Phong Quan’s story “It Feels Like Déjà Vu” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 27 July 2018.
“It Feels Like Déjà Vu” is the culmination of many different influences from throughout my life. I wrote the first scene many years ago while I was in college, involving the two (at that time unnamed) main characters talking as a shift occurred. In that scene, the character that would become Ely is trying to remind Jon of their relationship and he is trying to shut her out just as a shift happens and she disappears. Nothing else came of that, though the scene and premise of “shifts” stuck in my head. Many years later, when I was working in New York and having my soul crushed in corporate law, I decided to start writing again to preserve my sanity and chose to create a story from that basic premise. The setting became New York, a city I loved, and I decided to use the “shifts” as a way to explore the Buddhist concepts of impermanence and the karmic cycles–something my parents believed in and talked about a lot. Finally, Ely’s character and personality are based on the person I was dating at the time, and the focus in the story on environmental issues and nature are a reflection of her passion for them. Those three basic building blocks are the foundation of the story that I ultimately wrote and you can read on Metaphorosis now.
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