Posthuman Blues

So far tonight I've experienced two intense episodes of deja vu: the first while looking at a picture of a fossil-like formation photographed on Mars and the next after changing CDs in my stereo. (For an insightful essay on what deja vu may or may not be, click here.)

I very, very rarely experience deja vu. So when I do it's rather unsettling. Especially so since the sensation tends to come in successive "waves." It's a little scary, especially since neuroscience is still basically clueless about its origins. I personally think that "real" deja vu is a minor seizure, a momentary glitch in the synaptic matrix. There's no evidence that it's harmful or symptomatic of any undiagnosed malady. In fact, it's easy to understand the mystical, "shamanic" connotations the phenomenon has acquired. Though brief, it's an actual altered state . . . a dizzy certainty that all that is exists in some inaccessible holographic Now, an unannounced perforation in causal reality.