I thought I saw Jean* today. To my knowledge I’ve not seen this woman, who I never really knew, for seven or so years. Jean’s face is one of the two faces that are involved with “the strange phenomenon”, which I have described in detail in the first post of this blog.
I didn’t speak to this lady who I spotted today, and I didn’t get such a great look at her face, (it is rude to stare, you know), but I do think that her nose did not look exactly the same as John’s nose. Her nose looked (at a glance) more pointy and less downturned than John’s. If this lady was indeed Jean, then the strange phenomenon does not operate on the basis of John and Jean having near-identical faces. So is face recognition really the engine that makes the strange phenomenon work? Perhaps it is recognition of something more general than faces?
In what way did this lady look Jean-like? She had the same general shape and colouring, a face that looked pretty much the same, and exactly the same hairstyle and type of clothing that Jean wore all those years ago. I have got to consider the possibility that I’ve only identified this woman as Jean based on superficial similarities in the way they look, and I’ve got to consider how likely it is that any woman would stick to the same hairstyle and fashion style for seven-odd years. It seems unlikely, but then again, I think we all know people who are fashion dinosaurs or conscientious objectors to fashion, people who find a hairstyle or brand of clothing that they really like or that feels comfortable, and they stick to it forever regardless of the changing seasons of haute couture.
Was this Jean or not-Jean? Unlikely as it seems, my gut instinct tells me that this was Jean. I’m glad that this lady is still alive, because it would indeed be creepy to think that all this time I had been receiving “visions” of the face of a dead woman. Long live Jean, whoever she is.
* Jean and John are not their real names.
