Doppelgängers
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Today my good friend Alberta called to tell me that she met a girl who could easily be my double. She said her name was Claudia, that her intonation was similar and that we even had the same last name. Maybe she's a distant relative? It makes sense right... a long lost cousin maybe? :) But nevertheless whenever someone tells me that they saw someone who looked just like me I think of the old Doppelgänger myth, I like creeping myself out:
'In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.'
This is one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, 'Mirror Image' (1960), it's partly to blame for my morbid Doppelgänger thoughts.
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