The Dreaming of God

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in CafeLit Magazine and The Mad River

The early Maya were convinced their God had dreamt them into being. In the heart of the Yucatán, amid impenetrable jungles, they raised up immense cities. Their half-ruined pyramids stand there to this day, shrouded in humid mist. They devised a writing system no one has yet been able to decipher. Carved into a myriad mute stones is their system of reckoning, their  incredible, millennia-spanning calendar, accurate down to the minute. Everything that so astonishes our meagre imagination—their irrigation system, their countless aqueducts, their monumental edifices—everything collapsed into eternity. Their God awoke. Convinced they were nothing more than dreams, the Maya vanished, leaving behind only faint traces of their glorious existence on this earth. Their stones tell us nothing. We cannot comprehend their lives or their era. How will we vanish—we with our godlike conviction that no one is dreaming of us? Where are the traces of our dreams?.. Or will our God awake one day?