Tim, Claire, Diego

In his May 30 post "'Naming' Joan (and 'Beware this one!')," William Wright brought up Tim and Claire Delune, two beings I encountered in dreams some months back -- Tim on the night of November 6-7, and Claire on the afternoon of January 5. Then in yesterday's "Eowyn-Eve dwelling in Everlasting Burnings," he revisited another of my old dreams, from March 5, with a character named Diego. In the post, he connected Diego with Israel and with Tol Eressëa:

When I read the dream, I understood Diego to be synonymous with Israel.  Diego is the Spanish equivalent to Jacob, who was renamed Israel. . . . Who fought against Israel?  In my story, Pharazon and the Numenorean's attack on Eressea was an attack on Israel given that many of Finwe's House resided on that island. 

Today I had a meeting with the owner of another school. One of his teachers is taking a long vacation, and he had hoped I would be able to help him arrange a substitute. The owner is someone I had only met once before, some seven years ago, so I asked why he had thought to contact me.

"Tim suggested I give you a call," he said. I know Tim.  He's a sales rep for a bookstore chain, and I often order textbooks through him. Then he added, "Actually, I don't see Tim all that often these days. He's really busy, so I mostly contact him through his assistant, Claire."

I did not know Claire.

"I don't think I've met Claire," I said. "I always work with Tim and Miss Chen."

"Yes, yes, Miss Chen. Didn't you know? Her English name is Claire."

This is a Taiwanese person I was talking to. His English is extremely limited, and our whole conversation was in Chinese except for the names Tim and Claire. I've been doing business with Tim's assistant for five or six years now and never knew her by any other name than Miss Chen. The guy who doesn't speak English, though, knows her as Claire. Weird.

Later in the conversation, I asked for some information about his school's curriculum, and he said, "I'll arrange for you to meet with Diego, and he can explain it. Diego's one of our teachers. He's from Guatemala."

Curiouser and curiouser. I suppose it goes without saying that Taiwan is not blessed with an overabundance of people named Diego. And from Guatemala, too! Remember that William has connected the Diego in my dream with "Israelites" living on Eressëa. As it happens, Guatemala has come up exactly once on William's blog. In the May 20 post "Conferences in the Sawtooth Mountains," he discusses a movie about the Book of Mormon which "portrayed the events happening in the jungles of Guatemala or something... not, as we now know, on Eressea."

Looking up my Diego dream now, I find that it also features the surname Chen. Running into that name isn't that much of a coincidence -- one in every nine Taiwanese people is a Chen -- but it still counts for something.