Wendy C. Ortiz could be called a bruja in the sense that she is a conjurer, a master of creating an illusion of reality and interchanging it with fiction where she sees fit. Having written the memoir Excavation in 2014 and her self-described "prose poem-ish" memoir Hollywood Notebook in 2015, there hardly seems like a better choice than her to create a "dreamoir", an elegant pastiche of the reality of a life lived and the unreality created within the subconscious. Bruja, which has just been released on October 31st from Civil Coping Mechanisms, is exactly that, in an ambitious and beautiful form. Ortiz chronicles a period of her life through the uncanniness of her dreams, which blends together fantastical elements and people from her waking life. The result is a strangely relatable magical realism, charting the highs and lows of her day-to-day living through the frustrating ambiguity of dreams.
The working/joke title was Drugs and Boys. I thought it was funny because it was so obvious. It could have also been called Substance Abuse, Bad Relationships, and Mental Illness but that is a really long title.
These days, and I do what I should. I eat breakfast, I get enough sleep, I wash my hair. When I'm troubled I tell someone who has felt like me. When I'm agitated I close my eyes, take deep breaths, and treat my thoughts like clouds. I don't do drugs anymore, even though sometimes I'd like to. I have a man who loves me, and I've never thrown anything at this one, besides a bucket or two of sharp words.
Matthew Salesses is the guest. He is the author of two chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get, a novella called The Last Repatriate, and his new novel is called I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms).