Déjà Vu All Over Again

When I was a little girl, I did not want to go to bed during the long summer evenings. I wanted to stay outdoors and play with the older kids, who were usually allowed to stay outside until the sun set around 10:00. I wanted to be where the action was. I didn't always fall asleep right away, and I would lie there in my bed and remember things.

One of the things I remembered was being a child during another time, living in a great house made of granite stones. The house had endless hallways and chambers, which were lit by candles in wrought iron wall sconces. On the walls were huge hunting tapestries, and I remembered walking through the halls, looking at the tapestries. The tapestries were large and covered most of the walls, and there were intricate details and beautiful rich colors.

I grew up in a small town on Vancouver Island, and I can assure you, there were no great stone castles and no hunting tapestries. But I remembered them, in detail. And I remembered walking slowly through the hallways, studying the art work in the tapestries, thinking how beautiful they were next to the large stones in the granite walls, lit by the candlelight from the sconces.

When I researched hunting tapestries, this is what I found: In the early 1500s hunting scenes were very popular with the aristocracy. This popularity led to 'verdure' tapestries of lush landscapes, which in turn developed into romanticized pastoral designs, which reflected increasing Italian influences.

A few years ago the Vancouver Art Gallery held an exhibit of hunting tapestries, and I went to see it. As I went through the exhibit, I had a feeling of being at home. These tapestries were identical to the ones from my childhood memories. They were familiar to me, but the exhibit at the Art Gallery was the first time in my life I had ever seen a real hunting tapestry.

How does something like that happen? Do we in fact have past lives that we slowly forget in this one? I can't explain it, but to this day I have vivid memories of walking through the granite hallways, looking at the tapestries, lit by the flickering candlelight from the wall scones next to them.