Life In Fiction. Have I Been Here Before?

I know that this is probably quite strange to write in a blog, but I feel that I have been here before. I have written this blog while sitting on my couch on this Wednesday afternoon. While the sun streams in through my patio and Oskar peacefully purrs in his sleep next to me while I write. As Nooteboom writes in The Following Story, “There’s nothing better than a full-blown déjà vu….”

Déjà vu is something that for the past semester I have found myself completely preoccupied with in Dr. Sexson’s classes, especially Nabokov and now Emergent. The idea that memories and déjà vu have the power to connect a moment in time with a moment in time from the past.

That is the sense that we have been some place before and it is strangely familiar. It is the only real way we seem as human beings to be able to time travel even if we can only do it for a moment and involuntarily it seems. But as I am sure Dr. Sexson would say we have been there before and we are only then at that instant remembering what we have already forgotten. But then in another moment it is forgotten again until we experience another realization of a past that we have had at another time.

Whenever I experience déjà vu for some reason I always say that I have dreamt this before. While in fact it was perhaps not a dream, but a memory of a past moment. This is strange especially because I rarely remember my dreams, but frequently experience déjà vu. The only dreams I remember are two and they are actually horrific nightmares. Déjà vu to me seems to not be so much a realization of a dream, but a realization of a long forgotten memory of a past life. We have been everywhere before and it just takes a little déjà vu to remember it.

The only real thing that I have to say about life as fiction, since most of the class covered the topic so well. Is that I always wonder if it is our own life that we are living or are we a part of someone else’s world? Whenever I think of the idea of life as fiction I think about the novel Sophie’s World. A novel that is spoken of as almost a beginners guide to the history of philosophy, which I enjoyed, but I really like the story of Sophie herself underneath. By the end you realize as a reader that you are both the audience and a part of the tale when Sophie picks up a copy of the book herself. Perhaps as the audience we/author are creating the mysterious letters she reads. I have not read it in a while but hope to again. Just another final thought on a topic covered long ago.