Last night, watching American Idol, I couldn't help thinking during the recap of last week's show that I had watched it in my apartment. Particularly, the few seconds of Annie Lennox's cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" that nearly brought me to my knees last week.
The literal translation of deja vu is already seen. And we use it to talk about that feeling of having experienced something before. The recap wasn't so much a sense of deja vu, as it was that I had literally seen the show before. But at the same time, it was strange to be trying to match up the first experience with the second. With the window for saying "this time last week I was in Wilmywood" closing up fast, the opportunity for deja vu is going out that window.
But is there a word for the confusion of seeing something out of context? I've seen several cars this week that look like those of office mates and friends from Wilmywood. For a moment, the lines between time and place are obliterated, and I'm left standing there wondering where I am. Similarly, I see things here that belong in other parts of my life. Like Jackson Street, where a long-ago boy I liked used to live. I notice it - something in my brain flagging its importance - and deliberate briefly about whether or not it belongs in the present.
The neatly compartmentalized eras of my life are escaping their confines and blurring together. And without a clear direction - no address, no job, nothing to ground me - I feel like I'm just swirling around in all my different selves, able to be one or the other at any given moment.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Leaving: Part Two
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Hrmph. I just posted a comment but blogger ate it.
Whenever I am someplace new, I find that my brain takes some time to catch up and that I am constantly seeing people and things that I think are people and things from home, as if the brain were nothing but a giant game of memory.
Recently I read some poetry I wrote when I first came into the program about being homesick for Greensboro, and it brought back all these memories of things like falling over the furniture in the dark because it wasn't where it "ought" to be.
But the mind is an adaptable thing and soon catches up. I hope you are doing well.
i know those feelings all too well, my friend. you have captured them perfectly by saying that your compartmentalized selves start blending and you confuse who you are. just one day at a time and eventually a new chapter begins to write itself.
ash- once again you have described what happens to me when i move as well. the car thing has to be the strangest to adjust to at first- i used to see vesta's car here in beaumont and steer my car far from hers only to realize it wasn't my sweet Vesta driving like a bat out of hell- it was some man in a car. a relief (for i was still safe) but disappointing not to see my grandmotherly Vesta. you will adjust- give it some time- i adjusted and i "don't transplant well" as russ says. love you.
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