DRIFTING

I think most people have something weird happen to them from time to time.  Maybe they think they’ve seen a ghost or a UAP (formerly known as a UFO).  Some folks may think they get more than their fair share of weird and they could be right.  Personally, I think it’s just because life is weird in so, so many ways.  Let me provide a recent example of my own:

Several years ago, in order to combat a case of chemo brain (a well-known side effect of some cancer treatments), I began playing online solitaire.  I’ve played a lot of online solitaire since I first downloaded the app, 16,387 games so far.  I started out playing the standard, one-deck layout but that quickly became boring, so I started using a three-deck layout.  It was a huge challenge for me at the time, and I really had to work at keeping track of all those cards.  But I got to be pretty good at it, and years later I could play it without paying close attention.  I could let my mind drift away from all the stress and anxiety of these modern times and let my thoughts ramble in the back of my mind.  Then things got creepy:

I was playing the game, drifting as usual, and I had the feeling that someone was watching over right my shoulder.  It was a “huh” moment – weird, but potentially explainable if I were to bother chasing it down.  The first time I shook it off, but then it happened a few more times, always when I was drifting while playing.  Away from the laptop and thinking about these occurrences, I admit I was disturbed.  I’ve given this a lot of thought since then, and the best way to describe it is using iterations of myself.

The primary iteration is reality based, seated at my laptop busily keyboarding/mousing through the game onscreen.  Meanwhile I’m drifting, disengaged from the images on the laptop screen.  The pattern of the cards in the layout acts as a moving mandala and basically I go into a meditative state, mentally several steps back of conscious interaction.  The second iteration is a gray, amorphous shadow form positioned a step or two behind my right shoulder.  It’s turned slightly to its own right, as if watching something behind it while also keeping an eye on the laptop.  Through the second iteration I observe there are scenarios being played out in the distance, but I don’t experience these scenarios in any physical sense.

There is only a subtle understanding of the setting and what the individuals in the scenario are experiencing.  It’s like watching a one-act play from a far balcony seat, but there’s no sound and wafting clouds of cigarette smoke obscure the stage:  1920s New York, a tenement family in distress over a family member recruited to the local mob; 1930s Germany, a tense discussion with sardonic, arrogant Nazi officers.  There were several other scenarios, but those are the two I remember most clearly since their emotional context was quite high.  The really interesting thing, though, is that once I figured out what was going on the scenarios stopped.  I understood and had identified them, and by identifying them I had fixed their position in my thoughts.

So, Schrödinger’s Solitaire.