Sheila Heti began collecting dreams about Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries. Even after Obama’s victory and his first 100 days Heti’s peculiar dream journal is an irresistibly peculiar read: 

Then he is in my bed wearing blue striped boxers. I have a perfect apartment in Harvard Square … The room has a bohemian look, all earth tones and Indian prints. The afternoon sun is coming through the window above the bed. I remember the intense conversation we shared … We’re talking less intensely now. I’m reclining on the side of the bed, not touching him … We fall silent and our eyes meet. Then we kiss very softly. I can feel his desire to relax, to be himself, to lose himself here. I realize this could never be kept a secret. I know how disastrous it would be for the man about to be our country’s first black president to have an affair with a white woman twenty years his junior. I cannot risk any chance of ­being the woman who will cost our country his presidency. I put my hand on his chest and say, This is getting ­really dangerous really fast.

The venerable Geist magazine has collected the best of these dreams and produced a video of dream readings over a montage of paintings they inspired.

Of course, if you’re more the Obama nightmare type, there is something for you too. Jamal, take it away.

Sources:  I Dream of Barack ,  Geist  

Image by EricaJoy. Licensed under Creative Commons.