Two Lives to Live

One déjà vu is already one too many, but one every other day, sometimes one each day, can be distracting and eventually unsettling. It can be, of course, the beginning of dementia, or simply the start of the slowing-to-a-crawl of the mind. Of course, a déjà vu can only occur once.

Many things are coupled, numerous occurrences appear in twos. Two eyes seem to be the prevalent mode for seeing. Two ears allow many creatures to hear and listen to the world around them. Two nostrils allow more air to flow into the lungs effortlessly. Two hands (front paws) and two feet (rear paws) seem to be the most successful sets of limbs. Two lungs are better than one for long-term survival. Two ovaries and two testicles tend to increase the likelihood of fertilisation. Two buttocks seem to be a wise adaptation in the right direction. Two breasts provide more milk and look nicer than one much bigger. Birds and other sky-bound creatures require two wings to fly.

The base-2 (binary) numeral system is basic (0 and 1) yet very powerful. There are two directions on a straight line. It takes two to tango. Yin and yang. Yes and no. Fiction and reality. On and off. Alive and dead. And the list goes on and on.

What if each life, no matter the form, exists twice! Repeats itself once! Another couple. An additional twosome. There is no scientific basis to this question (it is not even a hypothesis). It may be a simple question that could be investigated. I am almost sure that we only live our lives once. There is, however, a splinter of a chance that it could be our reality. If we could prove it, we would be able, from then on, to always do the opposite of what our minds seem to indicate that we should do, thus assuring ourselves that we are indeed living a second life, unless, of course, we are already living our second life and are now repeating it.

One life to live should therefore remain the premise. What about the déjà vu? It can be advantageous to experience the same thing twice, especially if it is a good thing. I never had a déjà vu of a bad thing, which is more than strange. Can it mean that I am living my second life? Not if I am only reliving the good or neutral events in my life. I thus surmise that I could only be living my first or only life.

On the night following what a I had written so far, I had a strange dream. It appears that my unconscious concocted a plan to help me find the answer. In a green field surrounded by cute trees, I saw a truck-sized balance that tilted more to the right, with my passed-away wife seating in it with a smile to die for. Seating on the left side was beautiful Goddess Athena; I mean a woman from Flickr whose photo I had used as Goddess Athena's lookalike in another story, but not a horror one like this bloody tale.

How come my wife weighs more than Goddess Athena? I remember asking myself, since I knew the weight of each of them. In a balance, both sides are equal in weight, so it had to be only them with nothing else added to their weight, except for my love for them, which can only weigh on the chest. I must be dreaming, I concluded, but my unconscious was maybe trying to tell me something.

I had 28 years of happiness in each and every year, but surely not all of the time for one reason or another. Life is not a bowl of cherries or an avocado; an amazing fruit. My wife weighed more when she should have weighed less, which meant that there were two possible outcomes to everything, even life.

According to my dream, we live two lives, and this one appears to be my first, and it was and is a good one, with my wife meaning more to me than the nine years after her death, which may be the reason why she weighed more. Maybe I did not have déjà vu of bad things in this life, so far, because it is my good life of the two. In one's second life, the opposite occurs in order to balance both lives, and in my case, I will thus live some type of horror in my second life. I can only hope that it will be a short one.

A final element in my interpretation of the dream is that it announced my own demise in the near future. My deceased wife smiling, and Goddess Athena, who is also one of the heroines in my Greece-related stories, were two significant signs in the world of dreams. I am living on borrowed time. I could die tomorrow or even before I get the chance to finish this story.

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Vitas - Opera #2

My house is built and completed

Inside, it is full of my loneliness

Behind me, the door slams shut

The autumn wind knocks frantically

on my window panes again

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A stormy night is followed

by a foggy misty morning

The sun has turned all cold

Sufferings of the past

are coming one by one

Let them gather here tonight

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My house is built and completed

Inside, it is full of my loneliness

Behind me, the door slams shut

The autumn wind knocks

frantically on my window panes

Once again, sobbing over me

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That is fate, and I cannot question fate

Struggling is tiring and futile

I only know that after I have left

The autumn winds will start howling after me