Once upon a time I was twice upon a time. Pete and re-Pete.

This isn't your traditional reincarnation tale, because it doesn't follow the existential trap door of time as a linear construct. We live many lives, and to think of them as having been lived — to be lived — before or after has you falling through that philosophical floor.

Some people have lived previous lives. I don't know any myself, but I know I have lived another life. The reason I know is that it's because I I live another life now. I didn't die and then get reborn, i.e., become reincarnated. My two distinct lives overlap. Now. In real time.

And very tightly.

Sometimes I act this way. Sometimes, that way. It is the sum total of the pros and cons argued by my two coincident lives. I live via bipartisan compromise. Legislation is presented, debated, referred back to committees, and enacted. Somewhere, I am the executive branch who implements the results from my legislative branch. And if I come to regret any decisions or actions, somewhere I am also my judicial branch. I am an awkward jaloppy of checks-and-balances wobblong down the pot-holed road of life.

Do not misunderstand. I am not schizophrenic. I don't have multiple personalities. My corpus callosum, allowing both sides of my brain to think as one, is just fine. I am just two separate lifetimes in progress, simultaneously.

Marie is my wife. Marie is my life.

She says I am different. I have changed. I'm grumpy. I've become obsessive about things like the thermostat and keeping up with oil changes. Leaving the lights on or heating an empty room makes me crazy. My Ways and Means Committee is en garde, always.

"What's happened to you, Pete?" she asked me. "You've gotten, well, just a little mean lately. And it's to me." She's never been one to fawn, but she also seldom whines. Especially about me. She sees me and accepts me, warts and all.

First came love, then came marriage, and who knows? Maybe there'll be a baby carriage. But our plan doesn't end there. There an unstated promise to each other that our success will intertwine with our growng old together.

"I'm sorry, my love. I hear you. Yes, I could be a little more patient."

"A little?" she laughs. "Try a lot!"

So, it comes down to me, does it? What is a lifetime, after all? It is a life... in time. I affirm again that no rules of metaphysics mandate lifetimes be linear and sequential. If a life previously lived was in the past, why can't it be just a few minutes ago, in tandem, spoke-for-spoke? Simultaneous or, perhaps, skewed by just a moment, or a minute, hour, or day?

Am I in love with Marie in one life but not in love with her my other? She's certainly entitled to more than half of me. How do I get my other life to fall in love with her? Or at least treat her better. That may be hard, because that other person — the other me —doesn't take criticism very well. Doppelgängers are, by nature, ill-tempered. (At best!)

If it's possible to have had a previous life, and if it's possible that both can skew together to overlap, and that linear time is irrelevant, then is it possible to live a future life, now? Is that why I'm acting like an old man?

Is it cold in here, or is the thermostat turned too low? Again! Marie!"

"Oh, Pete, shove it up your ass, will ya?"

My wife, ladies and gentlement, the love of my life.

Marie and I had always wanted to grow old together. We will. I'm just, halvesies, as it were, a little ahead of schedule. But if Marie and I hang in there, stick it out, and don't get tripped up by stupid marital inanities, those timebombs that make estranged couples wonder where it all went, then I know there will be a time — one I can look forward to — when all three of us are happy together.

Everyone else was asleep and the baby climbed out of his window and fell.

When his mother went to find him she put his bones into place and carried him wailing upstairs. He was furious, after having been put back together, not to have been allowed to carry out his plans of running away.

After all, it was a perfect day for it—the sky was cloudless and birdless and the oceans seemed to be stretching inward, as if kissing the shore was no longer enough and they yearned for much more.

His mother placed him in his cradle and closed the window. Once she was gone, he threw himself out of his cot and crawled out of his bedroom. He found the fire place in the library across the hall. So, into the ash and simmering logs he went and blew up out of the chimney, past the flames and smoke and once again into city air.

There, he was caught by a kite, flown by some foolish child somewhere, and off they soared, skirting the sky.

Down again—the kite shot like an arrow towards a park and the river running through it, and toppled him overboard to land with a splash. He sunk to the bottom, among anchors and forgotten tins, lost socks and overdue bills. Some fish swam past him and he followed them, not sure what else to do, down into the depths of coral caves and rocky passages filled with flirting mermen, when he was caught by a heron and lifted back up into the sky. But the heron, realising he would not be so tasty and juicy and scrumptious, dropped him just as fast.

The baby landed with a crash in the salt of the sea, among jellyfish and sharks. A scuba diver spotted him, bonked one of the sharks on its nose and picked him up. He took the baby up onto his boat.

The divers were robbed and ransacked then, by a ship full of pirates. The pirates took the gold and burnt the ship, and discovered they had looted the baby too, by mistake.

A decision had to be made; half of the crew were in favour of throwing him back overboard, a third suggested finding out what kind of ransom he’d fetch and the rest thought it might be fun to keep him.

The baby didn’t like any of these options, and was relieved when the captain said they’d keep him till they reached the shore, and then find out what he’d fetch.

They meant to take him to someone who would know what was what.

on the way there, to quench their thirst, they stopped at the tavern in town. while the men drank and talked, the baby slipped into a passing woman’s basket. The basket was full of flour and it was with some surprise he found himself tossed onto a baker’s table. Water, then, and yeast, and soon he was being kneaded and left to rest.

Baby found himself in the middle of a loaf, baked for an hour in the fire oven. Wrapped up in paper and propped up on a shelf, he could smell the heat and baked goods around him as he waited patiently, listening to buyers and beggars come and go.

”That one,” said a voice he knew, and found himself carried all the way home.

she took a knife and tore gently at the bread. The baby peered his head out at his mother, who took him out and put him back in his cot, again.

Hadn't even made it to adulthood.

A terrible, awful, heart-breaking mess to clean up to boot.

Where'd it all gone so wrong?

A whole lot really. And those notes that turned into something of a manifest, explained the whole thing. In detail. It was no 13 tapes however, absolutely not. The one named Daniel had had quite a few friends and acquaintances and people who knew him and who even his stupid, defective depressed mind knew would be bothered when he left.

However, that life, those people they hardly mattered anymore.

And the road he walked this time to the other place beyond reach was different as well.

And had a different name.

The Sweet Hereafter.

Which sounded quite fifties and all too delightful if he was quite honest.

Or were those the scabby, wretched hands of his old life's sorrows?

Did he, perhaps deserve nice and sunset aesthetic? What a beautiful popping pink sunrise.

And the sign still red, jutted from the dull green metal roof. In that life, in this moment he could only hold his stomach at the memory. His old life had never permitted him a burger. Only viewed milkshakes in audition roles and the brief filming. Before his poor character was hung as an ornament and he'd relax each Thursday night to watch the rest of the gruesome, mutilating show take shape.

For brief rivulets of flowing time eyes glowing green, all too clear and knowing met the eyes of a dark-haired, alluringly destructive boy. Who opened the door with a wry, mischievous quirk of his lips.

And for a moment cotton stuffed his head. His mind whirling and briefly insane.

Cheeks flushed and the bell signaling the door shut, he wondered if perhaps he would fancy boys in his next life.

There were some whispers, there were some smiles.

There was lust in the girls' eyes. Only that was wrong. These girls, were imagining a picture show on the hood of gleaming thunderbird cars or picnics at the park or the river for a cooler, crisper breeze coloring their lovesick cheeks even pinker.

The boy sat down.

He shook hands with a football player in a vintage varsity, realized he was wearing plaid and an indie band shirt six sizes too big for a fit, slim waist, and ordered his burger with limitless refill fries.

_____________________

So that when he was born again the salty flavor of greasy fries clung to his mouth.

And it would be the vague snatch of pastel pink that would form his first memory.

Slowly fading, slowly receding into a new life before he analyzed what was between his legs.

He'd be a boy again.

When he was eight is when he heard of a terrible suicide on one of the city monuments.

Despite the blood being cleaned and flowers placed, all respects paid, the thing was considered grim and macabre.

It fascinated the boy with too bright eyes all too clear and all too knowing.

The ladies in the orphanage wrote him off as dumb. For he did not speak a word.

Because he knew there was one task required, from some old storybook or some old friend he could have never met before.

There was once a very wise, very old man who spoke sly in his ear once who had said, "babies forget their past lives." Is how the law went and how it very well should go. "When they say Mama for the first time."

Well then it was very lucky he had neither a Mama or a name.

The ladies of the orphanage wore black and grey. It was some mandatory dressing.

Just about the furthest thing from his favorite color. Pastel pink, a close second to electric blue.

Just like a volunteer whose eyes were sunken and the electric part all whittled and gone. So they looked more grey and decrepit as her pale, sallow face.

When she'd first decided he was to be hers he wasn't completely sure he'd understood.

He also didn't quite remember, six years old, if it was that he could not speak or did not choose too.

However he knew very well it was important he did not.

When she'd decided and asked of him; "would you accept me? As your Mother."

The boy put his hand in his mouth. Silent and staring.

Though the girl's lips were usually chapped and dry, the day she'd adopted him she wore a pastel pink lip gloss.

Mother spoke quite a bit. Too much, she was tempting him! Way too much!

And though she never raised her voice, never dared do anything but smile he began to be a little antsy the more time she would patiently teach him about letters and sounds and speaking and family.

"Madame," asked Daniel ten years old, "why did you name me Daniel?"

In many years and many conversations they'd compromised. His Lady's grandmama was French, and had shown him all the beautiful, elegant scripts of her home land. Her language and tongue that often represented love itself.

He much loved this lady he should be calling Mother.

But he'd not forgotten.

No, rather he remembered more and more. And he just needed...

The one more piece. One more before he and she could both move on.

"Your name?" she asked, his Lady ever gentle and ever caring for his every wish. "I named you after a dear friend, someone I loved once very much. He didn't get the chance to grow up."

And quite often he asked about her as a girl, when she was his age, when she was older. Why it seemed their town, all nice and attentive of him, didn't seem to like her.

Often there would be tears in her eyes. But she would smile anyway. Slightly chiding, "now don't worry about such things. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said."

"Maman, if you could have that friend back, would you tell him? Tell him just how much he meant?"

"Daniel."

You are here.

In a place deeper than remembering,

you are born again.

In these brief seconds of eternity,

the lessons of your past and the hopes of your future

spread out in an infinite spiral.

Warp threads treadle up and down,

recurring themes in your tapestry.

Lessons learned, covered, and recovered,

until wisdom becomes identity.

Weft yarns shuttle back and forth,

frantic snapshots of your triumphs and defeats,

in familiar colors and never-ending patterns.

A few yarns, with brilliant sparkle,

intertwine with yours, again and again.

The Loom calls you back,

and you fall past the stars of understanding,

landing, bruised, battered, and breathless

into a new becoming.

The Water of life surrounds your body,

the blood of the Earth beats in your veins,

and the Fire of thought sparks in mind.

You emerge, taking in Air,

exhaling the memory of the stars,

for the nth time and the first time.

You cry out and your soul awakens,

ready to try and feel and love and learn.

You are here.