“You are coming back alive.” Ming spoke to the Jello and gently stirred. “You are returning from the void. You’re returning to life.”
“I hear you playing God with your Jello over there,” I said to Ming.
It was amazing, the gentleness that Ming spoke to the Jello with. Ming is a beneficent God.
“It’s time for me to put the lid on,” Ming said.
“Yeah, put the lid on. Today is a little too mythological,” I said. “Could we turn down the mythology?”
It was six in the morning. I was peeling errant garlic cloves, the single cloves which had been forgotten in the pyrex pie plate that alliums and ginger live in, on our kitchen counter.
dream
“I had this dream I was being protected by children and by the spirits of children who had drowned,” I told Ming. “There were all these baby bikes. You know the smallest size of bike?”
“Yes,” Ming said.
“They have the… things sticking out. What do you call those things?” I made the angle with my hands.
“Kickstand?” Ming suggested.
“The support wheels.”
“Training wheels,” Ming said.
“Ok, yeah. Training wheels,” I said. “There was this altar which was also a staircase, and the baby bikes were on the bottom step, all piled together, but not really in a pile. You know how bikes can be clumped together?”
“Yes,” Ming said.
“Creepy, right?” I asked. “Why drowned children?”
“It does make me feel creeped out,” Ming said. “I like it.”
“And I needed to change my name to Guadalupe. Lupe, Lupita. I was like– I can just change my name, and I don’t need to tell anybody.”
dream memory
“Did I tell you recently, like a couple weeks ago, that I was going to change my name to Guadalupe?” I asked Ming.
“No,” Ming said.
“Hmm, ok. Maybe that didn’t really happen. You know how sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a real memory and what’s a dream memory?” I asked.
Ming chuckled. They were standing in the kitchen without a shirt on, their arms folded close to their chest and tummy, and I was standing there with Ming, pulling on their arms.
“That’s your life, huh?” I asked. “I’m sorry.”
Ming has narcolepsy which can warp a person’s sense of reality. You know I hear voices and have a schizophrenia umbrella diagnosis; some people think my sense of reality is different also.
“There are dreams and then I remember them, and I’m not sure if it’s an actual memory of something that really happened. But also there are things I remember in dreams, and then when I wake up, I can’t tell if it was just a dream memory or an actual memory…” I explained.
Ming looked chagrined.
Guadalupe
I needed to change my name to Guadalupe because I am La Virgencita. It had to do with the protection that the children were working on– if I took my actual name, I would be protected.
It reminds me of transness. Finding the truth and stepping into who we really are is a kind of magic.
You know how dreams are. Sometimes I consider maybe my dream life is my real life, and I do interesting things in my awake life to make better dreams. Food for dreams.
Happy to be alive.
