Updated: True North, Chuck, Funes, and me: Letter to Jorge, A Parable:

Letter to Jorge, A Parable

About 20 minutes:

Letter to Jorge, (1). A Parable:

Eric, Chuck Close, 1990

“Dear Jorge:

‘People you love, or loved,  should be allowed to keep their secrets to themselves,’ you once wrote me. When does that promise expire? Does a promise expire?

If I think about it, you keep all their secrets when you love someone. If you’re in love, then you’re a little mad, and you have no secrets from each other. Never angry, just tired. Now, exhausted in the face of a river of rage.

Remember when Funes(the “Memorious”) greeted you by reciting, mockingly, in perfect Latin:

“ut nihil non iisdem verbis redderetur auditum?”

(“Nothing that has been heard can be repeated with the same words.”)

Some people never forget certain words, though we need time and distance to know the truth.

For me, faces are never forgotten, and it is in the timbre of words spoken, like “unimpeded.”

To a few, I might just as well be Chuck Close’s Eric, pictured above. I know who I am; others cannot remember me.

True North is a constant for me. Not so, for the directionally challenged. Some of us don’t care what you know about us because we like ourselves the way we are. Others, not so much.

I knew this when my face was too easy for her to bear at the start. Puzzled, at the sight of my face, she seemed to think: True North. I thought it was just my face. Not this time.

My face is my nemesis, the residual effect of an acoustic neuroma (brain tumor), intertwined, like spaghetti, on my proximate facial nerve. You told me, but I do not remember this, that I called you in Argentina the night before surgery and asked you to help me escape from the hospital.

That night disappeared from the files. Even my memory has a gap or two. Remember?

Sacrificing the acoustic nerve, Dr. Malis (not “malice”) spent 12 hours separating the encroaching tumor from the facial nerve, and in the process, it was damaged. The resulting droop ameliorated a bit over the years, made shaving into self-torment, not only because of the hexagonal shape of the left side of my face, but also because my dimple was gone, the left side of my forehead devoid of furrows, and did not furrow well. My left cheek sits flush with my teeth, so I use my left hand to manipulate my face for my double-edged facial Zamboni

Six years ago, I had my first Bell’s Palsy episode, another facial paralysis, after an oral virus, and it damaged the salivary glands as well as the motor nerves of my upper lip. Look below.

My smile, until I contracted the virus, had been loppy, but could be coaxed, with a few fingers. I was too serious, some believe, which I am not, since I became the owner of a ten-puppy litter. Now, however, smiling requires uproarious company. Or, the external assistance of a four-legged fur ball jokester roommate who stuns and injures me by moving the caterpillars inside his eyebrows.

Shifting my face requires a hand, raising my “poker face” to a new level. Imagine having almost no clues about your partner's inner moods in the moment.

The viral infection decimated my salivary glands, making my mouth hospitable to a desert viper, and leaving me in even greater need of my comic canine. I am ready for a new and truthful voice. You liked her, especially her cooking and her art. She was art, but disciplined: one cancer stick each day, after dinner.

Many cannot resist the stupor from the second stick. An unbroken force of will, or an experienced chemist? You said: “lying eyes.” “Not the shape of your heart,” you also said. “Her unforgivable sins do not allow you to see her splendor,” you almost penned.

It took me time to recognize the revised me.

There was no impediment; I just needed to process the loss of one ear, my three dimples, and my face’s new smoother contours, not unlike an earthquake’s tsunami hitting the beach. Now, my upper lip requires a little extra time in the morning, and my furrowed brow stops at the midline, a forehead that resembles the seismic fault below it.

Abhorring pictures, or being photographed, I have not renewed my lost American passport in twenty years, but I did suffer to obtain an Enhanced NYS Driver’s License, a “Real ID.”

I digress, so let me regress with a Flitcraft warning: (“He went like that,"Spade said, "like a fist when you open your hand,") to make this point: Wearing a mask can have some benefits.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

I do. No mask except for the residue of the virus.

Recall this, Jorge:

I wrote you about what happened that summer night, four years ago, when a clumsy white-haired private cop with a South Philly accent in a high white wool turtleneck loudly announced himself on a barstool to my right at my local pasta bar, where I was enjoying eating alone, in silence—removing a roll of fifty-dollar bills from his pocket to pay for a chablis.

I didn’t tell you everything the first time:

Raymond Chandler could not have better scripted the scene: a silver comb-over, a High-White wool Turtleneck (“HWT”) on a cold night, his liver disease hanging over his belt, a screeching South Philly accent, and a $10K left-hand Panerai on his right wrist.

With intent, his left hand, nearest me, swept back his unbuttoned navy blue sports coat and gave me a peek of his snub-nosed revolver holstered tucked to his hip. Then with his manicured right paw, he reached into his pocket, pulling out a roll of fifty-dollar notes, laying one on the bar two feet to my right.

Tapping the bill with his right pointer finger, like he wanted to see my cards, he said, looking straight at me:

“Chablis———y’use look like Lucky Luciano, do ja know?”

I do, post 2017 Bell’s Palsy.

He seemed to have an unbridled thirst for announcing his credentials and intent and was used to giving orders. The snubby revolver was likely not legal, but he didn’t care with the Union card in his wallet.

He didn’t say “please,” so not French. His “L’s” did not roll out of his throat, not Levantine.

Not hinged, either. Wait for it.

Staring back for a minute of silence, I responded:

“He was my great uncle’s second cousin, once removed, on my mother’s side.”

No, I didn’t just think of that, it was one of many scripted squibs; and, I knew it would purchase a few seconds. His blue eyes flickered, then stared up and to the right, at the ceiling, as his overworked amygdala sought a cave to hide in. Circuits overloaded, he muted, to process his newly found cousin.

In Philly, especially its Southern part, murderous genes often overwhelm a core belief in community policing.

Four decades ago in grad school, when the policía had dropped two gasoline bombs during a standoff with “MOVE,” a black liberation organization in Cobbs Creek, I had smelled burning flesh, at lunch. The potion was not forgettable. My new cousin looked like he could have been a young cub on patrol that day.

It was later ruled an “unreasonable search and seizure.”

With his right hand, Cousin HWT grabbed the glass of wine from the bartender’s hand, so he was faking being lefty. Odds were that no true lefty wears a watch on his right wrist, a revolver on his right hip; and, doles out cash, and catches a wine glass, righty if they’re a southpaw.

Standing up, I reached with my true left hand pulling my wallet from my back pocket, and scribbled a note in the air with my right hand. I rested two twenties on the check a second after it made an emergency landing on the shiny bar runway in front of my half-finished plate of Sal’s linguini with four cloves of garlic which moved to Union Street in Carroll Gardens.

Waving to the two plaid-shirted bartenders staring at us, seeing High White Turtleneck‘s face flush, not smiling at the faux Southpaw, I pivoted ninety degrees to my right. I exited in three steps, walking into the night, without my usual doggy bag, just after summer twilight, and greeted by a wave from two of my “boys” standing across the street on the southeast corner. I crossed the street to join my cubs in baseball caps and sneakers.

We watched the door behind me open in a minute, and Mr. High White Turtleneck lit up. I could see now that, had on black leather chukka boots spit-shined.

Meeting my three accented shadows, High White Turtleneck decided to buy another Chablis at the bar.

The three of us waved to him, and seeing me with two Dominicans, who were not Dominicans, Bear dropped the lit stick to his feet. "Like a fist when you open your hand," he turned north on the Bowery. The Empire State Building, true north, lit white above his head, he double-timed away from us annulling any chance for a three-on-one constructive conversation. The boys looked at me, and I said to them: “Let him be.”

Meeting my three accented shadows, High White Turtleneck decided to buy another Chablis at the bar.

Who sends a turtlenecked polar bear into a hot Bowery summer night, to have dinner in an apex predator’s den?

It gave new meaning to Dorothy Parker’s, “…only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.” Who does not love Manhattan’s crépuscular hours, the light reflecting off the cobblestones on Bond Street?

When does paranoia morph into danger, Jorge? Or, does the twilight just turn into magic? Why not just call me? Why not just divulge my existential secrets? Why send multiple waves of thugs?

So, Jorge, I hope she keeps at it.

We are all alone, and silence, without fear, is preferred. I need my quiet. I still have not learned how to fear any man. I may learn this someday after I board my first commercial flight in eight years.

Hypervigilance is the gods’ eternal gift to some of us. It circles in our heads, then around, without interruption, and there is no off switch.

Above is Chuck Close’s Eric pictured.

He could be a forty-ish me through the eyes of Chuck, the face-blind artist. To Chuck. my asymmetry is unseen.

To another: the same, and worse, because after the Bell’s Palsy episode, my face became a mask, a “poker face,” not as much torment for me in the mirror, as a jigsaw for someone so keenly challenged by faces to sift the emotional feedback they needed every minute of every day.

A few years before I had caught the Bell’s Palsy virus, Esther (Setare in Old Iranian, so I called her Starry) had walked through the portmanteau doors of the Irish saloon where I had arranged for our first meet. To say I was shocked that someone who looked like her would find my damaged face tolerable would be to redefine understatement. But, we matched, and she asked me to meet. She walked in backlit by the early autumn twilight, tanned, pearls, a blue dress with a V-neck scoop, and curiously, flats instead of any heels. She walked right by me sitting on a stool, down the length of the bar starting at the entrance, and turned looking like she might be in the wrong place.

Propped against the wall adjacent to the end of the bar near the entrance, I waved. She smiled at me, the sun burst, then she sucked the air out of the room, so I let the question of facial recognition go, as I hated my face, too; but, she sat down next to me and did not care, or ever care, about my face.

Recall, in 1985, Dad’s friend, Oliver, had published a case history about Dr. P., who confused faces with hats, a very severe visual agnosia. He was not able to recognize faces or their expressions. Moreover, he could not identify, or even categorize, objects; thus, he was unable to recognize that a glove was an article of clothing, or perceive that it resembled a hand.

Later, Starry gifted me with a bottle of Terre (“tells the story of man's relationship with the earth, his humble and harmonious dialogue with nature and the elements”) which you thought was a “love bomb,” and shopped me a new wardrobe for me, to wear her talismans. Yet she could not see the two blue fleur de lys on the flower vase on a painting, six feet from her dining room table until, after finishing our Saturday night bottle of red wine, I pointed them out.

“I never saw them before,” she said, and I knew it was not the wine.

Visual agnosia is when someone cannot name objects even if they are familiar ones. This occurs when the brain fails to produce a single, coherent image from the visual features of the object present, what is called apperceptive visual agnosia. Or, when despite being able to form an image ( a percept), it cannot be associated with anything already known, and so no meaning can be assigned to what the visual information is or to its function. This second case is known as associative visual agnosia. The “fleur de lys” is an embedded icon in the history and culture of France and it symbolizes many things, including French royalty and culture, purity, light, virtue, and sometimes chastity.

Starry had lived in France for decades, had attended a French-speaking school, and was fluent in French; so, the symbol was intimately familiar, yet she just could not see it. While she may have a visual agnosia, she can authenticate paintings’ provenance. Who needs to see the fleur de lys to know that they are real?

You warned me. You knew Chuck. I knew Ollie.

“Face blindness,” Prosopagnosia, which is an inability to recognize familiar people's faces. Usually, people with prosopagnosia (“PwP”) are unable to recognize, or remember, the faces of family members, partners, or friends. In some cases, people with facial blindness are unable to recognize themselves in the mirror or photos. Like Oliver.

PwPs often develop coping strategies to give them clues to the identity of the person they're interacting with using extra layers of information such as gait, voice, eye color, clothing (my colored checked shirts), or hairstyle. For PwPs, a friend’s new hairdo can be a puzzle with no solution. Or, they pretend not to have seen their friend. Mostly, they just fail to recognize you.

It happened.

Absence can be a raw wound for some people. Imagine waking up, over and over, with the same person; whose face you cannot ever remember from the night before. For me, with my face, that I wish more people would forget, it was a dream come true. For her, it was pure shame because everything she did, and lived for was in the realm of the visual, and her impediment was so profound she sometimes pierced the line of visual agnosia and could not see the details of a painting in her collection.

After five years, of so many lies, the face blindness, mostly by omission had accumulated; and, none I would have cared about but for too many breaches of my Three Rule of Tells:

“Tell me first, always; don’t let me find out.”

“Tell me first, always; don’t let me find out.”

“Tell me first, always; don’t let me find out.”

Little deters me, and, I knew that I wasn’t much to look at because, you told me, plus I heard a viper mother say it to her viper grand. And then this, a signal in the noise (brakes screeching).

She is the grey bubble. I answer, “This is me,” not expecting a rendezvous:

The old “Shabab has become da first environmentally friendly terrorist group” change the topic gaslighting pivot. Blame-shifting to a terrorist organization works every time on me.

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes, and your smile is a thin disguise

Almost the last land mine, having concluded it wasn’t all about my face.

Having coffee with a friend? Just tell me. Do you remember this, Jorge?

Honesty included, there are many ways, like Funes did, like I do, to cope with a brain short circuit; but not as many to cope with the shame that morphs into serial mendacity, or rage, about how one sees the world; or, passes on viruses without warning.

In the abyss, you agreed, it was about the shame of not being able to be forthright about a congenital issue that many talented and intelligent people share; Jane Goodall, Oliver Sacks, M.D., Steve Wozniak, Chuck Close, and even Brad Pitt.

They cannot remember faces, either.

It was not about my face, in the end, it was about her memory, those of us who don’t remember like Funes, or me; the trauma of embedded feelings of “badness,” imposed as a little girl. Shame is that brain injury version of an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. It makes the wounded feel so bad about themselves that they mask everything rather than share the truth about matters easily shared. Rightfully shared.

You never wrote about the memory of shame, Jorge. Never, because you have none.

“What is shame but a plea for tenderness?” Alain wrote. I did too, because shame can lead to self-harm; or, cause one to harm others.

Last March, remember I wrote you that I walked out of my hair place? Under a full head of steam from the gossipy haircutter’s revelation of a private conversation with someone else. “Am I a bad person?” she had cried to him, sitting in the same chair the previous week. Trust is a rare thing, a gift to the deserving.

Interesting, you wrote me, “People mask something harmless to themselves, yet lie about things that can harm others. She has no remorse, she is reckless.”

Serial liars normalize mendacity and then pretend that they are the victims. Ironically, it was her “friend” who betrayed her trust. “Dineros never buys trust,” you say, over and over.

Then this, Jorge:

Last week, as I walked into the room with Manet’s painting of my favorite ship afloat off of Cherbourg, she looked right at me walking past her in the room and did not recognize me at the Museum, with my hair below my collar hiding the scar that peeks out of my neck, not wearing any loud colored item she knew.

Like wearing a mask.

Dressed in a bright orange aposematic blazer (look it up Jorge, you love English so much), she likely thought maybe it might attract good attention and not bad trouble as in nature. She did not know it could also be nature’s warning to repel others. Some animals advertise to potential predators that they are not worth attacking or eating; pyrrhic defenses may make them difficult to eat, such as toxicity, foul taste or smell, sharp spines, or aggressive nature. Or, venom. Or, an embedded virus.

Not realizing that I was twelve feet away, she started talking about my love for this painting, and more, to her friend, a loud man who I could see was trying to impress her, falsely telling her that the damn boat was fleeing in the picture not realizing it was parked off of Cherbourg having already sunk its prey, the Confederate raider CSS Alabama.

The woman in the orange blazer was staring at Manet’s sloop-of-war, a famous maritime hunter, as if it was a first glance, the kind where you fall in love immediately, as some people do on first glances, or with a new favorite person, though we had seen it together a hundred times before, and she knew it was my father’s ship’s namesake, too.

Imagine, Jorge, seeing a favorite person, or a painting, for the first time, on a continuous movie loop.

The “Kearsarge at Boulogne,” Édouard Manet, 1864.

Listening to his bluster, I thought that short people are the cause of too many of the world’s miseries because of their need to be taller, or their embedded shame.

Except for Catalan midfielders.

Like Manet, the loud short voice had missed witnessing the end of the battle. It was a shortcoming of personality, not a neurological divergence.

I let him speak for five more minutes, walked up to them, and said:

“I am here. You are speaking very loudly, and I want it to stop.”

She went silent, her face blank at hearing my voice. I turned and walked away and, knowing they had been caught talking loudly and clearly, they had trouble with their next words. She had looked directly at me walking into the room, I had been silent, and she had not expressed any recognition.

Trust is earned, it cannot be bought.

Now, she silently stared at a ghost, with a voice she knew. She remembered. My cousin Funes was right, Jorge, some things that we hear we can never forget.

So, like Shimshon, you say, I have regained my strength, and my ashen hair is now well over my collar, completely obscuring the pink keloid reminder of my brain surgery decades ago. Waking up with “bedhead” is not pretty. After my shower, I even conceded to using “product”, a white jojoba goop to control the mess. But, I look at myself in the mirror, and I know me, and I like me, with the white flecks on my face, and tides of uncut white streaked hair, and a crooked face, all together.

I remember too much though Funes is far to my left on that Bell curve.

Never filling up the shelves, laminating over old memories, without losing access is not painful. Still, after a few blows to the head, I remember almost everything I hear, as Ollie predicted, with a few gaps for externally imposed blackouts and short circuits. Being a “super recognizer” of faces does not create storage issues, it just startles others and feeds into a hypervigilance without an On/Off switch, where I have learned to pretend not to remember Patty O’Hara’s freckled pale face from second grade at the Pennington School in Mount Vernon, the day JFK was murdered.

Shame skipped me because I lucked out having a keenly observant tender and kind physician father, who knew I preferred quietude, rarely took notes in class, only from novels, compiling quotes of novelists, as I still do, cross-referencing them by topic and author, back then by hand; now, a reference library squeezed into Apple Notes (v 4.11), with a search engine. It was one of many obsessive interests, and it puzzled a few of my college classmates when I would quote, without notes, pages from textbooks (not in Calculus where I fully earned my glorious D-, or Microeconomics, where graphs almost defeated me) in class. Luckily, I was able to share and confide in Oliver, and more lucky because he believed me, being face-blind, he empathized, and he likely could not find his way home, with or without a compass.

Until you and I met, I thought that I lived at the far left of the other end of the Bell Curve, then discovered I was not quite as far left as Funes, a secret man. Ollie kept my secret, living on the opposite end of the facial recognition spectrum from the few who cannot remember their face in the mirror in the morning. (We were mirrors.) Or, their children’s faces; or, or their beloved objets d’art. I did not harm anyone with this section of my brain, or by the other ways that I view the world. It’s the intentional missiles that can cause permanent physical and temporary emotional harm.

Like you said to me, “Philip, you loved every minute and every lie of it. You tolerated her lies to you, her shows and inept tells, just not others’ lies about you. Until you could not.”

In retrospect, I wish you had not outted Funes because now I know I am exposed.

Both ends of the curve live among us, but you have never lived it, and living with it is distant from writing about it.

Many of us fear discovery, or of you writing another long essay Jorge, especially since you wrote that story about Funes. So, we mask. To paraphrase Oscar, some of us are least ourselves when we talk in our person. Give her a mask, and she will tell you the truth.

“It is with our faces that we face the world, from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Our age and our gender are printed on our faces. Our emotions, the open and instinctive emotions that Darwin wrote about, as well as the hidden or repressed ones that Freud wrote about, are displayed on our faces, along with our thoughts and intentions. Though we may admire arms and legs, breasts and buttocks, it is the face, first and last, that is judged “beautiful” in an aesthetic sense, “fine” or “distinguished” in a moral or intellectual sense. And, crucially, it is by our faces that we can be recognized as individuals. Our faces bear the stamp of our experiences and our character; ”

—Oliver Sacks, M.D., The New Yorker, August 30, 2010

On balance, Jorge, I have rarely, suffered from my divergence, others failed to make me suffer, but I did make others suffer until I learned to cope. Now, I cope with living in a world that is not designed for the way I think and experience the environment, almost always from the so-called “educated” class.

When I wake up at dawn (another thing never lost) I still shave a lopsided face but now with a major case of bedhead, and no morning kiss.

I was her colander, you said; even colanders have their clogging limit.

“The turquoise tiled bathroom soothed her, a cool bright, silent place.

Asleep in orange on the beach. Waves crashing like the stars on the horizon;

a liminal space for her rage.”

—Duchess of Orange 🍊.

Are you ever wrong, Jorge? I just thought that the rage would fade if I starved her of my oxygen. I seem not to fade.

You remind always me of my oath. My pledge to prevent. But it was such a long time ago, and we were so young. Do you expect me to keep all my promises forever? Is this a test? No dispensation, Jorge?

Instead of my morning kiss on my lips, my hand gets a lick; I kiss my senior Goldie’s enormous wet nose to the sound of his tail thumping the side of the bed. Being with those I only like is enough, and most have four legs. If love is loving those people, that sometimes you don't like, then maybe we both are too old for love with its constant prospect of loss. Silent Kear loves me, or my smell. I feed him well, and maybe that’s all she loved; someone to feed her so she does not starve her empty self. She was never silent. And she slept a lot, it was exhausting being her.

I know myself, and that I have a sense of self, and I always can find the way home, using a familiar store, a familiar face. I am a homing pigeon and I know True North; and, I tell the truth, both under oath and not. Even with my extra capacity memory, the truth’s frugality takes up so much less space. I do not know when my limit will be reached. Infinity may not be forever, Jorge.

Never have I been ashamed of my difference, even when belittled: “They are little people,” you said.

I have always just experienced the world my way, and my truth is embedded in me. I cannot be cured of it, and nor would I want to be. It is not an illness, deficit, or deficiency. It is a difference.

Unlike others, I have not lied to hurt someone, but I have lied to avoid hurting someone, and something; and, I have told that lie that improved two lives, but I have never lied to improve my life at the expense of someone who offered me tenderness. When someone does that, their soul is irreparably impaired.

Face-blind, the same. No shame. Sunlight kills shame. You can be anything you want to be: artist, architect, actor, scientist, physician, inventor. Adapt, buy the person you love a pretty scarf, and make her, or him, wear it so that you recognize True North.

Never lose True North because it will always bring you home.

True North, Jorge? Never break an oath, Jorge? Never? When does betrayal overflow the colander?

Even at night, every traveler knows True North when they hear it, when they see it; and, when a star goes silent, you know when they have lost it.

Cordialement,

Philip (Y’ alla)”

**************************

Querido Felipe:

“‘Forgetting is the only form of forgiveness; it’s the only vengeance and the only punishment too.’ You figured it out, that when someone wants to tell you about themselves, listen and watch, with care. The silence was good, for a while. It avoided triggering. You were there to make her like herself, not diagnose her; so, maybe she doesn't want to be helped, and maybe she is happier this way. Remember, she is missing from you, but she lost you. People come and go, but the real friends stay forever. Just smile because it happened.”

—JLB (¡qué vergüenza!)

Jorge, ©Pablo de Estrada. 2024

Querido Jorge:

I believe in freedom and the truth of feelings; so, I want someone who stays not because I ask but because they can't imagine life without all of me. I don't want a person who stays with me out of fear of loneliness, or out of habit, but who understands what I bring to their life.

I deserve someone who sees my value.

My time is too short to hang on to someone who’s not where they want to stay. Walk in or walk out. If they think they can find something better elsewhere then go ahead.

I am a choice, not a default option. Stay because their heart tells you I am where they belong; so, if their happiness lies elsewhere I won't stand in the way. In the meantime, I have continued building my own life and being happy on my own.

I’ll be seeing you.

Felipe, Felipe:

“Being the pirate in someone else's story, even if you weren't, is what happens when you merge. Whatever you are, she did it. Never forget people must turn you into what they need you to be so that they can cope with that small voice in their head. Count yourself lucky, I always wanted to be a pirate, so be the pirate.”

©Philippe du Col, 2024

Nota Bene:

(1). Letter to Jorge, Duchess of Orange ©Philippe du Col, 2024

(2). Most of us use landmarks to get home, and to navigate life, and some need fewer, or none. Please, be kind to the ones who see you but can’t remember you. It’s not their fault. It’s not personal. Many carry shame. Most ‘typicals do not comprehend others’ memory, for faces or sounds, or smells; or fathom others’ deficits. Try to understand how someone is born different, lives invisibly and might only be a scrub jay hiding its food, and not a magpie recognizing itself in a mirror.

(3). “…I have become what I beheld and am content that I have done right.” EN