A daydreaming bird in mid-flight diverges from its flock. Lost searching for a shortcut leading it back to course, it finds that has instead flown north for the winter. A species of antlion digs a trap in the sand and burrows in the center. The declivity of the small pit in the ground ingeniously matches the angle of repose of the sand. If I could take singular incidents like these and extrapolate them, I could also come up with the following: I've seen you before. I've never seen you before at all. There was a moment in time when I once saw you and now I am remembering. The fact that I may have never seen you at all also leads me to a few possibilities-- I've never seen you and I am remembering wrongly. I've seen you and I've simply forgotten. Or perhaps I've never seen anyone but you. I could leave you in a delicatessen in New Hampshire, swim across the Gulf of Mexico and find you at a newsstand in Panama. You may be secretly following the course of my life as much as five minutes ahead. Or the simple fact remains that you are everywhere, preserved with all your personal idiosyncrasies, calling me the same recognizable terms of endearment at every encounter. In fact, the act of differentiating you from everyone else has become impossible. If I could take all these immeasurable ways of seeing you and seeing you again, I could explore multiple probabilities. In a perfect picture therefore, I could say that it was both a pleasure meeting you, see you next time; and also, I'm sorry, I think you've mistaken me for someone else.
