Rubber Bands and Lima Beans: A Dream of Release

Rubber Bands and Lima Beans: A Dream of Release

I had a dream.

But it wasn’t just a dream.

It was a journey… through spirit and shadow, through old wounds and new awakenings.

I found myself at work, but not quite the work I know in the waking world. This place felt familiar, yet distorted like memory and reality had shaken hands but never truly met. I wandered into a lunchroom. People were gathered. And there, in the corner, sat a woman an older Black woman, regal in presence though dressed in simple cloth.

She was reading cards, not the kind you find in casino halls, but the kind that opens portals. Her voice wasn’t just her own. It echoed with ancestral knowing. She was speaking to another woman, telling her, “You must love the soul that matches yours... no matter what they look like. No matter how the world sees them.”

I stood listening not just with my ears, but with my whole being.

Something in that room had stopped time. Something was calling me closer. But I told myself I was only watching the news on the television. I said aloud, “My name is Kateb. I manage the pink building next door.” A harmless introduction. But my spirit knew better.

Because just as I spoke, something shifted. Something stirred.

My mouth, once a place of speech and breath, became a battlefield.

There was a rubber band in my mouth.

Then another.

And another.

I picked them out one by one. Trying to remain composed. Trying to maintain control.

The woman asked again, “Can I help you?”

I didn’t answer her with my soul I just walked away. Not out of pride, but pressure.

I wasn’t ready to face what was surfacing.

Suddenly I was in a gym, then a bathroom, standing in front of a mirror.

The place of sweat and strength, transformation and truth. And as I looked into the glass, I saw not just myself but my burdens. My mouth was filled with rubber bands more than before dozens, maybe hundreds. I pulled them out, and they fell like silent confessions onto the floor.

But they didn’t stay rubber. No. They turned into tar. Smokey. Sticky. Dark. They released not just form, but a feeling thick and heavy. It was as if every silence I ever swallowed had come back to ooze itself onto the earth.

Then it got worse or maybe, more sacred.

My body convulsed.

And I began to vomit.

Not water. Not blood. Not air.

But habanero peppers fiery, sharp, burning with truths that had scorched my chest.

And lima beans soft, innocent, but clinging… like beliefs I once needed but now couldn’t digest.

The peppers told stories of the anger I buried beneath kindness.

The beans told tales of nourishment that had expired but refused to let go.

I kept throwing them up over and over until I felt emptied, but not free.

Because when the vomiting stopped, the beans didn’t leave me.

They stuck to my skin-like memory.

They clung like shadows.

And no matter how I scrubbed, no matter how I washed, they wouldn’t let go.

That’s when I woke up.

And I knew:

This was more than a dream.

It was a message.

It was a mirror.

I had this dream on May 15, 2025