The collage was strangely familiar when I encountered it In Surreal Life sitting on the page of a writing prompt.

I wrote:

the day i stopped talking to god
i swallowed sleep
sinking beneath my eyelids
i found safety riding death in my sleep

The second reflection comes from the name. Riding Death in Her Sleep. What does this even mean. Riding, obviously a vehicle, and so on.

What interests me about Wangechi Mutu’s Riding Death in Her Sleep (2002) is the undeniable sensuality and eroticism of this being. Perching like a demon, it compels attention and elicits fear. While something feels off, there is an emergent question. There is feeling. Erotic here = Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic.

It’s also a metaphor that makes me question the thin line between waking and dream life.

I don’t remember the questions of the prompt, but I thought about old pop punk song titles and my grandmother.

In the title, I connected it to the pop punk songs that dot and splash my Spotify.

The piece came back into my life when a partner recommended that I explore art as nail designs. When paired with a nail artist with vision, a lot can happen.

When exploring what design I’d make for my nail designs, I thought about it and decided to write stream of consciousness on paper because if I don’t then the shit is going to end up not great.

Writing on the computer feels like a different modality than typing and long-hand.

I wondered about how might I bring it back to the article at hand when I thought about it.

I stopped looking at the computer, or rather stared beyond the screen and let my fingers type without being an overseer. Without a gremlin perched on my back ready to edit and devalue.

My hands, my fingers, my wrists. Their brain. Their innate knowledge.

I surrendered to their decisions, removing reliance on my eyes and brain to process the words. In a visually dominated world, what looks wrong brings a desire to fix.

Editing would come later.

Okay so the prompt continued in my moleskine journal:

When I first saw this prompt I was surprised by how strikingly beautiful it was, while holding the fire of horror and pain. I think back to an article that said something similar (As I edit to publish I have no recollection of this article). What was interesting is that it mentioned the ways that immigrants are placed in land with no roots and how mushrooms are able to live and grow off of so many things. It was humbling as I consider my own relationship to mushrooms. I just started regularly eating mushrooms for the first time two years ago.

I continued. The lightness of the head. Darkness of the bottom, create this balance in the piece.

I see sensuality behind the eyes, that either lie dormant from a life unseen. Or lurk behind ready to sink its teeth into something.

The title is another thing. Riding Death in Her Sleep.

After coming off a dream the night before, I rethink and remember that I had a death moment. Seeing death and being like this ain’t real.

I am reminded of Charles Yu. It was around 11am and I was snuggled in hotel bed with my best friend. Then I see him coming to give an artist talk at Yu n Me books in Chinatown on instagram.

I was nervous to meet him, and didn’t want anything but a signed book and to use courage. Maybe ask a question.

I can always count on a question to come to be honest. So going there helped me release the insecurity of overthinking, of being a doofus. And a question came–how did you write this second person world?

Something like that at least. His answer, I don’t really remember, just the ending “if that makes sense.” And it did.

It made me think about writing in the “I”.

First person, and I am returned to the piece.

I am riding death, I may not wake up. Isn’t that the loveliest way to go? No pain they say, no pain. She went soft as cream, I believe Toni Morrison says of Baby Suggs.

I think I wanted to also die in my sleep. My grandmother did not die that way, she died in a hospital bed, away from me. Unseen by me.

I just saw the dying and only got the feeling of her physical body leaving this plane.

So maybe that’s why I am terrified of this waking dream, but in dreaming, you may not wake up.

I think of the image of riding a line during dreams. Like a tightrope. Falling off either side is bad news. There are tight ropes close to the ground for practice. Maybe there is a mattress under you.

Maybe.

I am reminded of just Vonnegut’s words in “pity the reader”. I thank an old partner for the introduction. He says if it don’t illuminate the subject cut it. I can apply that anywhere.

It reminds me of how I sent this text to my mama.

Something I will print out (still haven’t). My grandma took me to the museum. When I think about our time together it was the museum and the movies.

A black woman, sharecropper, nurse, mother, sister, daughter, deaconness. In all that found time for art in a well-deserved rest. Retirement.

In a cherrywood case she kept figurines. Small statues. Black baby angels.

My mouth would fall open. Questions filled my mind as I stared in silence. How did the glass get blown, then twisted to create this?

It’s an image I still see in my mind, even with the middle being blurry. The edges jutting out.

When I go back home, I’ll find my favorite part again. And I will put it inside myself.

And riding death in my sleep. god maybe I always am? and maybe in sleep, if I can push it. Whenever I have forgotten myself, I am sleep.

Like Hanuman, sometimes it takes something outside of me to remember. But I have started to leave notes for myself.

When fear asks me to look outward and I often forget about that thin glass object.

I forget the inner fire inside.

I forget the original source and my trust in it dissolves.

fear! the desire for liberation!

And lastly, death the tarot card. Placed in pop culture to scare folks away because most fears stem from death, no? The death card is just transformation.

And for that I’m riding death wherever she takes me. I have severed pieces of my self, so that they can be given a new life. To let go and come back to me ten fold.

What would this be without the title having a double meaning the light and dark?

I ground my fear, not that it takes roots but that is stuck on the ground. I populate fungi over it. I eat my own shit and make it something new.

Death is transformation. The riding is both.

From my unpublished chapbook BUG EYED GIRL:

CHILD OF DIRT

Child of dirt
Decomposition is your birthright
To chew on decay
Rework into fertile soil
I ask if you are greater than great
Older than old
You question my curiosity
As if it is a double edged sword dripping with blood
Who do I seek out?
Who might I call you ask.
Who is the first,
The originating substance
You go back to eating dirt
The clay of your mother caked into every pore
Yet you remain moist, slimy to touch
Child of shit
Transformation is your birthright