Day 240 - Paranoia on an afternoon walk

 Paranoia on an afternoon walk

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

If I lived a previous life, would I know it? Not like someone having a séance and speaking to the past or undergoing some deep hypnosis to try and unlock some clue. I mean, if the whole reincarnation, ladder of life, karma sort of stuff was real, would the person living it have any sense of it? Or if you thought too long, could you convince yourself you felt something, but really, you’re just playing mind games with yourself. Psychosomatic thinking and false memory planting based on feel good stories we like to tell ourselves.

Why was the man in the suit following me? Not overtly. Not blatantly. But I saw him every day. Nearly every day. Almost for certain most days. Did he want something from me? Did he have a plan to get it? If he did, he was most meticulous in his approach. Certainly, he had mapped out all my standard movements and deviations by now. I had seen him over and over. He could approach at any time. Maybe I should approach him. And then what would happen?

I saw a woman notice me on the street last week. She noticed me and said nothing. But later I saw a youtube video made by a different woman talking about all the men she would notice on the street and how she would write their entire life together in her head, but would never approach the person. I wondered if the woman I noticed did the same thing. Maybe she was afraid to approach me because her fantasy was better than anything that real life could afford. Or maybe she was just unimpressed.

I always wonder just a bit when I find notes written in my handwriting that I don’t remember writing. Was it really me? Did I do it and forget it? Was someone else writing me notes? Did I pick up a glitch from an alternate reality and am really reading writing from some other version of me? I think about writing really random things that make no sense and have no connection to anything in my life. If future me finds them in three or six years, what will he think? Will he remember that it was all a lie? Will he think he had a brain disease and was forgetting vast chunks of his life?

Everything seems to be a loop. Politicians, entertainers, sports figures. They just spin around in a circle forever and ever. There’s always a new model. Always a new version which is really just a spin on an old version. The same quotes get trotted out. The same game winning shots. It really takes the heart and emotion out of it if you know it’s all been done before and will all be done again.

I wonder if my parents are proud of me. What an asinine question. Of course, they are. They were designed that way. I’m proud of my son and he’s never done anything. Seriously, like nothing. All he had to do is exist and I’m proud. I’m sure they felt the same about me.

If reincarnation does work, and we do keep any ounce of our memories, would that make any sense at all to the next version, or would it be some maddening construct where you knew something insane and out of place also felt real and true. Maybe that’s where dreams come from. Maybe there’s a way to map out the world that was by remembering when no other thoughts can get in the way. Now I sound like the people that believe in hypnosis. As if a dream is anything different than a wish.

Am I someone else’s man in the suit? Like not intentionally, but all the same odds and coincidences. I walk the same streets. See the same people. I’m not following any of them. I’m not stalker, or serial killer or international spy. But they might see me that way. They might notice me and think I’m following them. They might think I’m the bad guy. Maybe that’s why that woman who noticed me stayed so far away.