A Note On Dream Journaling and Magical Realism
A couple of nights ago I had a dream my husband wanted to connect an old Nintendo to our television in the living room. I knew it wouldn’t work and was frustrated watching him try. I kept saying something about the technology not matching, while some rectangular blocks appeared on the screen in shades of gray and black. This part was probably a subconscious childhood memory not just of what the Nintendo looked like — essentially a gray and black rectangle — but also of when we had to desperately blow into the game cartridge and pray the game worked. There was nothing worse than being excited to play, putting the game in, and then watching a ton of tiny little squares take up the screen, sometimes with the game’s music playing in the background forcing us to grow even more desperate for the game to work already.
As I wrote all of this down in my dream journal, I couldn’t help but think of my cousin Pablo who passed away in May 2022. I searched for him in this recollection, making sure I didn’t miss a message, making sure I didn’t miss his appearing in the dream. I imagine the version of him that exists in most people’s minds is the adult, the man in his 20s who went to medical school in Spain, who grew to be so muscular my son referred to him as Colossus from X-Men. But the version of him that walks around in my mind most of the time is the little kid with a squeaky voice obsessed with video games, the kid who did silly dances in front of the TV when he was winning at Super Mario Bros. and who screamed when he lost, “Just one more!” Skinny legs and cool eyebrows (one of his eyebrows did this cool swoopy thing on top like a tiny mountain peak), he was only two years younger than me and yet, I saw him as my “baby cousin.” A remnant, I’m sure, of someone calling me his big older cousin (I was also tall), making me feel forever so much older.
We grew up in different countries, saw each other once a year if we were lucky. I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I regret not seeing him before he died. He had been sick for a long time and he fought the cancer hard, ultimately holding on much longer than was probably reasonable. I don’t think my family knows this about me, my regret, my caring. I don’t know how to express it without an over sentimentality that I feel may seem disingenuous in another language. I actually don’t like to talk about my feelings, which is in part why I write.
I will spend a few days thinking about Pablo, about what this dream brought up for me, remembering, reflecting until the dream slowly fades away, its opacity dimming into my subconscious again. But the practice of writing down what I can remember each morning gives me clues into what I might need to focus on, what I might be ignoring.
As a writer though, I tend to be a bit cautious about sharing these elements of my life on the page. Folks read it as magical realism or fantasy (I dare not say speculative, because no one has called it that yet), when in fact, this is all very real to me. Natalia Sylvester wrote about this beautifully in Reactor (back when it was Tor) in 2018. I leave this quote here from her essay When the Supernatural is a Natural Part of Your Culture:
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE magical realism. The list of media that made me want to write stories is a solid mix of movies and less than a handful of books. Two of those books were Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude (no, I haven’t watched the Netflix show yet), and House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.
I suppose the purpose of writing this post, of emphasizing culture and differing views and sensitivity, comes from the current political landscape. I honestly don’t even know what else to call it. Historically, marginalized folks have always had to fight against appropriation, against discrimination, against othering, against exoticism. And today, in my little corner of the world, I simply want to celebrate my culture. I simply want to share it. One of the things I love about sharing stories is the curiosity, genuine curiosity, of finding similarities and discussing differences. You don’t have to believe the same things I believe in, but it’s okay to be curious and respectful. I can’t help but feel a little sensitive about that today.
