Déjà vu

Déjà vu\dā-zhӓ-vü\ n [F, adj., already seen]: the feeling that one has seen or heard something before

I suspect it's because I'm logged onto the internet from a Springfield IP address, but I still find it disturbing that the fourth result on a Google search of "deja vu" provides a link to a review of the Deja Vu stripclub here in the capitol city. It begins: "Deja Vu Showgirls is a Nude Strip Club in Springfield, Illinois. So mine is the first review in 12 years, so here goes. I think this is the only strip club ..." I didn't click on the link to read further--one, I've been there and need little to take me back to that dirty hole; two, I have no desire to click on any page that actually wasted time to 'review' the Vu, even if it is the first in twelve years...that should tell you something about the individual writer as well as the 'place.'

But this is all a waste itself. I started writing this with no intention to discuss stripclubs, much less the worst one I've ever been to, which unfortunately was not the last, though I wouldn't mind going to the stripclub in Texas that Scott McClanahan describes in his story "THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN TEXAS." It seems they put on a hell of a show there. To the point, I have experienced two very surreal instances of deja vu in only the past two weeks.



It seems the sensation is most often connected to dreams, and I've had dreams before that have closely reflected real events that had already occurred, kind of like an echo. I've also had dreams that seemed so realistic that I confused them with waking, actual memory only to find later that I had mistaken the dream for reality. In the last two weeks, these instances of deja vu have been particularly striking because they involve dreams of the future, a realization of the potential for that future to materialize, and yet an unconscious (until afterwards) acting out of that dream-reality.

I had a dream approximately two weeks ago that I was at a friend's house for a party. In the dream, I spent most of the time talking to another friend and her mother at the party. I woke with the knowledge that I would be soon attending a going-away party for the friend at her house and that I would most likely see the other friend at the party. I did not suspect, however, that the mother would be present, and I laughed it off as merely a weird dream of the future and soon forgot. Several hours after returning home from that party, a week after the dream, I remembered the dream. It was a somewhat unsettling realization of dream and reality because I had indeed spent nearly the first hour or so conversing with that very friend and her mother at the party.




Some time later in the week, I had a very insignificant dream in which I was grilling food at my parents' home, and I recall a moment from that dream when I was standing in the kitchen, I think, perhaps, even thinking about being in the kitchen, and thinking about thinking about being in the kitchen, and so on. I mainly recall the kitchen scene because I experienced the very scene in real life today. It's not that I've never grilled out and been standing in my parents' kitchen before--I've done it quite often in fact--but in this precise moment, standing with a tupperware container full of marinating chicken legs and a plate of shish kebobs, I could feel the moment from the dream. The actual dream memory was triggered as I stood in the kitchen. I stood staring absently at the garbage disposal in the sink, and I could feel, I could recall the experience--not of real life memory but--of the dream, standing and thinking about thinking about being in the kitchen. I was at a sort of loss for a second. I felt like I was in the twilight zone...but I've been feeling like that more and more lately...