6.13.10
I already wrote paragraphs about why the grandmother is my favorite person in my town, but today warrents elaborating on that thread a little more. Last night I had a dream that my cat Ali was actually an ant, and I put her in a petri dish and sicked her on a spider. However, the spider became more ferocious than I had anticipated and turned on my cat (aka ant) so I grabbed the spider by the leg…and then became quite freaked-out because I was touching a spider and sad at the same time because the spider was eating my ant (aka cat). I’m still a little confused but I guess that’s just how dreams work.
This morning when I was making tortillas with the grandmother I started telling her about my weird dream, so she reciprocated and started telling me about her weird dream she had last night as well. She dreamt that a soltero, a police officer from the times of war, killed one of her little chickens with his gun, and that she didn’t understand why he would do such a thing. She complained to him about this killing of a chicken and he paid her Q25 (about $3) for her pollito, chick or little chicken, which she didn’t think was satisfactory. She said over and over “who knows why bad people do what they do” in her broken Spanish/K’iche’.
The exchange of dream stories is quite normal to me, as I enjoy having strange dreams and then telling the people that were participants all about them, though this particular exchange seemed special. It’s not that I think the Guatemalans I live with are strange or anything out of the ordinary, but it did feel a little weird but comforting at the same time to have actual proof that this old woman from another culture and a completely different background than me has strange dreams too and likes sharing them. I got rather giddy after hearing her story but I can’t really explain why.
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