I've always said that truth is stranger than fiction and when I caught a news segment yesterday this only proved it more.  You can read the entire article with this LINK but I'll tell you what I heard.

A man from LaRochelle, NY apparently went missing last August.  He was an attorney, a married man with a family and somehow he ended up at a homeless shelter in Chicago.  Bizarre?  For real life, probably.  But it happens.  He had no idea who he was or where he came from.  I'll let you read the article to see how he was finally found.  But when he was, he had now developed a stutter which he never had before.  Amnesia?  The medical field isn't sure yet.

But what really sent this home to me is that in addition to writing solo, I've co-authored a fiction novel with Bill Bonner. For those of you who don't know us, we write under the pen name of Bonner DuLong.  And it just so happens that our debut novel, Immoral Symphony, is about homeless people.  Not just homeless people, but our main character Mark not only ends up at a shelter in Washington, DC but he has no clue how he got there.  Over time he comes to realize he had been a surgeon.....so how does this happen?  One day you're in the OR saving lives and the next, you're homeless in Lafayette Park?  Well, of course I can't tell you......you'll need to get yourself to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com and order a copy of the book.  Which, by the way (since this is my blog and I can shamelessly promote) won the Royal Palm Award for Best Adult Fiction, 2004 from the Florida Writers Association.

But back to the topic at hand.......What must it be like to suddenly find yourself somewhere, without knowing precisely how you got there?  And to compound the situation, you have no recall of past experiences, family, accomplishments, mistakes.....nothing.  Your entire life has become a mystery.  I can't even imagine.....even in our novel, Bill wrote the character of Mark Puccini.  My character, Maddie, was also homeless but at least SHE knew how and why.  What a frightening emotion it must be to suddenly realize you're invisible to yourself.  I recall a novel I read years ago, Run Jane Run, where a woman suddenly finds herself on the streets of Boston with no clue how she got there.  While it was all revealed by the end of the novel, I remember the feeling it left me with....fear. 

So watching the segment about this Raymond Power made me wonder if he'll ever recapture his past life.  Or has it just tumbled into oblivion, with no recollection of his wife or family?  And if it has......does that cancel out the fact that he previously existed? Do all those years count for nothing?  All the sadness, all the joy that occurred and yet, in his mind never took place.  So does it mean he gets to start over?  A new leash on life completely different from his previous one?  All of this brings to my mind memories of The Twilight Zone......that other dimension where only some of us get to tread.  And all of this keeps me wondering.........

See you tomorrow.........