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| 'A winter garden' |
Memories
playing tricks
Been there, seen that…
Déjà vu usually stays
around for only a short time, often for less than a second. It has not happened
to me for a long time, maybe even years. It has never been as clear and long-lasting
as it was at a meeting that I was at recently.
Someone joined
in a conversation that I was having with two people, one of whom I knew well
the other of whom I have known of for ages but we had only just met face to
face. A fourth person began to speak to all three of us and I stepped back from
the group as he leaned over the table to say something in quite a forceful way,
not a disagreement, more a reinforcement of what was being said as introducing
his own opinion.
This situation is
all so clear in my mind. I even thought at the time that I knew what he was
going to say next, that I was just a split second ahead of him. I was so
shocked by this that I think the astonishment probably showed on my face, and
this is why I took the step backwards. I almost felt no part of it any more,
more like an observer. I was surprised I even had time to wonder about what was
happening while it was happening and to question whether it really was déjà vu or whether something else was
going on. It appeared to me as I imagine it to be when people describe how they
have an enhanced, nearer and clearer view of the world from taking certain
drugs. The visual picture of that déjà vu
is still so sharp and the sounds are so precise in my memory, just as they were
as it happened.
Tricks of memory
As it was
happening I had that feeling of ‘I have been in this situation before’, ‘I know
what he will say next’. Then came the feeling of ‘Yes, I was right, he did say what I remember from last time’.
Oddly enough, however I have absolutely no idea what the conversation was
about, or of what the newcomer, or either of the other two, said. I have no
idea how the conversation ended or even when the déjà vu ended. Perhaps the meeting began and I was pulled out of it,
I do not know.
It is all so
extremely well deleted from my conscious memory that I wonder whether something
actually happen to me, like falling briefly unconscious, and that is why there
is a gap in my memory. I do not know, perhaps I was just ‘vacant’ for a second
but did not pass out. If I had fallen unconscious I would have been told. The
next that I remember is finding a seat to sit in.
I have always loved the feeling of
déjà vu
This used to
happen far more often than it has in recent years, and some déjà vus, I believe, at the time that they
occured, had happened more than once before. I suppose that this would be
called an already seen déjà vu! The
one last week was a déjà, déjà vu.
I remember how as
a child and teenager I loved this experience. I never spoke to anyone about it
and I suppose that I eventually read or heard something that explained enough
for me to know that it was a fairly common occurrence, so I was not afraid of
it.
I do not ever
remember thinking that this only happened to me. I suppose that, as children do,
I considered it to be normal, happening regularly to everyone. I do think that I
even believed that situations really had happened before and sometimes, only
during the déjà vu itself, I believe
that still. This time I also thought, as it happened, that it must be true as I
knew the words, although oddly, I no longer know them.
Eyes playing tricks. Or are they?
‘As children
often do’… I used to believe many things to be normal but never asked about
them. Déjà vu is normal, some conditions, however, are not.
It was not
normal, something I unfortunately only discovered at the age of nineteen, not
to see well enough to read a book after about three in the afternoon, in poor light,
at school. I was embarrassed in class because I thought it was my shyness that
made me stammer and stutter and rub my eyes a lot, but that shyness was
probably due to a vicious circle.
I could not
read in bed, or read a script for a play in the evening at youth club. I could
not read more than just a paragraph and that not without rubbing my eyes a lot.
I thought this to be just how it was with everyone, especially as we had school
medicals, with eyesight tests annually that I always passed with flying colours.
I remember that
this was how it was from the beginning of grammar school. I now know that this
is why my homework took so long if I had to use a text book and that this was
not because I was stupid and therefore slow. I now know that this is why I only
became really interested in really reading books when I was at art school, when
I took myself off to the optician and
got myself such strong glasses that I
had to have them in two prescriptions, one step at a time instead of at once.
I wonder how I
managed to get through school as an average pupil, pass O and A levels and get
on to a degree course without this ever being noticed. It helped I expect that
my degree subject was art and I drew what I thought I could see and no one
questioned what was on the paper, as it was ‘artistic’ enough and my hand-eye coordination
skills were quite good! I noticed the problem myself when I started to learn
about textiles and weaving and I could not thread a loom. Then a whole new
world opened up to me, of newspapers, books and easier learning. Learning
assisted by another source – the written word.
A personal view
I wonder
whether this experience has sharpened my observation skills. I believe that it
has. My ability to learn through doing is still much more honed than my skill to
learn through reading about it. I do find though that, as I have practiced my
writing skills in recent years, my ability to understand the written word has
become easier and faster.
Perhaps in believing
that it was normal not to be able to read sharpened my abilities to observe the
world and taught me how to look at things that I saw and how I really see them,
and I learnt how to fit things together in a slightly different way in order to
understand the world.
Who knows what
happened? All I know is that I found it a real problem to read before I got
glasses and throughout my childhood I think that this embarrassed me and made
me incredibly shy and timid, in class and out.
My family could
never understand why, even when I had learnt to read, I did not do it. I loved
books, especially those with lovely illustrations that helped me to understand
the text that I could not see very well!
I always
snuggled up to my sister in bed and asked her to read my favourite Enid Blyton
fairy stories to me, ones with many elves, pixies and clever owls in them. My
wish not to read is still a family joke and I think that the family thought I
was lazy, but it was not laziness it was because it was after three in the
afternoon, the light was dim and I just could not see. I admired my sister so
much that she could read so fluently, and I am very grateful to her that she
always did, right until I was ten or eleven years old.
I know that it
is only recently while I have managed to practice through writing, that I can
understand much of what I read with just one reading. Until then anything more
than the headlines in the newspaper took a few readings to make any sense to
me, even when I had my now very strong glasses.
Observation
It is no wonder
really that I only ever felt really comfortable and relaxed with a pencil and
paintbrushes in my hands. I do not really need to see what I put on the paper
as I am drawing or painting, not that clearly. I need to see what I am looking
at in reality, and that I could always see well enough to interpret in my own
way.
Those well-honed
observation skills come in very useful in my life at home and at work!
It is not only
the observation of what I see that is important and vital to my work it is the
observations of what could lie underneath.
The patching together and finding the reasons why a walk is hunched up, or a
voice has changed in tone, or words can no longer be found. Observing what
cannot be seen is all so important to a conductive upbringing too, to any upbringing especially mine when I
could not really see well enough to read but did not know it for a very long
time.
