Wizardville, September 11th, 2099, 5AM
“Take me hoooome!!!” Ama shouted, panting from the dream sensations. On the dawn of her 43rd birthday, she would have preferred to ride “Unique Corn” instead of “Night Mare”. The fight between the oneiric horses had always existed in the psyche of all living beings. The mare had long, curly, raven-black celluloid ribbons for a mane, where the dreamers saw shadows of their nightlife selves. Her nemesis, the horned stallion, poured spirally dreams from the “corn-ucopia” over his third eye, like sweet-corn ice cream born from the rainbow kiss between Sun and Water, “Ama” in Cherokee. It was Abedul’s choice for her daughter’s name, to remember the sacredness of the liquid element. Ama’s family had a different historic interpretation of “Remember the Álamo!!” Álamo was Ama’s grandma, who loved naming children after trees. She always played the violin for her vegetal relatives by the creek.
Grandma Álamo had taught their ways to “la Bisabuela”, stubborn great-grandma Alya. Alya was not a blood relative, but Ama had always felt connected to this ancestor, maybe because they shared their birth date. Alya had spent her apprenticeship in an adobe airlock in between worlds, learning the basics of once lost tribal ways, before she could be part of the “beehive” village. Maybe Bisabuela Alya spoke to Ama in dreams about some dystopian past. Ama secretly thought she might be Alya reincarnated. She could not believe that many people in the past dismissed the truth of our cyclical soul and made fun of those who remembered all their earth walks.
Still shaken by the night images, Ama reached for the scrying water bowl by the bed and brushed her fingertips on its surface to telepathically project some of the dream images: a long sword piercing Mother Earth to her deepest core; a metallic structure erected into a huge snake between North and South; Mother Earth’s ice cap melting into Unique Corn’s horn, drowning all the good dream seeds; the blue bowl of the sky crisscrossed by white, toxic trails that chased real cloud people; and the water people swimming among tons of fake jellyfish. “Burquelandia”, Ama heard when the water turned into a whirlpool. She had to go to the big city to look for tangible traces of her dream. When the water settled in the bowl, she saw the reflection of an adobe airlock-house behind a pomegranate tree. “Alya’s hallway,” Ama heard in an old lady’s voice, understanding that it was once great-grandma’s isolation cell.
Ama liked riding her day mare when she had to run errands, but that morning it felt wiser to use a water-powered vessel. The star relatives had used such vehicles for thousands of years. One day back in 2066, they had shown it to their human brothers, when they emerged from under the sacred water hole. It dawned on Ama that the year 66 was 99 in the water mirror… Facing the rising sun, she closed her eyes to summon a teardrop-shaped vehicle. Then she dressed while the ship came from its liquid shelter by the mountain.
When she saw the shiny vehicle hovering by the door, Venus the mare whinnied in disappointment, but a look into her favorite human’s eyes convinced her to stay home and enjoy the day munching on dandelions. Ama kissed the mare’s forehead, touched her own heart and opened her arms to unlock the vessel’s door. She loved it when the Hopi Prophecy cross carved on the vessel’s shiny metal opened the center of its four inverted pyramids to welcome her. She poured the content of the scrying bowl into the inner water tank, which projected their destination on the dashboard screen. “Flight time: 66 seconds,” said a gurgling voice. “Like the number of the coast-to-coast tar snake that once dotted the land with fossil-fuel stations,” Ama thought. She took off in the clouds, and 66 seconds later the ship hovered over a park surrounded by lush vegetation and Victorian houses that had survived the Great Purification. “Robinson Park,” Ama read on a sign. “Association of Ideas,” the gurgling voice commanded. “Desert Island!” exclaimed Ama. The screen showed archive footage from 2018: people traded their farm produce for paper rectangles. The caption said: “Farmers Market, still too isolated, still selling goods for “money”, but relearning the old ways”. Then the ship left the park to land before a faded mural called “Resilience”. A couple surrounded by Monarch butterflies blew on dandelion seeds. “My associated plant!” said Ama. “Make a wish,” suggested the liquid voice. “I wish to broadcast my findings live on I-Te*A*Ch. I think I could use the worldwide tribe’s ideas to fulfill my dream mission”. A camera emerged from under the dashboard, and Ama was on air on the world tribal school TV channel. “Hello relatives, I am here at the old…” “…Washington School aka Washa,” added the vehicle’s voice. Imitating the laconic conversational style of her vehicle’s voice, Ama challenged her audience with two words starting with the same letter: “Sound Similarity”.
A boy’s face popped up on the screen and said” “wash-all-the bad stuff away!”
“Thank you, I think that is the reason for today’s dream mission”, said Ama.
“I dig that!” said the boy.
The vehicle crossed the street while its voice recommended the use of “Polysemy”. They landed by a pomegranate tree with a shovel at its feet. Ama jumped off the hovering ship and started digging, after asking Mother Earth’s permission. Buried under the roots was one of the fake jellyfish of her dream, which wrapped an old 2018 newspaper. The headlines described all the elements of Ama’s nightmare. “Let’s dream such news away,” she asked. As she and her Te*A*Ch audience meditated over the past events, the cloud people came raining on the newspaper, turning it into a pulp that Ama carved in a heart shape. The jellyfish disintegrated, the mural couple came to life and gave her a slice of watermelon that held the mountain spirit who thanked her for her dream.
Once again, unbeknownst to us, our future selves were paving our path with beauty… On her way home, Ama looked one last time over Burquelandia, whose cottonwood people smiled peacefully.
THE END… or the beginning.
ReCORNectioN 