« 011: Cake | Main | 013: The Daily Regime » November 21, 2002

012: Déjà vu

I’ve written the beginning of chapter 11 before. It is a strange sensation to have my fingers moving on the keyboard without any mental effort on my part -- automatic writing thrown up by the lizard part of my brain. Déjà vu is an experience which never fails to feel like cold goose feet on the base of my spine. Especially when I write.

Everything we see and do is grist for the mental mill. Every conversation during the day can be mined for gold; everything overheard while riding public transportation or sitting in a coffee shop is fair game. We are wallflowers with binaural mics and digital lenses and terrabytes of storage for all the audio and visual that surrounds us. We breathe it in, synthesize it, and breathe back out again.

Remembering the difference between the imaginary and the concrete can be complicated. The distinction becomes ever more distorted when your dreams are continuations of the work which is consuming your waking hours. I’m dreaming again -- which always happens when my brain is actively churning through a project -- and the dawn turns the nocturnal firestorms to stinking pits of hoary ash in the morning. But the fires which have burned during the night have left marks on the dome of my skull, streaks of soot which are inverted still frames from the mental journeys, phantom negatives which are indelibly captured in my head.

Déjà vu. Am I recycling reality or remembering a dream? The act of creation is beginning to get away from me; this creature is starting to breathe without aid from me, starting to flex its own muscles, rattling the bars of its prison.

I’m starting to wake up. I’ve remembered the secret: reality is fiction too.

Posted by Teppo at November 21, 2002 10:33 PM

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