Jamais Vu

In this post, I will first talk about a dream that I had last Friday, and then I will talk about how a part of it came true in real life. I obviously can not remember 100% of the dream, this is probably only 5% of it, to exaggerate. There are many pictures in my head of different parts of the dream, but I can not fit it into the whole picture or put it into words, so here is the skeleton of my dream.

So….this dream is set in RHHS, but it is not the RHHS as we know it, the school looked totally different. In fact, it had a more creative look to it, unlike our boring hallways and classrooms. Think UHS. I went to school here and there was always this area of the school which had a wall and behind the wall, you can see a little bit of what is going on, but I never really paid much attention to it, never thought it was much of anything. Then one day, during a time when there were very little students in the school, some male adult was leading me to the place behind the wall. I first saw that it was actually a café. The walls were red and there was dark lighting compared to the rest of the school. There was someone behind a counter far in the back, which was even darker, who was probably the store clerk, but the main focal point of this scene was the lady. She was sitting on this stool with her legs crossed, dressed in a red dress and looked very sophisticated. I think she was Caucasian. She was sitting around a high small round table, like you would find in a coffee shop and was drinking coffee. She was all by herself even though there were other chairs. There were even more dark red couches against the wall in the little shop. Once I saw this, I was very surprised because I never knew there was a café in our school!!! Then the guy who was with me led me to the right where the scene changed completely. There was a hallway where there were many shops along the side of it like you would typically see in P-mall. The stores were made with glass walls and there were displays on the outside, each one selling different things. However, they were all closed and the lights inside the stores were off.The lights in the hallway were really bright, like in the real mall. At this point, I was by myself, and started to walk around, there was a dead end in front of me, but you could turn to the right or the left. The only other people were at the end of the hall, where the dead end was. They were these two Asian girls dressed in a red traditional outfit and doing some type of traditional dance. They were facing an opening to the right and they did not notice me. In the same dream, but prior to this, I was watching the same two girls, and they were supposed to be on stage performing, but I guess from a different angle, they were just here all along. The memory of the stage in my dream looked red, made out of wood, looked very Chinese traditional with a big sign at the top. As I was walking around and looking at the closed stores and their products, I was wondering why everything was so strange and why I never knew this was all at my school. Everything was really quiet….

So yea, that’s as much as I remember; it really is not much, for I remember that dream was pretty long. Now, I will explain what happened that following Sunday. So after eating with Iciee that Sunday after church, I fell asleep in the car ride. When I woke up, I saw this underground parking lot and I was wondering where we was. I had a strange feeling that it was an Asian mall, but I really did not know where we had gone. We got out of the car and went towards an elevator, everything felt really bizarre, and there was absolutely no movement in the parking lot besides us. I was somewhat scared as well. We arrived at the top floor of the mall, and I looked down. I tried really hard to know where we were, and at first, I thought we were at Splendid China Tower, but not everything fitted. My mom was looking for a particular store, and everything was closed since it was New Year’s Day. There was this one store still remained open, selling bootleg DVDs and when my family and I passed it, the guy came out to reorder the DVDs, I felt kind of bad, was not sure why. We walked around following the numbers of the store and eventually arrived at the correct store. While my mom was looking at the products in the window, I gazed down the hall of the mall, and it struck me how much this reminded me of my dream. I was lost for words because it seemed like if my dream was all coming true, with the bright-lit hall, dark Asian stores and people were deserted. We were walking around and it was all so weird. I had no idea where I was, yet it seemed so familiar at the same time. It was like a prophetic dream that I had. I do not know why, I but I felt like if that mall was suddenly dangerous, my dad went to the bathroom, and even though I had to go as well, I would not dare step into it, for it frightened me a lot. As we looked more around the mall, there were more clues as to where I actually was. Clues that served my hypothesis and ones that deferred me from it. We saw this Chinese restaurant and that was one of my foremost clues that made me think it was the Splendid China Tower, for I remember that there was a Chinese restaurant there. Also, there were these skinny escalators that were a complete parallel to the ones in that mall. There was even a stage on the first floor; the layout was pretty much the same as Splendid. Moreover, there was a food court on the second floor, it was so familiar!!! I was amazed because I almost convinced myself I was at Splendid China Tower, and for the past month or so, I had this strong urge to actually go to that mall for some reason. That was two prophecies coming true!!! Then as we went to the first floor, things began to change. I remember the last time I went to Splendid, there was a long booth where they sold beauty products near the escalator, and as I looked at this mall, I could not spot a place where that could potentially be located. The stage was there, but it just did not seem to match 100% to the one in my memory. I also remember another booth near an escalator where they sold some type of pastries, and it was not there. On the first floor, I remember somewhat the layout of the halls of the stores, and it did not align with my knowledge of my last experience. Last of all, it did not say anywhere in the mall that it was the Splendid China Tower. I was left hanging in my thoughts. Where on earth was I???????? We finally decided to leave, for there really was not anything open. In the parking lot, I noticed a sign hanging from the roof, saying something about the directions and streets. I saw the word Sheppard, and at that moment, I just could not picture where Sheppard was in Toronto, I knew it was in Scarborough somewhere…but my brain was just stuck. Then as we drove out of the underground into the world, I saw the building beside our car and the scenery in front. I knew where I was. I always wanted to go there. It was all coming back to me. Across from the mall is a restaurant we always ate at, especially when I lived in Scarborough, the mall was called Oriental Palace (or was it Place???) Then I recalled a memory from the past, or possibly from another dream, that I felt jealous because my mom got to go to the mall, but I never got to, and I really wanted to go…..well, I guess now it is just MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I never knew I could feel like I knew where I was even though I never been there before. Jamais vu is explained by Wikipedia as the phenomenon of experiencing a situation that one recognizes but that nonetheless seems very unfamiliar. Many people say it is the opposite of Déjà vu. I guess that was a jamais vu experience, who knows.

All in all, that whole experience felt like a dream. Besides, I was already sleeping in the car to begin with. Maybe it was a dream, I really am not sure. How do you tell the difference between a dream and reality if during a dream, we mostly do not know we are dreaming? We are never sure of what we see, nothing is ever real, nothing is ever sure…like Socrates believed, “I know that I know nothing”……..

- Wingless Aura