When I mentioned "Deja vu in dreams" in the previous posting it reminded me that I've written before about deja vu . Classic deja vu is a situation where a new encounter is bewilderingly like...something else that previously occurred, but we can't really put our finger on it. Are we simply temporarily forgetting the former event? It's kind of impossible to be sure, but the phenomenon is notable for its intensity, whereas in daily life we forget stuff all the time and it's no big deal. This authentic deja vu experience is pretty rare, but it has happened for me, and it feels very similar to what I've more often experienced in dreams.

This comes in a couple of interesting flavors. One is the recurring dream. That usually means a common theme that you identify between two or more dreams, either while the second is happening or afterward. A lot of times a lot of time can elapse between these dreams, and especially when it does that's when the similarity to deja vu is seen. It's because (I think) that we're dealing with "meaning" here, not "reality."

Another flavor is the revisitation of a place, or re-encounters with particular people. A lot of my dreams happen in my home town, places I went a lot as a kid. I've pedaled my bicycle up and down 10th ave a lot of times in dreams, driven past the high school and out into a verdant countryside at least a couple of times. I mentioned the parking lot across from Safeway. Our friend Nanci often tells us of an entirely parallel world she encounters, with a cast of characters who maintain continuity across numerous dreams and have a tenuous relationship with the real people in her life.

A couple of nights recently I've found myself impelled to repeat crimes, the robbery of a convenience store that I previously had hit, with an intense awareness that I was doing it again, a tickle of guilt and awareness that this time the cops would not be so slow in arriving.