We are doing a powerful ceremony. We start as a small group and our numbers grow. There is magic. Animals that were not alive come alive. One is a stuffed cat that becomes a real cat. Ruins rebuild themselves. One of the ruins is an Inca site, rebuilt out of car tires. One is on a Grecian island.
A core group of us, all writers, are leading the ceremony. Even though I am one of the people in the core group, I don’t know what is going to happen in the ceremony either. I keep being surprised, and though the magic feels a little scary at times, it also feels big, and right.
Our numbers keep swelling, until we are all over a big building—a library or a mall. We are climbing all over the outside, swarming. There are more and more of us, hugging and crying and taking care of each other. Change is happening.
NOTES:
I think this is a dream about the literature of restoration: the writers doing ceremony, swarming the library, making change. In the dream, it wasn’t clear if the building was a library or a shopping mall. Stories can be treated as another thing that is bought and sold, a reflection of and reinforcement of the dominant, capitalist culture. Or stories can work to transform the culture. Our swarming like bees all over the building, in growing numbers, felt hopeful. What we were doing as we swarmed was also very clear: hugging, crying and taking care of each other. There was grief there, definitely. Also relief, like people who have lived through something big and traumatic, in the process of renewing themselves individually and together, as a people. The dream was very clear: this was change.
About the Author
Rebecca Brams is a writer of historical fiction and essays. She grew up in California’s Mojave Desert and has traveled extensively in Latin America. Rebecca has a B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California. Her historical novel, set in South America during the Inca Empire, has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, which allowed her to conduct extensive research in Peru. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in The Stonecoast Review, MUTHA, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, Carve, and Literary Mama. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, two sons, and a little fluffy white dog. She can be found at www.rebeccabrams.com
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