Word After Word

How come I yelled out of my car at 8 am on Saturday morning, when she was crossing the lonely street? And knew her? Miss Supposedly Face Blind.  How come I yelled HEY LAUREN like that?

Here was the scene. A couple Saturdays ago, I saw a woman crossing 9th Street.  I saw her from the back, walking away from me. At an angle that implied not a normal downtown crossing, but a going-in-the back-of the stores on 8th Street as an employee might.  Who else, with this Lauren-like shape and gait and hair, would be going downton when it was still closed? Towards a shop where a person fitting this description perfectly worked?  

I rolled down my car window.  With a degree of confidence.

“Lauren, you’re in the class, come by and get your slip!”  The person acted like Lauren would act. Surprised but going along with it. “Okay!” she said. She kept walking.

So how did I know (pretty sure) it was Lauren?

Context. Gait. Hair. Good guessing. AKA excellent Sherlockian type reasoning skills. Luck.  Long time to gather information as person was walking along sidewalk, and I was in car with excellent sightlines, no distractions. Pure genius.

The person walked how Lauren walks (she leans forward, keeps her head down, walks kind of hard, kind of hell bent, same energy as her beautiful prose–she’s not a minimalist. There’s a lot going on. She gets where she’s going. Purposeful prose = purposeful walker.)

And, I knew, from many, many, many purchases over a period of four semesters, made at a certain downtown shop, Lauren is employed downtown. Lauren’s a hard worker. I could totally imagine her up early, not hung over, working hard on Saturday morning at this particular (and delicious) shop. Where’d I have seen her many times.  Who else would be going to the shop through the back before it was opened?

I was so happy to recognize her.

Face blind people are often exceedingly friendly (”why do you gush?” one student asked me) or shut down, aloof, ignoring everyone because it’s hard being wrong a lot and being uncertain all the time.

My friend Ron was telling me all about his business trip to Athens, all how it went, coordinating everything with his boss, K., and Steve. Ron was telling his colleagues they needed to meeet in the morning at 6 am. “So I guess we are up at 5,” Ron said. Steve said for him it would be 3:45 am. “It takes you that long to get ready?” Ron was aghast. Steve said he has prayer and reflection time. Every morning.

This is how artists are. This is how writers work. The travel schedule doesn’t cut into your writing life–your writing life fits into the day you have. Whatever shape that day takes. You don’t kibosh the writing. You get up earlier. Yogis do this. Bible study people do this. Moms do this.

I was grateful to Ron for telling me this story. I am happy when I get up really early and work on my writing practice. I am seeing progress.

There was a fight at Jake’s school: a boy pummeled a boy and they were both suspended. There was a big meeting for all the other non-fighting kids, girls in one place, boys in the other. Jake said they got yelled at. He hated it.

What did they yell at the kids? How bad it was, fighting. How people should have stopped it. Jake looked bereft, telling me this. “You couldn’t have stopped it,” I said. He said, “Another twenty people in the fight. That makes sense.”

Jake’s real good, gentle, quiet, smooth. He’s the third tallest person in the school, including faculty. So he’s grown up with an ability to take up small amounts of space. He moves slowly, deliberate, heavy grace. Like a bear. Fabio in a giant blonde bear suit.  That is Jake. He’s giant and he creates a zone of peace around him.

The other day the Cat was mixing it up with the Dog at Jacob’s feet. I watched from across the room as Jake twisted in his chair, leaned down, and sort of smiled. He slowly put his hands between the two of them, like his hands were pieces of paper. The Cat and the Dog were still snarly and batty and hrarh hrarh. Jake pressed them back.

Very, very slowly. Like God, he just moved them, away from each other, pressing his palms on their little fur-flung chests while said, in this incredibly soft loving deep voice “Animals….. Animals……?” It wasn’t a threat, or even a caution; it was an invitation to better behavior, a ramp that showed them the easiest way back to their normal selves.

I think Jake expected the adults at his school to be more like that. Gentle in the wake of violence, and smart, and kind. instead of yelling and guilting and pressuring and whatever else. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I could have the whole thing really completely wrong.

But I do know calm good people resent being yelled at to calm down and be good. And fighting people, like instigating Cat and noble Dog, bite harder when the soundtrack is shouting.

One thing I want to remember when I’m warring with myself (go write no go write no go write can’t write must write be a better person), pummeling myself into submission, is this.  “Animals….. animals…..”

A little later the cat and dog ended up dozing near each other on the little round carpet. Closer than they have ever been to each other while asleep. You truly could see them smiling.

We want more time to write.

Let’s say we get four months off work, unpaid, but our job is held for us, and we have health benefits during the four months. Time for writing, for real, finally.

I am nearing the fourth month of this very program and at dinner last night with the beautiful poet, D., single mother of three, I told her how hard it’s been to write, because so much in the world rushed in during these four months: family crises, illnesses, a legal nightmare, more illnesses, more illnesses, corruption, evil, and more illnesses! D said, “I’m buying dinner.” (So D.)

But I think I’ve gotten the same amount of writing done as if I’d had no crises. In four months of perfect writing weather I can see I would have been blocked a lot, wandering to little towns nearby, worrying about all the great literature I’ve never read, feeling like I should really be reading hard books before I pen another syllable, who do I think I am? Many days of a good clear writing life are spent seeding those clouds.

D. thinks so too. She said, “I think we get more writing done, of better quality, when we have to fight to carve out the time.” 

I have so much, so many privileges, so many benefits. Such a nice sofa, such a quiet new fridge, such a fantastic hound, fast bicycle, loving friends. Letters from readers, letters from the Bug at Boot Camp. Lucky, lucky girl. So I’ve had to will myself to concentrate on writing these months—it’s been the hardest thing I’ve done in a long, long time. I’ve missed a lot of days of working. But fighting so hard to keep Badness from getting any more of my precious writing days, my days—it’s been energizing and strengthening and clarifying.  When things are running smoothly in life, I’m not sure I realize, always, how important it is that the work be kept alive, contact made, sustained. I’m not sure I realize that I know how to carve out ten minutes or an hour—when things are cheery, I believe in my own distractions, I take them as real.  When things are wretchedly difficult, I see how to insist. With something to push against, I work harder; I refuse to give in easily and not write. 

My dear friend T wants to know. She’s curious not confrontational. And I want to tell her. But I have no clue. I know I didn’t recognize her by her face. So how?

I recognize people all the time. I’m not sure how it works. I’m not sure when I am recognizing someone and I am not sure that I am getting it right. My version of recognizing a person is slow, awkward, nervous, unreliable. It’s like you are watching HDTV and I’m pressed up against a big old radio.

I am guessing. I work by ear, intuition, and motion analysis. I’m never sure. It’s messy and inexact and fascinating.

Here are some features of the face blind recognition process:

It’s much, much slower, I think, than your recognizing. Imagine a struggling reader, sounding the words out, aloud. That’s what it felt like, last night, at my book opening when I saw my friend T. (This is A’s term, “book opening,” which I love and am going employ frequently. My new poetry book is out, and last night we had a party to celebrate at an art gallery—a book opening! Lovely! But lots of people to miss, to know, to not know…hello…who are you…)

At the book opening, a woman came up and said “We should all be in nametags for you.” If she said who she was, I didn’t catch it. Then she said who she was, and I was shocked. She looked nothing like this person she claimed to be. Not even a little bit. But I had to believe her. I had to just roll with it. This is a feature of the face blind recognizing system: I’m surprised when I recognize someone; I’m equally as surprised when I don’t.

So then at the party, my dear friend P. said who she was. Which always seems unnecessary, and awkward and I feel weird about it, but it’s so great! This is what it is like when someone says who they are, even though it seems like I’m knowing them: I don’t have to do the work. It’s a crutch for my fusiform gyrus. A raft, a coupon, a cheat sheet—I can just dive into the interaction, I am spared the tentative guessing moments; it’s like you are working on a really hard long division problem (that would be any long division problem at all) and someone gives you the answer. (Thanks, P!) 

A note on P’s husband, M. I knew it was him because he was standing next to her in a way that husbands stand next to their wives at art openings or book openings. A gimme. But if he had just been standing alone in a corner, not next to her, I would have had no idea who he was. I would have seen a stranger. 

There’s a lot of faking. When someone smiles at me, I go with it. I am not sure at first who they are, but it usually becomes clear once they start speaking and moving and we are interacting. I know how people sound, how they gesture, and how they talk to me, what they say, how they just are reveals volumes. Stephen H has this way of imperceptibly bobbing—it’s slightly elfin, very adorable and that’s how I always know him. His signature gait. (My editor ED has a great gait signature, too. And my mom, Jake, and Mike the Bike guy. EZ.)

So, I think I was primed to recognize T and her husband because I caught them walking in: motion, gait. They don’t wear shoes that change their gait, T and her husband. Consistency is what the face blind person thrives on. Other reasons I recognized T and her husband last night at the party: he has very distinctive firm, declarative wise owl-type glasses, and a good clear outline (supremely tall person); she has distinctive hair (black telephone cords of gorgeousness) which if she doesn’t pull it back, is my main T. recognizing handle. And, I saw her first from the side (more telephone cords hair showing, less face). And, I knew to be expecting them. The stars aligned. I didn’t run up to her, but when a T-like person smiled at me in a really affectionate, I-know-you-well way, I felt about 84% confident this was my friend. All this happens in about a sixth of a second.

When two people are together, a couple, it’s easier. (However, at the opening, I recognized B but not his wife H.) But usually couples are much easier to identify than sole survivors. It’s like a dyslexic just assuming a phrase based on the first word. The spouse is a nice go-with, good guess.

But I think that the main thing that helped me recognize T on Friday night was she was wearing a blue polar fleece jacket that I myself have borrowed from her on two occasions when I got cold on a walk—I know that jacket and think of it as “my” T jacket. I’m fond of the jacket. It’s almost like she was in my jacket. 

So, I don’t know you by face, I don’t know you right away, I absolutely don’t know you for certain, and I don’t you know the same way you know me.

In most interactions, I roll with the “Hello” and let there be more space for more to come in after that—my brain doesn’t go “Tammy! Babe! So great to see you!”  That never happens.  My brain takes tentative steps in the direction of identification. “We’ve got a blue polar fleece jacket, a R-like husband, good hair samples, and a general moves-like-T incoming. Prepare for a T. greeting scenario! Check!” But I don’t launch the T greeting planes until after she speaks and I know for sure. 

I stay really open-minded until after we’ve started talking to each other. So often, I’m wrong. I have to stay in a place where I can change my mind instantly based on the information that’s streaming in.  (This seems like a really good thing for someone who is a writer.) I never run across rooms to greet people. They come to me and by the time we’re in the talking phase, I feel like somehow it’s going to work out. But I’m not ever certain. The students who came told me in advance they were coming, and in two cases, who they were coming with, so I employed my clumping-couples strategies. That’s how I got Anna W. I knew she’d be there and I knew with whom.

Last night is I was giving a reading so it was appropriate for me to stand around and people come up to me. That makes it easier. It gives me more time to gather the clues and get the appropriate response strategies lined up, fueled, and ready to launch.

But I spend evenings such as these very uncertain who is who. Some people are easier than others. Some people introduce themselves (Thank you Matt, John B, Katie—cute hat—and

Most of the time, I just pretend I know who is who and it either becomes clear, or it doesn’t. It’s easy to pretend. People don’t remember names so they aren’t expecting you to say their names. You can easily fake you know someone, just as you fake knowing their name. Faking is very, very draining. Before I “came out” as face blind, before I knew about the disorder, I faked entire conversations, long conversations. Long, long meaningful conversations. It horrifies me to remember this. I get flushed and sweaty thinking about it—I faked some important conversations. I kept thinking I’d get it, the clues would come in, but sometimes they never did. Now, I’m trying not to pretend. I am making myself ask.

Last night, when I was already well into the interaction, several times I asked people, when I caught myself faking, “Who are you?”

This is the art involved in being face blind: when to ask. I have to wait a certain amount of time to figure who a person is. When should I bag it, and just ask? When should I keep trying, using all my complicated strategies? What makes this so incredibly tricky is I do not know if I am talking to a stranger or a familiar person. I do not know if I am supposed to know.  (But I can tell a lot by how they act towards me.)

My whole life I’ve pretended I know who every one is. I never wanted anyone to know, ever, that I was not able to really do this. Again, it feels so much like being an adult dyslexic. All along, if anyone acted like they knew me, I acted like that back. It’s hard to stop doing that altogether. Nowadays, I’m trying to catch the exact moment when I’m past the point of info-gathering, and well into whole-hog faking. It’s an interesting place to notice what’s going on. I have to fake friendliness, knowing-ness, recognition, long enough to pull the person into my air space, so I can get the data I need. I can’t afford to act like everyone appears to be a stranger (though they do, at first, and sometimes for a long time). The way I recognize people is wholly based on the fact that I have to fake for a moment—like with T. I went with her smile, smiled back, trusting it would all be revealed, and it was. This is all very challenging and weird. 

Last night, a man came up to me all friendly and open and personal—I could sense he knew me well, and I would have figured it out when he and I exchanged words, but it was just so much quicker and easier for me that he was willing to say who he was. Before he reached me, he called out, “It’s John.” I didn’t have to work it out by long division, fuzzily partly erased by wondering. Thanks, John. Then, later, I recognized his wife: her perfume, and by now I was expecting her anyway. There is no possible way John came to my book opening under his own steam: he was brought there by his dear spouse, my J. Because of John, I already had her J. file open. So, I “recognized” John’s wife easily. Just not in the way you do.

My sense is you just walk about knowing who’s who. And face blind people have this incredibly intricate system set up in a control tower, with like forty guys working the phones, tacking up charts and pulling files with the history of everything we know about a person, their entire wardrobe, the movement analyses records….

At the restaurant next door to the gallery, before the opening, a woman and a man were at the table next to me—I didn’t think I knew them and wasn’t planning to speak. I’m sure I smiled and said hello, but I wasn’t working on it –wasn’t trying quickly to read the jacket? Shoes? Context? Couple outline? Plus they were not moving and so it was unlikely I’d get too far. The guys in the control tower took a coffee break. They were out back, smoking cigarettes. Then the woman said, “Hi Heather, it’s Lindsey” and I could see of course it is. The control tower guys flung themselves back into their stations and got really busy; we know Lindsey! We know Lindsey! But I didn’t recognize her date, was it her old boyfriend—was it a new guy? The old guy? Could be awkward, so I just pretended I knew him and just tried to act normal.  (Really, he looks like a whole new boyfriend but apparently he is not or else she is calling the new boyfriend by the old boyfriend’s name.)

Later, when we were all in the gallery, a stranger-woman was telling me I didn’t wear the dress from the poem, as I’d said I would and I had no idea who she was; then I remembered the conversation. She was the gallery manager. I didn’t recognize her. Nothing familiar in her movement, dress, or voice had helped me identify her. It will take more exposures. It was the content of her conversation I remembered.

When you see someone, you go by the face and you konw the whole person. I work by other parts—flimsy, loose, unreliable, interesting, complex moving parts.

Whenever someone asks me “how did you recognize me?” some part of me fears they don’t believe prosopagnosia is real. And, some of my friends, when I first told them I had it said to my face, “No, you do not have that.” Other face blind people have had the same experience. Their friends deny the

existence of the disorder.

It’s hard to understand recognition processes. I live in a very different model and I do not know exactly how to explain it because I can’t imagine what you get from a face that I do not—I can’t get my mind around what it is you see that I do not.

Faces look very, very similar to me. I’m recognizing you by everything about you that is not your face. There’s quite a lot to choose from; however, the stuff around your face changes a lot more than your face does. You do not, for example, match different noses to your outfits.

So, thanks for telling me who you are. I know it feels weird, and unnecessary. But it’s so relaxing for me to be certain and so rare. When you tell me who you are, it lets me focus on other things besides who the heck is this. Like how nice you are. How fun it is to be with you.  

My students say this when they love something they read. At first, it bugged me a lot, this phrase—it seemed so lazy and self-centered. “I see my life and my concerns echoed in this work and therefore it is good work.” Then I remembered my job as teacher is to embrace their enthusiasms and fill my classroom with many relatable things.

And, my job as teacher is to show them, without judging them, that many other pieces of writing want to relate to them, want to say about them, as readers, you are so relatable, I love you.  And my job is to make afternoons where these introductions can take place.

It’s like going to the dog park. It can be kind of stressful and over-stimulating for everyone involved, all that territory to mark, everything really obviously completely up for grabs. All our little biases. Our lovely tastes. Our limited experiences.

The last time I read something that was not immediately relatable was when I lived in upstate New York and I decided I had to read Moby Dick and I started it again with very good, very relatable intentions. What are the Great Themes if not relatable? I trusted utterly that the old Mobe-ster wasn’t worried about relating to me. He knew he would.

I slipped away from him. Four nights later, I was back to lazy self centered reading. Astonishing delicious easier books. I have diminished myself. And gotten annoyed at my students, very convenient, instead of myself.

A great teaching moment is when the student says some version of “I couldn’t relate at all and this book changed me” or “I couldn’t relate, but I loved it.” The authors who did that for me in college were Nabokov, Tanazaki, O’Conner, Mailer, Updike, Bellow and Levertov.

In a child’s life the difference between right and wrong is straightforward, yes no simple. Child’s morality is as clear and defined as a crayon drawing. Things are outlined, not layered, not nuanced.

In an adult life, yes, it’s always clear, right versus wrong, but it’s much, much more complex. Moral adult life is a painting, not stick figures. An outline for moral choice is no longer enough. You have to look—look, look, look—for a long time. And mistakes—some you aren’t going to see right away. Some you won’t see with out years of study, maybe special tools. In a painting, as in adult morality, mistakes can be painted over. They can be incorporated into the final product. They are layers. They are richness. They are, sometimes, what gives the painting part of its depth and resonance, shadowy outlines of what might have been, a wrong direction, something poorly realized or badly executed. Few paintings, and few adult lives, are free of this building-up process. It’s called learning. It’s real work.

Our religious lives, should we choose them, are able to shape our learning/building-up/layering/ living process. Here’s the thing: a quality religious life doesn’t simplify the moral questions. A useful religious life takes into account desire. Our human-ness. An adult religious life doesn’t pretend we are children. A religious life is a way of training the eye—to see the shapes and developments that lead to creating a beautiful, moral self, to see the directions that lead one to not what one wants or intends. A religious life may not prevent our mistakes but with a wise, good, quality one, we may at least be able to do some art history, and see the making of a self for what it is: messy, mistaken, practicing, trying, going off in the wrong direction.  

My students are dealing with desire. I remind them of something a wise friend told me: empires have toppled because of desire. No need to simplify or reduce this powerful overwhelming part of us to something it isn’t.

I am dealing with Two Bad Girls who see their destructive acts, their thieving, their lies and poaching as Heroic Acts. If I prosecute them, they become firmer in their certainty. My desires for justice are complex and confusing. Their desires to win are toppling all of us. How I decide what to do – it’s overwhelming me right now. Every one says “do this” and “you must do that.” They mean well. They mean to say: this is not right and it should be different. I’m lost in the

Fortunately, there’s a map from the sixteenth century that is very applicable. I’m finding my way through by pouring over Hieronymus Bosch paintings. The new volume has dozens of super close ups, so you can really look the demons in their faces, asses. It’s all there. I’m finding his work very “relatable.” [See Relatable post.]

Conviction isn’t religious. Looking harder longer is.

And, more mistakes will be made. Many, many, many, many, many more. (This is how we end up with poetry. We need countless maps.)

 My friend J the librarian is helping me design an assignment for (re)introducing students to the lost art of browsing. No pop up menus! No yahoo ads. Just lost in the stacks, scrolling with your body not the pearl, unplugged, nowhere to be and all day to get there. I know the assignment is doomed to fail. It’s like insisting everyone have more fun at your party. It’s like begging someone to love you madly. But J is very, very clever and also superbly kind so it could possibly work.

Laminating

I thoroughly enjoy a good lamination. 

A piece of paper, made into something you can carry around, prop up, grab out of a deep sack quickly, fling accurately, and wipe off—what greater joy is there in the world of paper?

When I laminate a lowly piece of paper, I feel I have made the sheet into Queen. As laminator, I’m a Kingmaker. I love laminating.

It’s been suggested to me by more than one person I invest in a personal laminator but this would be akin to buying wine by the case or cigarettes by the carton: it’s a signal one has gone around the bend. The phrase personal laminator disturbs. Though if you could safely be laminated, full body, like at a fair or something I would absolutely do it in a second, I’d love to be (organically free range) laminated.

I love the burning plastic smell, the melty feeling when it’s just still fresh, like a grilled cheese sandwich of see-through and paper; I love the way the edges are beady, spurling, frilling. In my early laminating days, I could not resist putting the lam-strings into my mouth.

Now I feel I have the laminating thing under control.

Two sentences.  Took seven hours.

This really difficult family situation I’m having got astonishingly complex (there’s a dear dog involved now and it’s more than I can bear); I was distracted and dissolving and grief stricken and researching and calling; I’m fantastically proud I wrote two sentences. I can’t even tell you how hard.

They aren’t even new sentences. Today’s two sentences—they’re the same sentence. I’m repeating myself. I’m repeating myself: this exact same sentence appears in the Prologue of my book.

You could call what I wrote today a refrain. I refrained from not writing.

I recommend this tactic. Call it refraining. When I copied over the sentences (obviously it’s a sentence I like very much) and decided to use it as the opening for section two of the book, I felt like a writer.

Now, it’s 6:50 pm and that’s all I have written today (besides the laminating blog post) but I have those two sentences, like a thin string, keeping me tied to the book, the place of concentration and focus.

I love my sentences. So much so that after I wrote them I actually went downtown to the florists and bought an expensive (thirty seven dollars) bouquet of flowers. For myself. (Thirty seven dollars is more than I have ever spent on flowers for myself. Up until now I have been a Single Stem Purchaser.) The card for me says Congratulations! The bouquet is white roses and there’s pale yellow fallen leaves tucked in between them and veiny gold flowers that look like they will last a long, long, long time. It’s a bouquet of triumph over death. But acknowledging death.

As was this day.