Déjà vu ©

Bill Longworth, March 11, 2009


In disembarking the plane in London Heathrow, the customs officer on checking my passport asked who I was. “Longworth”, I said, “Bill Longworth”. With that and my passport in order, I entered the country.

With my worldly, sauve, debonair, adventuresome, intelligent, quick-witted, and smooth persona, I had charmed and impressed the beautiful woman interviewer and landed a job in Cairo. As you can tell, modesty would probably not be listed among my strong suits.

On heading to the new job, I decided to do a little sightseeing on the stopovers enroute.



As I didn’t have much time in London, I went immediately to a landmark I’d heard about, Kensington Market. While there, I saw the unusual Trellick Tower and went inside. As I entered, I had the strange sensation of being familiar with the building and of having been in it before. It was a building designed by well-known architect Emo Goldfinger and gained its fame because some thought it avant-garde in design, while others considered it beastly. Some brought ridicule to the building and to its architect by calling those they despised, “Goldfinger!”

While in London, I was invited to dinner in London’s exclusive Reform Club. I once again had the strange sensation of being very familiar with the place and of being there before. As before, I found it a little stuffy eating among the prim and proper members of British nobility and felt I’d rather die another day and probably another way. I did put on my rich and cultured face though as I asked the butler for a martini, shaken not stirred. I’d feel a lot more comfortable, I thought, swashbuckling through the place with a sword in my hand, similar to the guys who’d been filming here the day before.

This strange pattern of familiarity continued to play its hand as I landed in Athens and started touring some Greek sites. While touring, I did feel a strange familiarity with Greece’s Great Meteora Monastery located on top of a rock pinnacle 300 meters above the Thessalian Plain in Central Greece. “I’ve been here before”, I said to myself, not daring to suggest this to my wife who would have thought I’d gone crazy. I had to restrain myself from swinging hand-over-hand 150 meters or so on the rope suspended high over the plain to the neighbouring Monastery of All Saints St Varlaam as I was sure I’d done in the past. Wanting to keep my foolish desires private, though, I did tease her by suggesting that I had something for her eyes only.

Following my Greek stopover, I boarded the plane for Cairo. It wasn’t long before I ventured into Cairo’s Gayer-Anderson Museum, a preserved traditional Egyptian house from the 15th century. Strange how I felt that I had also been here before. Romantic visions filled my head with the knowledge that my lover would have crouched silently in the secret overhead balcony observing everything that happened as I congregated with the men below. The Spy that loved me, I thought, as I envisioned her there.

As I left the museum and headed for the pyramids just outside Cairo and then Luxor’s Karnak Temple in the South of Egypt, I had visions of also being in these places in the past. Strange though, I had no sensation of ever being in King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings before now, nor of sunbathing on Christmas Day on a Nile Cruise boat just north of the Sudan Border until now.

I couldn’t understand why all these places were so familiar to me. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower and the Reform Club in London, the Great Meteora in Greece, and the Gayer-Anderson Museum and the Pyramids in Cairo. Was it possible that I was the re-incarnation of someone who went before. Certainly, my science background taught me that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, and I was certainly a bundle of human energy. It struck me that I may have perhaps been revisiting places from a past life.

I started to analyze my Déjà vu experiences with scientific analysis worthy of a James Bond character.

I started to think of my personal characteristics….sauve, debonair, adventuresome, handsome, fastidious, calm, in control, quick witted, and the interests and pleasures that I loved…women, adventure, the world of espionage…a James Bond character if there ever was one.

As I thought of the places I’d been and the clues that had sprung to mind in each of the places, the whole thing started to become clear to me.

Camp X, key allied spy school was located in Oshawa, and Ian Fleming had been posted here to learn the craft. His experiences at Camp X and around Oshawa had laid the foundation for the James Bond Character in his writing. I lived in Oshawa for many years and shared many of the talents, interests, and characteristic Bond had.

“Eureka”, I exclaimed. “ I have been to all of these places before as they were all film locations for the James Bond movies. I am James Bond reincarnated. Ian Fleming fashioned his character after an earlier Oshawa version of me.

Links

Trellick Tower
Emu Goldfinger
Reform Club
Martini shaken not stirred
Great Meteora Monastery Ref.#1
Great Meteora Ref.#2
Gayer-Anderson Museum
Luxor
Reincarnation
Déjà vu
James Bond
Camp X
Ian Fleming
The Spy That Loved Me
Goldfinger Novel
Die Another Day
For Your Eyes Only