A mind unto itself

I was no longer a pale and tubby boy in spectacles, naked but for khaki shorts and plimsols. I was Lone Eagle, lithe and bronzed surrounded by other small boys immersed in the same delusion; Cheyenne undergoing one of a series of rites: endurance running. The red-brick terraces of Ribblesdale Avenue had changed into canyons, Colorado or Utah, we weren’t choosy. On other occasions, I’d be Little Feather, a Mohawk pursued through northern forests by Iroquois; a cowboy on a blood-red plain surrounded by menacing buttes watched by the silhouettes of distant Indians. 

The images came from the Westerns that dominated the 1950s and early 60s. So vivid were they in our minds, it was easy to layer them over red-brick and tarmac. We could even turn grey skies blue.

All this coursed through my mind as I stared at my wife, unwilling, unable to believe. “Are you saying—” I paused to get this straight. “That you can’t picture this cup when you shut your eyes?”

“I can’t visualise anything,” she said. “This apple.” She held it up to remove all doubt she meant this apple; positioned it in front of her face and closed her eyes. “Gone.”

“In your mind’s eye,” I urged. “You must be able to imagine it.”

“No. I can’t. There’s nothing.”

I closed my own eyes and saw a whole bowl of them, an orchard in a sun-kissed valley (visualisation comes with cliché) I imagined eating one, heard the crunch, salivated at the sharpness of its juice.

This was my first introduction to Aphantasia and a whole new world I never knew existed. Mind you, as she confessed, she’d only recently discovered it herself. Until then she’d assumed everyone shared the same inability. For her it was normal. For me it would be like living in a prison cell – but only because I’d know what I was missing. 

“How do you recognise people?” I asked.

“I remember faces when I see them. I know exactly what I see. I just can’t visualise you when you’re not there.”

Later, I googled it, and there it was. Aphantasia—the opposite of Hyperphantasia, the tribe to which I belong. I wonder how many live and work together unaware of the other’s ability/inability to visualise things. It’s not exactly a conversation starter. It just doesn’t come up? Why should it if each assume things are as they are? 

Aphantasia (I love the name, a good Rom-Fantasy title) tends to cluster around those gifted in Stem subjects like science, computers or maths. It may have some evolutionary advantages; PTSD tends to be less severe for example. I on the other hand have to stop people in mid-flow when they describe a broken arm or a tooth extraction gone wrong. I immediately feel it, and a wince becomes a shudder of imagined pain.

The brain is a weird and wonderful thing, a mind unto itself.