Seeing Double

the first time i saw richard linklater's slacker, the story of a group of slackers in austin texas, i was with a group of friends who knew me pretty well. at one point there was a character in the movie offering up a fairly long and involved monologue and everyone in the room turned to me and said, "that's you!"

crazy thing was that there were two other characters, each different, who elicited the same response!

that was alternately exciting and crushing.

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Hey Chas,
that's interesting indeed, guess you have many selves that others get to see. So often we only wear the one mask of the persona out to the world.

Wow. Richard and Marianna's experiences both gave me chills.
Marianna, for some reason, the "child you" really got to me.
Thanks for sharing.

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Hi Richard,

I was standing in line in a coffee shop and when I turned around, I came face to face with my 14 year old self. No one else noticed because they didn't know me at 14. I remember feeling a bit sad and also hopeful.

I wonder if seeing your double was also enough to shake up your hold on the conversation?

Thanks to everyone else for sharing your stories...very interesting.

Hey Marianna,
Thanks for sharing your different age double. Very neat. I do think you hit on something referring to my hold, which was in the form of not feeling worthy.

What, Richard, no "Truman Show" for you? ;)

Now *that* film posited a nightmare reality.

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Have not seen the Truman Show yet Mark. What is a nightmare other than the unconscious calling us to get in touch...

richard,

i'm so intrigued by the impact of seeing your double, the way in which seeing him allowed resistance to dissipate. why do you believe this was the impact?

my example is much more mundane. When I was in college, my grandmother kept telling me that I looked like a young woman on one of the soap operas she used to watch. "Sure, sure," I would say. "But you really do!" she would offer.

Before too long, I would walk down the street in my college town and people started calling me someone else's name--the name of the girl on the soap opera.

Finally, because it became so prevalent, I tuned in to watch the show.

I was dumbstruck to see myself on TV. We were twins.

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Hey Patti,
While it was occurring, there was a sense that the thing was in someway imaginal (in the Corbin sense). I this guy really did breeze through the place, I even checked with the person that was with me. They were pretty wrapped up looking at something in a far corner, but noted the guy in the blue robes without recognizing that he looked like me. Jung's definition of synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence." This encounter was imbued with it...

If the cards were laid out and either I or my double had to act on the soap opera, I'd be hoping the double would get that card...

I've never had the experience of 'seeing double' in a physical sense, although sometimes people have told me I look just like someone else they know. So perhaps my particular 'doubles' do exist - they've just never walked into my line of vision. And in saying that, I'm reminded of the fairies that lived in my garden when I was a child - they were there, but flitted just beyond my peripheral vision. They were always gone when I turned my head to look.

The closest I've come to my physical double(s) is in dreams - where they usually appear when there's something in my life that I've been ignoring and that is clamouring for attention.

I think 'seeing double' can maybe also happen in a non-physical sense though.

It's when we meet folk who seem to give voice to our own thoughts when they speak. Where we feel we've somehow known them not only our whole life but in lives lived before - and when we speak with them, we seem in some way to be talking to ourselves. I don't mean simply those with whom we feel a deep connection - that can be a relatively common experience. But those very rare occasions when someone you meet, even if not looking anything like you, seems to be another version of you - not a body-reflection, but a soul-reflection in the mirror.

Ok, so this isn't a 'double' in the usual sense of the word, I know. And, when I think of a couple of occasions when this has happened most memorably for me, they have been chance meetings for only a short time. I figure that if the time spent in each other's company had been longer, and I'd actually got to know the other person better, many differences would have emerged and that sensation would have gone - possibly not to be remembered. It's perhaps the very brevity of these encounters that allowed the feeling to remain in my memory, unreplaced by greater familiarity and therefore differentiation.

But for a few moments in time - or more appropriately perhaps, a few moments 'out of time' - I was 'seeing double'.

Yes Sue,
I recognize those encounters by the altered sense of time that surrounds them as well...Great comment.

When I was attending college up in Idaho, one of my classes was a fine art class. I never really paid much attention to my classmates and actually found the class quite boring and mundane even though I love art with a passion. One day, as we were sketching statue heads, another woman sat down next to me. When we turned to introduce ourselves to each other, we both became really quiet and just stared at the other. Then, our professor and classmates too began to stare at us. It was the strangest thing--looking at my double. Although we were ever so slightly different such as in a freckle here and a little bit more weight there, we pretty much looked the same. It was the first time I think that anyone in our class during that semester actually took the time to talk to others. Our similarities were so noticeable, that my professor even asked to take our picture.

Hey Allie,
It's neat that not only the two of you but the entire room recognized what unfolded. And that it was an art class...the analogy into what seeing really is takes on a different level. Great story.