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Sueños is a living exploration of the collective subconscious, expressed through shifting realities.
Exploration may lead to enlightenment, unexplainable wealth, unbidden desires, community appeal or quite possibly re-lived post traumatic stress. Read at your own expense.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: ON THE CONTRARY
“Julian! Julian!”
Don’t forget your sunscreen, our kind hearted mother begs her little brother to come over so she can smother him with all the loving protection she needs.
He bounces over to her, like a cat being called to sleep, so loyal he is to her, as I am to me. I have learned that I am not this kind of child. Nor was I ever meant to be. I am the kind that reads.
Yet, that awareness brings no less ease to the ache of jealousy that sits in my stomach.
“Thanks ma-maaaaa,” his fat little legs carry him away as he dives into the swimming pool on a sweet summers day.
And I sit here in my whining, “Why can’t I have anyone smothering me? Why doesn’t anyone love me, as mother loves him? Why must it be the women’s job to do all the loving that is?”
I love and simply despise these lies of mine.
Sometimes I think of drowning little Julian as mother returns to the kitchen to do her dishes. I think, oh but wouldn’t it be so fast and so simple. And mother….well wouldn’t she have so much more time to spare without the little prince eating up all the summers’ air?
And yet…I couldn’t bear the thought of Julian not being here. No one could. We all love little Julian so deeply, even I. He is but a wee toddler who does anything you say. He loves the simplest little things like ice cream, pickles and sun chips toppled together served in a Sundae.
However, we all know his innocence will one day turn into manliness. And then, what are we to do then, with another man in the house? Surely, I’ll have to see my way out.”
~Love Cristina
Mi abuela takes a page out of her journal and shows me a note I had written to her in secrecy when I was only 11. “Look child, you were born gifted,” she says to me and I blush in forgiveness to my former self. She’s right. I’ve been beating myself up a bit in various ways trying to figure out what went wrong. When it’s so clear how water just knows our ways.
Even our names, including our long lost dreams. They are somehow stored deep within, waiting to be opened on Christmas day. When we are ready to see things a different way. And at that time, somehow water has a way of carving out a new plan as easily as currents run through sand.
Water, she seems to know the marketplace like the back of her hand.
Mi abuela serves me a honeysuckle tea and beckons me to sleep, “you’ll remember when it's time,” she tells me.
And so I take my seat at the edge of my bed, look myself in the mirror, and prepare to read what I read what comes next.
CHAPTER 2: ON JUNESBERRY DAY, WE'LL MEET SOON
“It’s 5 a.m., my alarm rings and for a moment I contemplate if I really do want to go fishing again. My grandfather knocks on my door and whispers “if you want to come, well we better get going now.” I roll out of bed and put on maybe 13 layers of sweatpants.
“That’s a sport!” I imagine he says.
And I love how happy I've made him at this moment.
As we ride out along the bay, well there isn’t ever much to say, and I get to wondering if I’m doing this the right way.
I wonder what it will be like if we catch the biggest fish we ever dreamed of last night! I wonder how happy he’d be if everything was done right.
But that wasn’t our dream. Instead that day we caught a bunch of undertow and had to cut things short.
And part of me was so saddened that it had to be this way.
While the other half of me was grateful that no one had to die today.”
Please come back to me, Cristina lets get some sleep, this is someone else’s dream. I hear from a distance.
Love,
~ Cassandra’s fairytale version of reality
For the first time reading this page in my journal I realize I am not “right in the mind,” and I don’t want to just “let it go.”
I start to wonder if other people’s oppressions matter at all? If jealousy is something that we can control? If we are all connected and living under the same family tree?
Most of all I think how elegant it would be if we believed in each other's dreams.
And then I get to thinking that she shouldn’t just let it go.
And that maybe right is not really right at all.
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