Déjà vu, Déjà vu: Part I
[The following blog series will be comprised of some original short stories]
April 21, 2021
So much for beginning my habit of journaling every day of 2021. Hopefully, starting a New Year’s resolution in late April isn’t a bad omen. Maybe I’ll journal every day until April 21, 2022. Jess says that writing down my thoughts will help me to actually know what I’m thinking. I suppose she’s right. How can I know what is going on in my head unless I dump it all out and take a look at it?
So, here’s what’s in my head at the moment …
- Most it is a bunch of work garbage. It has to do with the telemetry calculations for the launch later this year. The James Webb telescope is 100 times more powerful than Hubble; it’s been in production forever and has cost billions of dollars. It’s cool to be on the US team supporting the launch, but the data surrounding my tiny piece of the mission is taking up 90% of my brain cells at the moment. When I close my eyes all I see are numbers on a screen and writing it out would bore future me to tears.
- On the other hand, I’ll get to go to French Guiana next week to explore the launch site. I didn’t even know where French Guiana was when I began working on the project two years ago. I had to look it up on a map. Turns out it’s nowhere near France. It’s at the tip of South America. I’ve used my passport since me and Jess’s honeymoon in 2017. Which reminds me, I need to dig it out and be sure it’s still valid. OK. Here’s the first real benefit of dumping things out of my head to take a look at them. FIND PASSPORT.
- Speaking of Jess … we’re hoping to see her parents for the first time since the pandemic started. Even though they live just two hours away we’ve not felt safe visiting them. I’m more relaxed about all this than Jess is. Both of us have been working from home for almost a year (hence my excitement to get on a plane next week) and I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been at an indoor, public location. Still, before I go to French Guiana we thought we should visit her parents. I’m actually looking forward to seeing them. Partly because I’m socially starved and partly because I genuinely enjoy Jess’s dad’s company.
OK, this is beginning to sound like drivel and I’m boring myself to sleep, so will take a shot at another journal entry tomorrow.
May 15, 2021
So much for a commitment to a daily journal.
June 27, 2021
My latest idea to increase my journaling is to focus on a specific topic. Something interesting enough to motivate me and to hang my words on. The open-ended, daily journal doesn’t seem to be working.
My journal focus – déjà vu.
So Saturday when Jess and I were reading in the living room (it’s too hot to read outside, otherwise that’s where we’d be), I looked up and asked her what time it was.
“3:37pm” she said.
The feeling that I had seen this moment play out before hit me so hard that I sat still, trying to hold on to the feeling. Nurture it.
“We’ve done this before.” I said.
“Done what?” she said, “You mean, read our books here in the living room?”
“No,” I said. “This whole thing. Like I’ve read this very same sentence, then looked up and asked you what time it was, and you said, 3:37pm. The whole thing.”
Of course, by now the whole thing had passed. It was over.
“Déjà vu,” Jess said.
“Yeah, déjà vu.” I said.
Then it happened again today when I came home late from work at 10pm and saw Jess asleep on the couch. The feeling only lasts for maybe two seconds. Maybe less. I’ve seen this scene before. Not just Jess asleep on the couch, but me coming home, setting my keys on the entry table, and looking over at her. She’s in the same position, the same lighting, the same smells and sounds and feelings.
So I’m going to start journaling about déjà vu.
July 1, 2021
No moments of déjà vu lately but I’ve been doing a bit of research and thinking, which is actually pretty impressive since my workload is mounting. Less than six months away from launch!
Déjà vu means “already seen” in French. Which is more French than I learned back in April when I went to French Guiana. (P.S. That trip was a bit of a junket for the ground systems telemetry team. There wasn’t much practical value in going, but my boss has been working on this project for like 8 years and NASA said all twelve of us could go because his work is so amazing, and we’re mostly stuck behind screens for 10 hours a day).
Neuroscientists believe it might have something to do with a shortcut some memories take when being logged into our brain. The event goes straight to long term memory without stopping to make an entry in our short-term memory. The problem with this theory is that when déjà vu triggered event was observed under an MRI, it wasn’t the memory portion of the brain that was active (the hippocampus), it was the areas of the brain involved with conflict resolution and decision making. Like something is out of order and we’re trying to make it right.
I’m not a neuroscientist, so I don’t approach déjà vu as brain science. I’m a physicist, so I see it as a time problem. Time is one of those phenomenons we don’t understand. I’m not talking about time as a human construct, where we mark off bits of the day or the year with arbitrary human measurements. I’m talking about time as the way we move through the universe. How humans pass through the cosmos. All of our interactions in the world from birth to death (and whatever exists before and after those events). That’s how I think about the mystery of time. And déjà vu is a mystery inside that mystery.
So from here on out this journal is about my search for what is happening with time when we experience déjà vu.
July 3, 2021
This time it was so quick I almost didn’t notice. Something about seeing a car drive by from our bedroom window.
July 5, 2021
I had another incident yesterday. This one was different. Much longer and much more detailed.
We got off work early (odd to think of working until 5pm on a Sunday as getting off early). The ground systems telemetry group are all back in our cubicles because our wacko Florida governor is encouraging everyone to pretend like the pandemic is over.
Jess was excited to have me home for dinner for once, so we went out to Chick-fil-a. Later that evening, about 8 o’clock, we drove to a small town about 45 minutes away to watch their fireworks display. Small-town events are always the best. We sat there in our camp chairs waiting for dark when the déjà vu hit.
All previous déjà vu events have happened when I was by myself or with Jess around. This one happened in a crowd. I felt it coming on so I focused on the feeling as it washed over me. The sound of the cicadas, the smell of bug spray, that family on a blanket to the right of us. Everything was familiar. Not just familiar, everything was happening just as it had happened before. Hundreds of people out in the park and everyone was where they were when … when … when what? Last 4th of July? No. They didn’t even have a fireworks display in 2020. Surely there are others at the park who can see that we’ve all been here before. Who else is experiencing this déjà vu?
I managed to remain in a state of re-living it for a long time. More than ten seconds. And during those ten seconds it occurred to me. Not only was I re-living a moment that had occurred before, but I was re-living this déjà vu moment. That is, I’m pretty sure I’ve lived this moment in time more than once. My déjà vu was having déjà vu.