13 August 2007

A Glitch in the Matrix

I get pretty strong deja vu, about once a month or two. Well, deja vecu, is what it really is - the feeling like I've experienced a situation before (as opposed to just having seen something: vu). I often get the sense that I've been in a room before where the people or furniture were arranged in a certain manner. Or someone has said something in a certain way, and I knew that they were going to. I often feel like I've dreamt a situation before. Who knows - maybe I have. Some research indicates that deja vu might be a misconnection between short- and long-term memory. The long-term memory of a situation gets processed first, so even though you're truly experiencing something for the first time, your brain thinks a memory of the situation is being recalled from long-term storage.

When this stuff happens, I usually feel like I dreamt them before - I've even gone back to my bedside journals to see whether I'd written these things down. Actually, I had one instance of deja vu recently where I was almost certain I had written it down before - but I never did go back to see whether I had. Maybe I should...

It's interesting that these actually have a label.

On a tangential note, the DVR has officially ruined my life.

I don't watch a lot of TV, but there are a few shows that I do enjoy. Now that we have a Tivo-esque recorder, it is pretty nice to be able to watch television on my own terms. And skip commercials. I also like to pause a program or rewind to catch a missed line. I didn't realize how much I rely on these features, until I was in a conversation a few days ago. I was distracted and didn't hear some things that were said. My first instinct was to replay the conversation to see what I had missed. This is bad. Last time I checked, life doesn't have a remote control.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of deja vu--all last night I dreamed that I was in Madam J's classroom taking exams. I woke up so tired this morning. I kept thinking, wait, I passed the bar, why am I back in this room and why can I not read the directions to this exam?