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Disturbing news of Americans' feelings of social isolation came out last week (link). Seems nearly one of every four Americans has no close contacts, no one outside of family, with whom to talk. Hearing that saddened me but did not surprise me.

For as long as I could remember, I've been fascinated by the idea that every face that we pass on the street, every seemingly nameless individual who registers only as an obstacle on the sidewalk, carries with him or her a story, in fact a whole history. Within that story is all the richness of the human experience, from birth to death and all the mess and tears and laughter and sex and sickness and close shaves and candy and fingernail clippings that come in between.

What saddens me is that we as twenty-first century Americans are unable to act as conduits to hear and pass along these stories from each other. We would rather pick through the scraps of so-called celebrities than glean the richness of our neighbors.

An early start to the week

At a quarter after one a.m. Monday morning I was standing at the counter of Rendezvous Cafe wondering whether I should get a piece of spinach pie to go along with the americano I had just ordered. I had been snacking all day on and off, but there was a twinge of hunger lingering between and below my ribs. I went with "yes" on the spinach pie. The day that had just elapsed had been thoroughly unproductive. I had failed to leave the apartment, in fact had failed to leave my living room, since I rose at eleven that morning. I had wandered from the bedroom to the living room, turned the television on, and kept it on for the whole day. Two World Cup games came and went, at noon and then at three, and then the NBA Finals game at nine, and afterward I was left wondering what the hell had happened to my day, to daylight itself, and whether the life I was living was normal in any sense of the word. During the commercial breaks I prepared small amounts of food for myself, picked up trash that had accumulated from the week before, and generally futzed around on my laptop. There had been daylight, I remember, and then a brief period of rain showers maybe around five p.m., and then sometime during the basketball game, night came. The game ended around half past midnight, and I finally took a shower, brushed my teeth, and got dressed.

I had recently started feeling more like a nocturnal mammal -- like one of the raccoons, opossums, or skunks that sniffed around the apartment complex after dark -- than a real person. The previous night I had stayed up reading until I fell asleep, but somnolence didn't come until nearly five a.m. at which time the sun had started to rise and bird noises were coming from the window. Weird dreams followed, and when I finally woke at eleven, a figment of the dreamworld followed: a feeling I had a package to drop off to some woman. That was some fourteen hours ago.

And now I was standing at the counter ordering spinach pie. The man behind the counter took a slice out of the refrigerated deli case, put it on a plate, and put the plate in the microwave. I watched the LCD timer count down for a few seconds then turned to the table behind me to get sugar for my americano. The microwave beeped, and the man deposited my spinach pie into a brown paper bag and slid it toward me. What was I doing here? Where did this preternatural urge come from? As if I could make up for a day lost by a night spent in this coffee-scented Tartarus.

About thirty minutes later, I was informed that Rendezvous was closing. I packed up my laptop, and got in my car, drove to the lab. I was there by two a.m. and finished off in short order the americano then the spinach pie. I set to work, chipping away at a list I had made a week ago. But I was distracted by the thought that I was running out of night, just as I had run out of day. The summer solstice was only a couple days away and therefore nighttime in the sense of darkness only lasted about eight hours now. By a quarter after four I sensed the coming of the sun even though I couldn't see it.

I was a scatter-brain for the next two hours: looking up papers, scratching down thoughts, typing up code, arrows going at a bunch of different targets. I felt tired but I kept telling myself it would pass. When the feeling came I dissolved some freeze-dried coffee crystals into hot water and swigged at it. I made progress, but occasionally I'd forget what I was working on. By six a.m. I decided to go see the sun rise outside but had trouble piecing together which side of the building faced east. Cardinal directions seemed like a strange idea at the time.

Learning as remembering

Today I was reading a paper from the immunological literature (Lenardo et al. 1999. Mature T lymphocyte apoptosis. Annu. Rev. Immunol. 17:221, if you're curious) and came across this word: "anamnestic". Two seconds later I was Googling "anamnestic" which led to Googling "anamnesis" and what emerged was this beautiful idea that learning is actually remembering things we already knew in past lives. Credit Plato.

Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so bad to be reincarnated, to know that there were yet more sunrises and sunsets to see as we grew old and passed. When I was young I thought something like this happened anyway: that upon conception each of our souls was plucked from the primordia where all bodiless souls await and eventually return. I remember thinking that, had I not been conceived at the moment when I was in fact conceived, perhaps my soul would have ended up in Africa or India or some other place. Then maybe I'd be calling some other people mother and father or forming thoughts in another language, thoughts that would only be vaguely recognizable to me now.

I think I might scrawl some words on a piece of paper, bury it in my parents' backyard in Texas, and see if I ever find it again. (Has no one ever put anamnesis to the test? I find that hard to believe. It's such a beautiful idea.) Come to think of it, maybe I'll try it here in Michigan too, somewhere deserted, maybe in the U.P. And come to think of it twice, maybe I'll do this wherever I go from now on. What's the harm?

But what would I write? I'm thinking it might start like this: "My name is Stewart, b. 1976 C.E in Carrollton, Texas. This is my experiment in anamnesis."

M.D.O.C.

I love riding my bike, and I now regret that I didn't have one for the first four-plus years that I was in Ann Arbor and that it took a pair of cousins visiting from Taiwan and their not wanting to ship back one that they had shipped over for me to finally have one.

I love how much stuff you smell from atop a bike: food that's being grilled at picnics, coffee from coffeeshop doors that open as you pass, grass being cut on lawns you skirt by, flowers from hedge bushes in bloom. Sunsets are amazing, the way the whole canopy of the sky gets blasted with color at the end of a summer day. (I understand the allure of convertibles now.) I even enjoy the slightly dangerous aspects of urban biking, like cars pulling out of driveways, cracks in the sidewalk, and pedestrians. And the way hills require a whole-body effort when you engage them on a high gear: love it.

All that may seem pretty obvious. But here's one benefit of bike riding I hadn't anticipated: how it makes for quick escapes. At the stop light coming away from the medical center yesterday I waited next to a man wearing a shirt with the letters "M.D.O.C." printed on the back.

Me: "Does that stand for Michigan Department of something?"

Him: "Michigan Department of Corrections."

Me: "Oh, do you work there, or...?"

Him: (with a grin) "I was resident there."

Me: "Wow, they give you a free shirt for that?"

[The light changes. I must have been pretty distracted because I don't notice until there's a flashing hand.]

Me: "Oop, I think we're missing it."

[We start crossing the walk.]

Him: "It also stands for Master's Degree in Criminology.... (pauses) That's a joke."

Me: (with apprehension) "How long were you there?"

Him: "Ten years the first time."

Me: "And the second time?"

Him: "Just a year."

[By now we've crossed the intersection and it's clear we're going the same direction on Maiden Lane.]

Me: (internally thinking, No sudden moves, Stewart, no crazy talk now!) "And, if you don't mind me asking, what were you there for? You don't have to talk about it...."

Him: "Possession of a stolen vehicle. I bought a car off some guy who had stolen it. Turned out he had previous charges. I should have got a bill of sale."

Me: "They didn't buy that, huh?"

Him: "Nope."

[He turns down Island Drive. A chance, a break! I'm continuing down Maiden Lane.]

Me: "Well, thanks for telling me about that.... Have a good night."

Him: "Yeah, no problem."

And then I was off, pedaling a little faster than I normally do on that street. Inside I'm thinking, "Don't look back, it's alright, just another day at the office. Did I give him any personal information? No, I don't think so." But the point is, if I wasn't on my bike, I wouldn't have been able to make such a quick, uh, getaway. Spaceman Spiff pulls out another one!

Sic transit gloria mundi

This afternoon I biked to a coffeehouse I like on the west side of town, Portofino, and was perusing a copy of today's Detroit Free Press. There were a few interesting items on the front page amidst the usual blather: one about rumors going around in the Detroit Latino population that they're being monitored while shopping at grocery stores, another about a 16-year old girl who met a 25-year old man on MySpace and flew to Amman, Jordan to meet him. But it wasn't until I got to page three that I found something that really caught my attention.

A girl in Chesterfield Township committed suicide the previous Thursday (link). It was the second teen suicide there this month, and writers described the scene as they found it the next day:

"The playground was immaculate, betraying no signs of what transpired Thursday, when neighbors getting ready for school spotted a 13-year-old girl hanging from a swing set near Chesterfield and 24 Mile."

Excuse me, what Gothic nightmare did I just wake up in? I pictured the girl's body swaying in the mists of a June morning and sunlight cresting the tops of the surrounding trees. I wondered, what did her face look like when they found her? A dull, blank expression perhaps. Eyes still open? I wondered whether she had used a rope or a belt, maybe something else entirely. What might she have been thinking in those last moments, as the last breaths left her? Did the end come quickly or with panic and kicking feet?

I put the newspaper down and felt terrible for the world.