DEJA VU?
It has, no doubt, happened to you, too.
Have ever been somewhere and had a strange feeling come over ycu which insisted you had been there before?
Of course, you knew you had never been there before and you were startled when certain things seemed familiar.
I had such a feeling one time in a most unusual place. I was in Northern Ireland shortly before the end of World War II Europe. We were visiting that part of the Ireland which was open to G.I.s at the time. Two of us
knew we had Irish connections in our family histories, but it was long after that when I learned the many of the Irish and Scots leaving for America actually sailed from nearby Larne Harbor.
We had entered Ireland at Larne Habor, having come across the Irish Sea from the ferry port of Stanrear. I remember it was raining that morning and down the street to the wharf came a
marching band - dressed in green kilts and playing bagpipes! I might well have had some deje vu feelings at that point, but I registered only surprise in being welcomed with bagpipes in Ireland.
The feeling came over me severa days later when I was standing on the rocky shore near Bangor, Ireland looking out over the sea. For just a few moment I “knew”.... I knew I had been to that
exact spot. I knew it. I looked out across the bay beyond the narrow beach at the rusty hulk of a freighter broken in two on the rocks as a reminder of the war then in progress. Other such hulks were to be seen along the shore in those
days. My feeling was that I had just come up from that wreck except, in my memory it was a long, sleek sailing vessel which was broken on the rocks! I had, escaped , found my way through the pounding surf to the firm shore. I felt so
glad I had escaped; made it across the hundred yards of rock and froth I looked down and closed my eyes to orient myself. Then, since the feeling which pinned me to the spot was, suddenly no longer there, I walked away and
rejoined my friends.
“You o.k. , Andy?” asked Donovan and short, chubby little Irish buddy of mine from Lamay, Missouri. I said I was and we went up the hill to visit “Floral Park”, a botanical garden site.
Only recently did I find my family had marked Norse connections. We were from Norway originally and came to The Minch in Scotland, not as Vikings , but as farmers and herdsman two centuries after the Vikings
had raided Ireland, burned the villages and killed many people.
Over the years, I have thought of that moment. It seems to have been a wisp-like glimpse in to an area we do not, as yet, understand or even admit exists. I wrote a poem about it some years ago, too which may
have caught some elments of it I have missed herein.
Have you had such experiences? Or, am I the only such kook still on the loose?
A.L.M. September 14, 2002 [c-536wds]
