Jed and Alison

When I wrote about Jed and Alison yesterday, I omitted some details of how we met. Have you ever made acquaintances in a domino effect? One person introduces you to another, who introduces you to another, etc? That's what happened to me on a sunny day in 1998.

I had a friend called Amira in New York City. I didn't often see her, because she lived in Manhattan and I lived in upstate New York, near Poughkeepsie. It was a two-hour journey into the city with train and subway. One day we were joined by her 16-year-old daughter Betty. She was fascinated by my British accent, and was even more interested when I said I'd lived in Germany. Betty told her mother that she was meeting a schoolfriend at McDonald's and wanted me to meet her. Amira said it was fine, and she'd come to pick us up afterwards.

At McDonald's I was introduced to Ulrike, a girl with German parents who was born in New York. She spoke remarkably good German for someone who'd never been to Germany. First we talked about me, where I'd lived and what I was doing in America. Then Betty nudged Ulrike and said, "You can tell him your secret". Ulrike was reluctant to tell me at first, then she poured it all out.

She said that she was born in Frankfurt in 1954. Wow! That would make her older than me. Ulrike wanted to stop, but Betty told her to continue. Ulrike said that she killed herself in 1980, but less than a year later she was reincarnated in New York. She'd remembered her past life ever since she was a child. When she told her parents they thought it was a childish fantasy. As she grew older she learnt to keep it secret, because people called her crazy. She hadn't told anyone at school except Betty, her best friend. I was confused. I'd never heard a story like this before. Ulrike didn't seem mad. Maybe it was all a joke.

One of the most bizarre things she said was that she wanted to go to Germany one day to meet her son. She still remembered her old house, so she could track him down. I advised against it. She'd be locked up if she approached an older man and claimed to be his mother. Ulrike seemed to be reasonable. She said that she could convince him by confronting him with old memories from his childhood.

That's when I met Alison. A white-haired girl was sitting at the next table. She'd overheard the conversation and asked if she could sit with us. Alison took it all seriously, asking her questions about her past life. Ulrike seemed happy that someone was taking her seriously, not accusing her of being mad. After a long talk and several Coca-Cola refills Alison said that we should meet her Dad. Betty said that she had to wait for her mother, so Ulrike and I left with Alison.

I saw a part of New York I'd never seen before. We were near Central Park, and we were surrounded by large houses, but we walked through the streets and came to an area with small houses. Alison lived in a small, single family house in the middle of Manhattan. It's an area the tourists never see.

It was an old but well-kept house. It was dark, even in the summer, because the windows were small. The house smelt of incense. And then I met Jed. He was a tall thin man with straggly unkempt hair. He welcomed us, made us a cup of tea, and he let Ulrike tell her story. Like Alison, he never doubted for a moment that it was true. He said that it's normal for suicides to be reborn quickly, because they have tasks waiting to be fulfilled. He said it's unusual for someone to remember his previous life in such detail, but it's not unheard of. He wanted to know about Ulrike's other past lives, but she didn't know anything except for her life in Germany.

Jed said he wanted to hypnotise Ulrike to delve deeper into her past. That scared her, and we didn't stay much longer. As far as I know, she never returned to Jed's house. I stayed in touch with Jed. We met as often as possible over the next year, considering the distance I had to travel. He always welcomed me like an old friend. I also met Alison at McDonald's a few times. I found out that she was only 16, but she looked older. I noticed that she was always alone, never with friends. She seemed to be an outsider, hardly surprising with such an eccentric father. I never asked why she didn't have a mother living with her.

Sometimes Jed joined us at McDonald's. Heads always turned when he walked in. He had a commanding presence. He was told off sometimes because he put his feet on the chair. He just didn't care what people thought about him.

Jed was a wonderful person. At first glance he looked like a vagabond, but he was always clean and tidy, in his own way. At first I thought he was arrogant, but I was wrong. He said that almost everyone in Manhattan is a fool. See my last post. But he didn't claim to know everything. He said that the Fools (with a capital F) think they know everything, but the Magicians realise that they know nothing and spend their whole life searching for the truth. He called me a Magician, not a word I would have used to describe myself, but I knew what he meant.

Recently I've been thinking about them a lot. AI gives me the power to reconstruct their images from memory. Jed was easy to draw, once I figured out the right prompts. Alison is more difficult. AI wants to make young women look beautiful, but Alison isn't beautiful in the conventional sense. Her hair is thin, without body, and falls straight. Even if I prompt her features correctly, I keep getting pictures I don't want. The picture at the top of this post captures her looks perfectly, as I remember her, but it's difficult to duplicate the image. AI isn't perfect. Not yet.

Here's the domino effect:  Amira – Betty – Ulrike – Alison – Jed

So I met Jed as the result of a series of coincidences. Jed would call it fate.

Alison

Wow! I haven't posted anything in this blog for five months. I've been getting lazy. It doesn't mean that I've stopped creating AI artwork. If you check my main blog, you'll see that I've been creating film posters with AI for the last few months. Sometimes they're obviously AI creations, but in most cases I've made posters that look genuine.

Over the last two weeks you'll see that I've inserted a white-haired girl into almost every poster. It was only two days ago that someone finally messaged me to ask who she is. Her name is Alison. She's a girl that I met when I lived in New York in 1998. She was 16, but looked older. I was often invited to her father's house. He was one of the most fascinating men I've ever known. Some may call him crazy, but I prefer to call him eccentric. Recently I've been thinking about them a lot. I don't have any photos of them, unfortunately, so I've drawn them in AI from memory. I remember Alison clearly, but it was difficult to draw her. Her father (Jed) was easier to design.

Jed called himself a mystic, or a seeker of knowledge. He said that he doesn't know much, but he's wiser than all the fools in New York. To explain, he laid two Tarot cards on the table, the Fool and the Magician. He said that all of mankind falls into one of two categories. The Fool is someone who only believes what he can see with his own eyes, or what science tells him. The Magician is someone who recognises that there's an unseen world, and he devotes his life to searching for the truth. In the first card you can see that the Fool is about to fall off a cliff because he can't see it.

Jed was pleasantly surprised that I already knew the basic teachings of the Tarot. That's why we became friends. When we met, Alison didn't say much, She just sat next to me taking everything in. On one of my visits Jed told her, "All your teachers are fools. Don't argue with them. Learn what they tell you and get good grades, but when you leave school you should forget it all and follow the truth". Alison obviously believed everything he said.

Alison looked somewhat unhealthy. She had white hair and a pale face. She almost looked like a Goth. She wore dark eyeliner, and I never once saw her smile. She always wore black. She wore a black sweater and a black skirt that covered her knees. She looked quaintly old-fashioned. Her eyes were vivid. It's impossible to describe them. When I said something that surprised her her eyes would flash open. She was always smart and well-groomed, unlike her father. At first glance Jed looked like a vagabond, but if you looked closer you could see that his clothes were clean and tidy. He just had his own look.

I regret not remaining in contact when I left America. I was having a lot of personal problems at the time. I've tried in vain to track them down with the few vague memories I still have. I don't even remember their last names, if they ever told me. It was 28 years ago. Alison must be 44 and Jed in his 80's. My only hope is that they'll read this post and remember me.