…is the name for that thing you have when you accidentally plagiarize someone–because you forget that he or she ever wrote it in the first place.

Apparently it happened to Paul McCartney every once in a while.

Me, I’ve been struggling with this or, perhaps more properly, a form of this–or an inversion. There’s this aspect of a story I’d love to write into one of my own–except for the fact that I’m fairly certain–no, remarkably certain–that I read it somewhere.

I have memories of dreams, I have memories of actions. I have memories of reading, I have memories of what reading made me dream about.

Each of the described memories is of an identifiably different sort. Though the most vivid memories of dreams seem like they might be foggy memories of actions, the most vivid memories of actions aren’t likely–at least in my current condition–to ever be confused with dreams.

–Although, one could make a convincing argument that I’m wholly unqualified to make that claim–

It should follow, then, that the vivid memories I have of reading are quite alike those I have of actions, and those I have of what reading made me dream about, quite alike those of dreams when I sleep.

And it should go without saying that–while all these things often confuse themselves with one another–each is quite different from thoughts I believe to originate within myself.

–Which, again, one could–perhaps should, in this instance–argue I cannot possibly say–

Anyways, I’m fairly certain this isn’t my idea–whatever that really means–which means that I read it in someone else’s story, but I have no memory of reading the story–nor of any story that happens around this particular aspect of it.

Which is particularly jarring because–as this aspect clearly stuck with me–I must have found it interesting when I read it, which means I should have–somewhere within my mind–marked it down as something, written by someone, to remember.

One of these days I’ll write out the aspect in detail, even if unliterary, just so I can show it to people who might have some clue whether or not it’s something I dreamed or thought or imagined rather than read or heard or saw.

Either way, it should be out there, and if it isn’t, it will be.