standing there getting letters ready. I mail the letters and a man comes in and puts a beautiful picture of a woman on the wall and a sign beside it as to how to mail and address a letter accurately. She is dressed in fairly tight violet or purple blouse that shows her contours, and a white linen skirt (?) ... and I adore her honey-brown hair and steady gaze. Suddenly, another man comes in and puts a "Give Blood" sign over the instruction sheet and her picture stays the same, and the blood bank honors Emma for many years of giving a rare B- blood. And then a second man comes in and places, on table beside me, a small steamer trunk with brass fittings that holds the vessels for the collected blood.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm at a lecture hall - a round room in a library near my house. There is a circle of chairs, all empty except me and an unknown woman. My books are under the chair. A thin, pretty woman about 30-40 comes by and invites me to the gym of the YWCA nearby. "I'm going to exercise." I walk onto the gym floor in my ordinary clothes and shoes and she slides by on her back in a bathing suit. It looks as if talcum powder is on her to make it slippery. I adore her energy and courage. "Let's have a test of strength by pushing against, hand to hand." Suddenly she is naked, almost as tall as I and I admire her nakedness. Suddenly another naked woman comes between us--short, plump. I see her back only. She turns slowly and it is a young man. I leave immediately to retrieve my books in the round room. It has filled with women about my age, 60 to 80. I can't find my books under the chair. Just as I see them, and wonder how to get them, the dream ends.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm by a bay with a cove with rocks to break the big waves of the ocean. I am with Emma's daughter from her first marriage. Then my Bantam hen from when I was 15 years old walks between us and goes into the water. The hen is not brown and tan, but white like a gull. It starts laying eggs--they come out in the tube like the birth sac of dogs and other mammals. A "big" bantam egg comes out. Each after is smaller until the last one is the size of sparrow or hummingbird egg. Emma's daughter disappears and I'm back at home and wonder what to do. I decide to put the largest eggs in box of fluff and an electric light and keep temperature at 110 with a thermometer.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I'm in a big city with friends from India [I introduced myself to them on a university campus in 1954]. They drive up to curb and we three get out, and it's an Indian celebration. Suddenly a bigger truck--theirs is a pick-up--and suddenly their children get in the big truck and drive away--both about 8-10 years old. We follow and I don't ask where we go or if they are kidnapped and it's an adventure and no fear.
male
1940-1998
emmas_husband
Emma's Husband
I was approached by a friend who made Japanese gardens--in the dream only--and he said he would make me a garden free. He was so slow or so busy, he got around to finishing it when he was famous. He and I never discussed money--I felt it was free as practice for a beginner. He finished it and it was perfect. Just as I wondered if it would bankrupt me, a beautiful woman came and stood in front of it. She was confident, cocky, and luscious: her print dress showed her good figure.
male
1940-1998