dejavu

It happened again today. A dream came true. One of those strange waking dreams where I don't believe I'm dreaming. And then it happens and you realize that you weren't, really dreaming, merely staring through your future eyes.

It makes it hard not to take any dream seriously, no matter how strange it is.

This particular dejavudream had to do with subways signs and street corners, just a situation that I had been in before. I may or may not have been tripping on a frozen custard from ShakeShack at the time of the sighting.

How do I know that it's deja vu, that I'm not just remembering some sight that I've seen before, or that I'm just having a strong emotional reaction to a place?

Because I'll wake up the next morning after the dream, and I'll think about how weird it was. And then, maybe a few days, maybe a few years later, it happens. So I've lived it thrice.

I've been having strange dreams in New York City. All of them are epic in proportion, but completely forgotten by the time I rouse myself. It's hard to wake up, because they're so real, so compelling. My alarm clock goes off at 7:30 am. It's often 10:30 before I can pull myself out of dream world though -- dreams punctuated by a ringing noise and timed swats at the snooze button.

And how can you argue with dreaming if you're a victim of dejavu? Perhaps there is a great evil that I'm fighting off in my dreams every morning. The only dreams I dejavu are the ones where everything ended up all right. How can we know? My alarm clock is the real villan, attempting to pull me up to consciousness before reality is saved in Dreamworld.

And that is why I was late to work this week.