spectral pincer

For about two years I have been experiencing moments of déjà vu at an unprecedented frequency and intensity: whenever I have been introduced to someone, I have been haunted for days afterward by a sense of recollection, even when I've proven to myself the impossibility of a previous encounter. At first I attributed this burst of memory metastasis to my relocation to a new country. Dasein will not have been at home. But nineteen months later, the hyper-familiarity, the endless glitches in the matrix persist. They persist and now work in coordination with a new symptom: the inability to picture anyone's face. I used to be able to call up and contemplate people's faces in my mind. Now I'm Holly Martins being spirited through Vienna; faces are lit for an instant as the machine in which I'm being conveyed roars past. Perhaps adopting the habit of really staring at people – not rude, evidently, by Berlin standards – has eroded my ability to stare at them when they are no longer in front of me. So far, my hearing is unaffected.