Waiting

A chance encounter with a very friendly waitress on New Year's Eve got me thinking about two other women I have gotten to know through their positions as waitresses.

It was back in 1990, in Newark, Delaware, after I had dropped out of grad school at the University of Delaware and started working for a solar cell manufacturer. One of my friends from the grad program was seeing a woman named Genie. We all continued to hang out together even after I was no longer going to school. That summer she picked up a job at a new coffee shop, the Café Americain. (It was attached to a video store and was trying to play on the name of Rick's place from Casablanca.)

The coffee shop was OK. I never spent much time in the video store - I didn't have a VCR, and DVD players were still years in the future. (Seven years, to be exact, and now they've been around for ten. Weird.) Possibly the first time I ever went in there was when I was trying to get in touch with Genie. I don't remember what it was for, I just remember riding my bike up to the place, chaining it to the steps outside, and going in looking for Genie. She wasn't there, but a pretty dark-haired bright-eyed girl was. I asked about Genie, she told me she wouldn't be in until later, and I asked if she could pass along my message. She told me yes, gave me a little smile, and the espresso machine she was filling exploded.

Well, it didn't really explode. But something happened, and the high-pressure water that is forced through the coffee grounds in an espresso machine did so while the basket was still partly opened. Damp coffee grounds shot everywhere as I was headed for the door.

I offered to stay and help clean up the mess, since I felt somehow responsible, but she shooed me away with a laugh.

I would be back.

Her name was Jessica Wolvek. She was a student at the University and worked most afternoons at the Café. I would stop in on my way home from work to get a hazelnut coffee and a cherry cheese croissant. Sometimes there were other people in the Café. Sometimes it was just me. Those times, she and I would spend a long time just talking. About...stuff. Coffee. Croissants. Relationships. Her nickname and how she got it. Life. The Universe. Everything.

Some days she wasn't there. Some of the time there was a pretty, thin, young, quiet redhead there instead. Very young - still in High School. Her name was Rejoyce Soukup. She and Jessica were friends, I think, at least through work. I would talk to her sometimes, though our conversations were not as far-reaching as with Jessica. I did learn from her, however, that the infrared signature of eggplant plants matches the infrared signature of marijuana plants, at least as far as DEA helicopters could tell in the early '90's. So that was interesting.

In time things started to change and go away. One day the Café stopped carrying the cherry cheese croissants. Then they stopped serving hazelnut coffee. After a while Jessica and Rejoyce were no longer working there, and I no longer had any reason at all to go there. Eventually the Café went out of business. Nothing ever stays the same.

Early in the morning of the first day of 2007 I found myself online and completely wound up. My mind was mulling over auld acquaintances that should not be forgot and ne'er brought to mind. I thought about Jessica and Rejoyce. Where are they now, and what are they up to?

Jessica I have looked up in the past, around the time that I discovered traces of Rindi online. Looking her up again produced fewer hits, but one was recent and quite definitely her. Jessica is now a professional flower arranger in New York City. That sounds pretty amazing. Good luck with it, kiddo. If you need flowers arranged and you live in The Big Apple, get in touch with her. Tell her I sent you!

Rejoyce should have been at least as easy to find, but her name doesn't appear anywhere I could find it as a single unit. I found her first and last names mentioned individually on a blog by a guy in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan. I wasn't sure it was her until I saw a reference to Newark, Delaware and some good close-up photos. It's been almost 17 years, and I do have a touch of prospagnosia prosopagnosia, but I'm pretty sure that's her in the pictures. So the answer to "Where is she now?" is, for the moment, "Kyrgyzstan"!

It was gratifying to see that these two women who I knew so long ago are still both around and about and are both doing things that they love. Good luck to them both!

A beautiful day, continued

Things didn't end when I published the previous post yesterday. I chatted online with a friend for a while afterwards, and came to a realization about climate change that will form the basis of an entire future post. But then I decided to wrap things up for the night, log off, shut down, take a shower, and go to bed.

On my way to take a shower I noticed my binoculars on the chair where I had placed them after Thursday's failed attempt at occultation-viewing*, and I remembered the last thing I had said in my post. I realized that my day was not yet over. I threw on a sweatshirt - not that it was especially cool, but as protection from the mosquitoes - and a hat, and headed outside with the binoculars to post myself in an Adirondack chair.

Despite the speed with which my pupils adjust to the dark, it took me a while to fully dark-adapt. But soon I saw that the sky was clearer than it had been in a long, humid while. It wasn't long before I was following satellites and scoping out stars that I could barely perceive with unaided eyes. I saw the diamond-bejewelled teapot shape of Sagittarius through a small gap between my neighbor's house and shed, and I saw the great Angelfish shape of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, for what seems like the first time. (I have a hard time resolving stars into constellations, something I believe is related to prospagnasia prosopagnosia.) I saw the great backwards-check of Scorpius and the red star that was once known as Antares (until several years ago when I "gave" it to a friend's daughter and rechristened it in her honor, with the same right and authority as any other self-appointed star-naming body.) I found an arc of stars almost directly overhead that I knew had to be Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Eventually I turned my attention to the glowing cloudy band in the South and East: the Milky Way, a galaxy seen at extreme close range, from within.

It's been a long time since I've stared at the Milky Way. Faint smears of light resolved into dense washes of stars through the binoculars; brighter knots were revealed to have diminutive shape and structure. I later verified that these were indeed Messier objects - the Eagle Nebula (M16) and Omega Nebula (M17), at least, and possibly the Trifid Nebula (M20).

It was during this observing session that I also discovered that I had once again slammed my seatbelt in my car door, causing the dome light to stay on. In a few more hours the battery would have been dead.

Finally it was time for a shower, a rubbing of Aloe Vera gel on my sunburns, and bed.

Once in bed I turned on the TV and began surfing the channels. I found an episode of the excellent revival of Doctor Who. This was the remarkable episode "The Doctor Dances". Even though I had the Doctor Who Season One DVD boxed set** sitting just feet from the TV, I decided to watch the episode as it was being broadcast. The denouement of this episode is so exuberant, so joyful, it simply must be seen to be believed.

And then, as the new-yet-familiar version of the theme song announced the end of the episode, I turned off the TV, turned out the light, and went to sleep.

It was midnight, and my beautiful day had drawn to a close.

*I may not have gotten to see much of the Moon occulting the Pleiades, but something very good has come from something I did that early Thursday morning.

**Yes, so much for "all discretionary spending is on hold."

Prospagnosiacs recognized!

(Note, March 20, 2009: All this while I've been spelling this wrong! The word is "prosopagnosia", not "prospagnosia"! So this title should be "Prosopagnosiacs recognized!" But changing that would screw up the url, whilch would undo a stitch in the tapestry of the Internet, which would undermine the fabric of space-time, which could lead to the destruction of the multiverse. And we wouldn't want that, would we?)

The July 17, 2006 issue of TIME magazine has an article about Prospgnosia Prosopagnosia on page 36. Called "Do I Know You?", it's a light introduction to and overview of the condition that has some interesting insights ("While mild prosopagnosics [sic; I have always used prospagnosiac] can train themselves to memorize a limited number of faces [it's said to be like learning to distinguish one stone from another], others grapple with identifying family members and, in extreme cases, their own faces") but very few resource citations ("Burman made her first contact with felow prosopagnosics on an Internet mailing list..." - where? what URL?).

One of the main insights is that this "rare" condition ain't so rare - it may affect as many as one in 50 Americans. If one out of every 50 people were to suddenly burst into flames, I don't think you'd call that condition "rare"!*

My own description of the condition, from one of my first blog entries:

I can't remember major specific details of a person's face. If they have huge scars, or bad teeth, or an enormous, misshapen nose, I can remember that no problem, but otherwise my recollection of faces is "He has a head shaped like an apple...with a chin...two eyes...brown hair, or maybe blonde...." Any description I can give is usually a record of imperfections. I have never been able to draw specific faces...general faces, yes, I can construct a face wholly out of imagination, but don't ask me to sketch your face, or you'll wind up with something generic and abstract, or something technically similar to your face, but lacking in humanity. I can usually recognize people in specific situations (work friends at work, friends in their own houses, friends of friends because of the people they associate with), but in the wild, I can sail right past a friend without recognizing them, or (more frighteningly) think I've made a "match" with a friend's face when in fact I'm looking at a total stranger. Surprisingly, I can often recognize people based on their hair color and style. I usually tell people that I have a very small memory buffer, and it fills up from the top down, so by the time I reach the face, it's full. For some reason, this condition also affects my ability to recognize cars. Good thing we have license plates.

I recently had reason to leave my small, isolated Fortress of Solitude at work and go out into the Big Wide World, where 14 years worth of my co-workers are scattered nearly anywhere but where they were when I worked with them. I found myself staring blankly at a half-a-dozen old friends, not recognizing them until I heard their voices, including one with whom I shared an office for several years, with whom I took my only trip to Los Angeles, and who scrapes doorways at a height of nearly seven feet! ("...They distinguish people based on cues like hairstyle, voice, gait, or body shape...They avoid places where they could unexpectedly run into someone they know...They act friendly to everyone - or to no one...") Maybe now people will understand why I will sometimes say, with a touch of disappointment, "You've changed your hairstyle" (since now I have to re-memorize them all over again!), or why my own personality seems to shift radically with major haircuts (I am, in my eyes, a different person, so I allow myself to behave like one.)

Check out the article and follow my links to learn more. Who knows - maybe you're one of those one-in-fifties!

*Maybe "well-done."

Adding Chloe's Watermelon Punch

I add links to this site mainly for my own convenience. I've been going over to Chloe's Watermelon Punch blog often enough that I've decided to add her site to my list of blog links. Her site is fun, informational, and loaded with links to other cool sites (like "The Shining" With Bunnies).

One of these links is to a do-it-yourself Identikit. Chloe did a demo involving a self-portrait. So I decided to try one on my own - without referencing a mirror or a photo. This is a bit of a challenge for someone like me who has a mild case of prospagnosia prosopagnosia.


My favorite self-portrait


Identikit sketch

It's one thing to create your own face, but it's another thing to create somebody else's face from memory. I tried it last night, and I was failing miserably until my computer crashed and saved me from further frustration.

Anyway: check out Chloe's site, and enjoy!

Lost and found dogs

This morning Haley and I ran into a free-roaming dog on the other side of town. This isn't too unusual, and generally such dogs will stroll by and go along their way. This dog saw us coming and crossed the street, but then seemed to change his mind and circled around behind us and proceeded to do a standard canine identification check on Haley. I didn't exactly shoo him away, but I turned and pulled Haley closer and he backed off and decided to walk the other way down the street. I felt a little bad about this - he wasn't particularly threatening, and we wouldn't have minded the company - so I called after him, but he kept on going.

In the morning paper an ad caught my eye. It was about two inches across and three inches high with a picture of a dog on it above the words "I'M LOST", followed by a description of a dog who got lost not too many miles from here and who could have been our early-morning visitor. I'm terrible with facial recognition on people, and am probably worse with animals, but it might have been the same dog. Maybe.

Tomorrow morning we will set off armed with a spare leash and the name of that lost dog. If we should happen to run into that same stray dog and if he responds to that name and is wearing a collar, I will attempt to leash him, walk him home, and try to reunite him with his owners. It's the sort of thing I would greatly appreciate somebody else doing if Haley ever wandered off. Odds are he's miles away by now, but I'll give it a shot, just in case.

UPDATE: The lost dog's name is Ruby, and he's a she, and we didn't run into her (or any other stray dogs) today. Oh well. Hope things work out.

A little bit about me

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, so you might have some small inkling of who is writing this blog. (I sense that this posting will be extensively edited and rewritten until I am happy with it.)

I am an ascetic hedonist. I believe that the simple pleasures of life should be enjoyed to the point of wretched excess.

I try to be virtuous, temperate, and industrious, yet at various times I am the embodiment of five of the Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath (more a sort of Mr. Furious impotent rage), Pride, and Lust. Greed and Envy usually aren't a problem for me, although I have a strange trait of being excessively miserly with myself and excessively generous with others. This is actually because money frightens and confuses me, and this is the way this fear and confusion express themselves.

I have a mild touch of synesthesia. This is a cross-wiring condition in the brain that causes the inputs of one sense to be experienced through another. For me it's usually a case of visual stimuli having a musical component. I can "hear" a sunrise or sunset as a chorus. It works in reverse, too...music can generate images in my mind's eye, especially during the periods of going into or coming out of sleep. (Coldplay's "Clocks" has a strong visual component: a large wheel, like a roulette wheel, with a rotational period equal to the repitition period of the opening piano notes.) This results in some careful self-editing of verbal descriptions that I give to other people - I need to phrase what I see in terms they can understand. I think a lot of people actually experience this and just don't talk about it.

I also suffer somewhat from Prosopagnosia. This is a condition also known as "face-blindness". I can't remember major specific details of a person's face. If they have huge scars, or bad teeth, or an enormous, misshapen nose, I can remember that no problem, but otherwise my recollection of faces is "He has a head shaped like an apple...with a chin...two eyes...brown hair, or maybe blonde...." Any description I can give is usually a record of imperfections. I have never been able to draw specific faces...general faces, yes, I can construct a face wholly out of imagination, but don't ask me to sketch your face, or you'll wind up with something generic and abstract, or something technically similar to your face, but lacking in humanity. I can usually recognize people in specific situations (work friends at work, friends in their own houses, friends of friends because of the people they associate with), but in the wild, I can sail right past a friend without recognizing them, or (more frighteningly) think I've made a "match" with a friend's face when in fact I'm looking at a total stranger. Surprisingly, I can often recognize people based on their hair color and style. I usually tell people that I have a very small memory buffer, and it fills up from the top down, so by the time I reach the face, it's full. For some reason, this condition also affects my ability to recognize cars. Good thing we have license plates.

I am also somewhat dyslexic, particularly with numbers, although this usually comes into play when I am tired or stressed. A lot of other people I know have the same problem to varying degrees. Most of them, however, didn't major in Physics in college or have a series of jobs that deal extensively with numbers!

I actually double-majored in Physics and Philosophy in college, at a Jesuit University where such a thing was possible. After college I went into a graduate program in Physics, which I almost immediately washed out of. This was the first major failure of my life, and one of the most painful things I've ever gone through. Maybe I'll tell you all about it sometime.

Politically I am a registered Independent, but in practice am a Liberal. What exactly this means I haven't yet decided. I'm not willing to grant Conservatives the right to define what a Liberal is. I also have pretty strong views about the Bush administration, which you'll certainly be hearing about eventually.

Religiously I am a Jesuit-trained semi-agnostic lapsed Catholic. I might add junior-level Taoist and (I have been told) Deist to that list. I was raised a Roman Catholic and still attend mass weekly at the chapel of the nursing home where my grandmother lived out her last years. But I have strong issues with some of the proclamations and positions stated recently by the bishops, allegedly by the pope, and by various scholars. I learned a bit about Taoism in college and have always recognized resonances within myself. I just looked up Deism for the first time ever a few minutes ago. After I described my personal beliefs during a late-night bull session with some friends last year, one of them pointed out to me that I was describing Deism. I knew that many of the American Founding Fathers were Deists (and not the Christians zealots that many modern-day Christian zealots try to portray them as), so maybe I'm among good company.

In appearance I am big. I'm short for my weight, which through extrapolation from actuarial tables would indicate that my weight is optimal for a height of something like 9'3". I have lost weight in the past through a disciplined program of diet and exercise, but lately I just haven't felt like putting in the effort. Maybe I will start it up again, sometime soon. I'm also broad-shouldered, which comes in handy when you need to block a doorway. I'm seriously big-boned, with a thick skull that can probably split yours open like a melon, buster. Which is all pretty funny in that I drive the smallest car Toyota produced 8 years ago, while tiny people around me feel the need to compensate for their private shortcomings by driving gas-guzzling Sheik's Delights.

Well, that's that. Off to meet some friends for sushi. Talk to you later!