Glimpses at the Dark

Poetry and Aphantasia

Glimpses at the Dark

What do you see with your eyes closed? Nothing, right? Yet most people are able to picture things if they try. Meaning that you can imagine anything you have ever seen and a lot that you haven’t. Consider a starfish: you can look at it, turn it around, make it move, even make it blue if you want to. You see it with your mind’s eye by remembering what a starfish looks like.

Not so for me. I don’t. I can’t. And some 1-4% of you may be the same way. No amount of effort will make me able to visualize that starfish. I am “mind blind” — wired so I can’t make an image appear in my mind’s eye. This makes my memory of images, even recalling my own face, vague at best. Am I malwired? No, I am just different, but in which way I couldn’t have known until about 10 years ago.

Sir Francis Galton hinted at the existence of these possible differences in 1880 when he described some individuals as “non-imagers.” However, the concept went nowhere and submerged, forgotten until 2015 when a neurologist, Adam Zeman, encountered a patient who complained that he could no longer imagine anything after a surgery. He had lost mind’s eye. When Zeman wrote about this man’s inability to visualize internally, he called it aphantasia — “without fantasy, without imagination.”

Had it been recognized all those years ago, I would have grown up knowing that some of us are unable to “picture this.” Instead, I never thought about being mind blind, or even wired differently. I couldn’t have. No one could. It was inconceivable (and yes, that word means what I think it means). The basic concept was undiscovered, still underwater, beyond the edges of the map where monsters lurk.

In retrospect, my first clue might have been when I attempted meditation as a teenager. The book I’d found in a Rosicrucian bookstore told me: to close my eyes and relax my body, then to imagine a burning candle, and focus my attention on the flame. …Nothing. No candle. No flame. I failed to see anything, and I tried for weeks. The book made it sound simple, as if I should be able to see a flame if I willed it. Maybe I had missed something. Was “picture this” a figure of speech? Or would people make themselves believe they saw flame when all they saw was the same darkness I did? Foiled by the first step, I gave up on meditation.

I learned about aphantasia during the pandemic. What struck me was its affect on the creation of mental imagery and visual memories. My consistently dim recollection of faces and scenes from childhood made more sense. This knowledge allowed me to reflect and better understand myself. It became my reality. I had a name for it now.

Soon afterwards, I remembered a short poem I had written some 30 years ago, well before I knew I was an aphant. I now consider it a preview of the shape of things to come.

---

Seeing 

I saw a window yesterday 
A green one, made of glass
from a time not too far in the past 
but far enough 
that looking through it,
your face was not 
very clear 
at all 

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        So what is it like? Well, I just looked over at a bottle of soy sauce left out on the table, and shut my eyes so as to visualize it. Nothing appeared. I recall a red cap and some yellow on its label. The bottle was mostly full. And the liquid was, well,… dark brown. But I can’t see it there in front of me when I try to imagine it in my head, not the way most of you can. I have to settle for thinking about the bottle. I can remember facts about a different bottle used in restaurants, more squat, with a double spouted plastic top in red or green, depending on salt content. But I am unable to visualize either one.

I remember about these qualities, but when I close my eyes I see only darkness. At best I have mercurial flashes, in the periphery of my blank screen of what might be called impressions of images — indistinct, blurred recollections of what I once saw clearly, when my eyes were open. These disappear in an instant, and I cannot bring them back. The center of my inner field of vision is always dark.

What I want to do on these pages is give you glimpses of the darkness, so you can join me in not-seeing. I will set out to present a poem every week. I want to share the dark with you and make you see it.

Aphantasia may translate as “without imagination,” but it doesn’t have to be so.