O Meu Diário de Coimbra

Don't Know From Nothing

I had assembled my father’s decaf at Owl Head in Tulsa and was headed back to the table.

“So what do you think happens when you die, Ba?”

Segues are overrated.

“Probably just keep bringing you coffee.”

“What?”

I sat.

“Nothing. Actually, I have no idea. What do you think happens?”

“They got good coffee here, you know?” he said, taking a sip.

“I do.”

“Anyway, I think after you die, you come back as someone else. Like your mother. She’s probably somewhere, some young girl, somewhere in the world, but she doesn’t know from nothing. She could be a baby somewhere waiting to be born. Would she recognize me? Probably not. I don’t know. Ach!”

Here in Coimbra, Portugal, outside of bakeries and banks, on my way to the mall, sitting in Indian restaurants, standing by the ferris wheel at the fair and in the midst of all the endless construction, I see people who remind me — no, it’s more than that — of people I know . . . or knew. Some dead, some alive, some seem reconstituted, repurposed, perhaps, some with whom I’ve lost touch, some who seem familiar, some eerily twin-like, a carbon copy.

Some days it feels I’m in a Star Trek episode written by Nathanael West.

What are so many of “you” doing here?