"My cousin Troy breathes fire."
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You're damn right he does!
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About a week ago, my cousin sent me a personal message requesting my mailing address, so I sent it to him.
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While away on vacation, I met a ten-year-old boy who looked very much like I did at that age. I told him so. I called him "Past Troy" and I called myself "Future James*."
Past Troy and Future James had a few conversations throughout the week and there was always this strange feeling that I was talking to another version of myself.
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I also know another boy, age eleven, Meshach*, who lives nearby and looks very much like me at that age, and I oftentimes get the same strange feeling that I am in the presence of an alternate "me" when I am around him.
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In print, I have a fictional alternate version of myself named Raju. He is now in his early 40s and still living in India, working as a painter. (Once a sign painter, he now paints portraits for hire, since the billboard painting industry in India collapsed due to large-scale digital printers.)
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Yesterday, I wondered that if the four of us were actually variants of one another in different streams of time and locations in space which one of the four elements each of us would be. I never came to any definite conclusion, although I assumed that I would be water, and, most likely in its solid form of ice, since I have "appeared in print" as another fictional character, Rikard.
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Today, the pictured sticker arrived in the mail with two other "Cousin Troy" stickers and a t-shirt from a restaurant that I've never been to, from an addressee I didn't know.
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I contacted my cousin and asked him if he was behind the package. He was. He had seen the "Cousin Troy" stickers in a social media group posting and asked his friend who posted the photo to send me a set of the stickers. That friend decided to throw in a t-shirt from his business and send all of it my way.
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I'm still not sure if I'm the element of fire or if it is one of the other three of "me"—James, Meshach, Raju. Who is the "Cousin Troy" in this case? Which one of us really breathes fire?
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* Not their real names.
1 comment:
I am glad that your experience with Borgesian doubles appears to be a pleasant one so far. I have had a few curious experiences lately. It seems for example that there is another me running around Spain with tattoos on her left arm. I want to hear more about this fellow in India.
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