All of us remember having had another self. Which could be a mirage, or a fleeting sense of someone we were long ago, perhaps elsewhere — call it a hinter-self who feels less transient than we’d like to believe. But here’s the catch. This other self of ours may not be a bygone self but a self living elsewhere even as we’re having drinks this very minute in this fabulous hotel.
Call it what you will. But there may be more selves out there: some still unsprung, like tiny egg cells that haven’t been fertilized; some already released; and some waiting for the end. Each one of us is a constellation of selves, some are not even lodged in us, but in other people, which is why sometimes we recognize others right away — because they are us in someone else's body.