Lynn Gray

In the Dreaming Lynn Gray

"In the dreaming, there was only water. Water like air?breathable, with clear visibility, but a weightier medium, life in slow motion. The desert and the fishes, the trees and the sea turtles, snow-capped mountains glimpsed through forests of kelp. Water behaving as air, says the Tarot interpretation. There was fire too, and danger, and all worrisome things seeded in the imagination. And angels, too, and messages from places unseen, from different mediums?fire behaving as water, air behaving as fire. Sofia looked into the eyes of her great-great-grandmother gazing into hers from the old sepia photograph. Stared into them and saw the glint. I dreamed you, said the grandmother, and you dream me. We are together in this moment, dreaming. We are always together. I come through you from my ancestors coming through me and we all abide together in this moment, in your body, as you dream yourself into your own becoming, into another body, or no body at all." IN THE DREAMING is the story of eight-year-old Sofia and her grandfather, Matthew. It is the story of how they came to know themselves as the accumulation of their ancestors, how they came to recognize themselves as the ancestors in the family photographs?and, more importantly?as the ancestors not in the photographs. They are?and we are?in each moment, the people we have been, and the people we will become.