Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Deja vu


So, lately I've been frequently experiencing what a lot of people call Deja vu, having the feeling like I was doing, thinking, or saying something exactly the same as I had at some earlier part of my life. Sometimes its a feeling like I'm somewhere I've been before seeing or hearing something I'd heard or seen before.

No, its not like sitting in class at school one day after another and thinking, "hmm, this seems familiar." For example, the last time it happened was this morning. I was getting out of bed and I heard a plane fly over the house. At the same time, I saw a sparrow land on a branch outside my window and suddenly got the feeling the sparrow was telling me something, something about how I should wait a while before I go downstairs for breakfast. At that moment, a weird chill went through me and I got sort of light-headed, like I was re-living the exact same morning the exact same way it had happened at some other point in my life. It was sort of like a feeling where you know you're aware of something, something bigger than yourself and that transcends time and space, but you can't understand it intellectually. Anyways, the feeling came and went very quickly, and no matter how hard I tried to hold on to it the familiarity of it all faded.

It's hard to describe the feeling of Deja vu to someone who has never experienced it before. It's a little scary but at the same time an awesome feeling in that you're aware of something grand even if for only a moment. Imagine yourself standing in two places of time at once, and only being aware of it through a sixth sense.

I've experienced the feeling before but, like I said, its been happening a lot more frequently lately. I know the feeling of Deja vu is sometimes explained by dreamed experiences, and sometimes we really do experience events or do or say things just like we did in the past, and we just don't remember. But that weird feeling you get...

Can anyone out there relate? When was the last time you experienced Deja vu and were you able to figure it out?

Friday, April 9, 2010

A Moment


Went to the movies tonight. Found a seat, empty-handed (didn't have $30 to spend on popcorn or a soda). We were about twenty minutes early so I sat and did my best to look around at other people while trying not to look nosy. Just a little concerning, what I saw...

So I saw a row of about 6 people in the seats in front of me with the bright screen from their cell phones lighting up their faces. The lady almost directly in front of me was sending a text message that said, "in the movie now, will text u later" (yeah, like you wouldn't try to see what kinds of texts other people are sending). Anyways, a girl next to me also had her little device out, scrolling through some musical selections that ran from the device into her ears. Behind me, I kept hearing the buzz/blip combination of sounds as someone was sending and receiving text messages. The pre-show on the screen occasionally went through a silent commercial about sending a text to the (x) theater and getting discounts on candy and popcorn.

There was one moment, an eerie moment that I'll never forget. For just a moment or so, the theater was almost completely silent; no one talked to each other, with only the sound of shuffling and an occasional blip, buzz, or bleep of a cell phone action. It was strange, almost like there was no one really there in the theater, and we were all just a bunch of computers executing programs through our devices.

I closed my eyes and imagined the beast on the big screen, his large, cavernous eyes looking down on us, his mouth slightly turned at one corner into a satisfied grin...

A text message from my friend Nico brought me back to reality.