Since early childhood I desperately wanted to live in Trenton, NJ. Why I, a sheltered kid in Utah, had such a driving desire is a mystery.
It took me 41 years to get here, but I made it to Trenton, NJ. I’ve a very, very deep sense of belonging here that I’ve not had anywhere else, including my hometown. My house, wife, and work are exactly right in eerie ways that sometimes make me question my sci-atheist stance.
(If I were a believer in reincarnation) I’d be 100% sure this is the first time I’ve landed in a female body and one of only a few times I’ve been white. My interests and weird “been here before/done this” experiences point toward being an old male soul who was a badass world adventurer for centuries – with a detour as an Irish Catholic priest in the 1500s.
I am comfortable, to a level some friends over the years have found creepy, in what can best be described as 1750s conditions. I can live for a month or more in the wild with what I have on my person, love flintlocks and fresh meat, and understand (to the degree possible) the mindset of a person trekking off to see whats over that next hill. I’ve also had a few brainstorms/insights over the year that have checked out both in the written records and archeologically. Does that mean I was “alive” back then? I doubt it. But if such a thing exists I would say probably around then.
Given that the population of the world in 1850 was about 1.2 billion, and is currently 7 billion or so, maybe I was in the holding area waiting my turn. Not enough information to tell - maybe I was a passenger pigeon or a mouse or something.
I remember in a past life working as a farm hand. I rode on the back of a horse drawn wagon emptying sacks of manure into the fields. The manure was often hardened in the sacks and I had a large wooden club to smack on the burlap sacks so it would fall out.
It comes as no suprise to me then that in my current office setting that I often have the urge to beat the shit out of someone.
I was living in Boston and totally frustrated that women were not allowed to do much but get married and have children. I told people the love of my life had died in the War Between The States, and I eventually moved in with a Civil War widow with no children, lived with her platonically for sixty years, and died in a hunting accident the day after her funeral.
I’ve had two strong recurring feelings along these lines:
I am certain that I was a poor indigenous child in Mexico in the mid-1800s, living in a small village. I can see my dirty bare feet, feel the rough woven cloth of my shirt, feel the heat and taste the dust. The men around me had black mustaches and dirty, lank black hair. I didn’t survive past childhood. In this life, I have an affinity for genuine Mexican food (not Tex-Mex or Americano stuff) and speak Spanish quite authentically. Oddly, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to visit Mexico.
Also in this lifetime, I grew up in California but left at 21 to move to Idaho with my first husband. But while I was glad to leave California, where I really wanted to be was in Oregon. I have always been drawn to the Oregon Trail and, as a kid, read everything I could about it. Small sections of the Oregon Trail still exist. The first time I have walked on a section (in Idaho), I immediately faced west (toward Oregon) and immediately thought, okay, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep going, keep going. It was so familiar.
And, when I finally moved to Oregon, I knew I was home. There are lots of other beautiful, worthwhile places to live in the world, but I belong here in Oregon.
I have long perceived incarnation as a progressive state. It begins when the essences of some picoscopic particles join together, forming a composite abstract entity. Divers essential composites tend toward mutual aggregation, merging into discrete presences (that is, after a merging, the resulting essence is whole, unique and indivisible).
Essences progress in parallel with physical things. It may be a mote, a rock, a microbe, a tiger, an asteroid, a star, on up to the sum total of all existence (universe, or whatever). That thing that is you arose from the joining of lesser essences and, after letting go of you, will merge into the essence of a greater physical entity (whatever that means).
Existence is recursive, the whole of it being fully encompassed by its own most elemental components. Hence, the upward progression of merging essences will eventually have to lead to the last handful of vast aggregations, becoming the singular essence of all that is; yet, since all that is is contained within the very least of its entities, hence, the final merger represents a return to the beginning.
1862, though, I think I was Doc Brown, but with better hair.
