On déjà vu

Why do I get the feeling that I’ve written this note before? I know that the feeling of déjà vu is a weird false sense that you have already done a thing and that you are repeating something you have already experienced. The rational empiricist in me knows that my mind is just patching together similar experiences and creating a false sense of repetition in my mind. I know this to be a fact. I know this for a fact but I just can’t shake the feeling that I’ve done this before. And why would my mind, which already has so much to do–walk, chew gum, whistle–choose to afflict me with déjà vu? Déjà vu all over again, and it is not a nice, friendly feeling on a clear sunny day. No, déjà vu is always associated with something dark and creepy, an impending sense of doom, let’s say. Let’s just say. The rational empiricist in me dismisses the idea that we have already lived other lives, learned other skills, spoken other languages, lived other lives, but what attracted me to Spanish? A small child of German-Norwegian extraction who speaks Spanish like a native? Say it ain’t so! So I come around a corner in the grocery store the other day and stop dead in my tracks because I knew, before I saw anyone, that there was a young woman standing there with an enormous basket of food. I didn’t run into her because I knew she was there without looking. Why? Because I had had the experience before in exactly the same way, in exactly the same circumstances. I have met people for the first time that I have known my whole life–their faces, the voice, the mannerisms. I know, all of it is a carefully constructed illusion created by my brain. I had déjà vu in school so many times I lost count. I have been able to predict what people would say before they said it on numerous occasions. I do not believe in supernatural phenomenon of this type. I understand the rational explanation, but it doesn’t matter: déjà vu comes coming back to me, repeating itself in people, places and things. It just keeps repeating itself, and the funny thing is, I know it will and there’s nothing I can do about it.