@dlnuzum · Joined December 2024
On “Do you know what you look like?”
Agreed. But I don't quite want to call it intuition, but I can understand how that word sort of feels right. I can recall the front of my childhood home. I could draw a reasonable representation of it. The windows, roofline, the chimney, the front door, the basketball hoop. I can recall how the materials felt and the splinters from the raw and weathered wood and the sandy stone, but I don't see it. No image what-so-ever. But... I do seem to feel textures... I think??? I can sort of feel the sensation of scratching frozen frost from a window pane... how it lodges under your fingernail... how it is cold... then melts and you feel the pressure it made under the nail relax and just become wet.
On “Have you ever felt like your mind holds images you can't quite "see"?”
Yeah. I know what my friends look like. I have some sort of recognition of them... a very distinct recognition. For example, I'm very good at recognizing relatively unknown actors. I'll say, "That guy was in an episode of [blank]." And I'm almost always right. But... I don't seem to have any ability to visualize. Nothing. And yet I feel that I sort of do... but not as an image. I can evoke a feeling of recognition by thinking about someone, but I don't see anything in my mind. It's so weird.
On “Does it affect memory/recalling memory?”
Re: Robert Avila. Robert wrote, "I can remember ways of figuring things out far easier than I can remember things." Bingo. I teach college calculus. I can remember the stuff I use all the time... the first derivative of sin x, cos x, and tan x... or the power rule, but I still derive a lot of the other formulas. I simple cannot remember them accurately. I can't spell either. I'm pretty bad with recognizing directions in a city. Names take a long time.
On “Artists/Designers with Aphantasia”
I draw when I read... in the margins. I think I'm trying to visualize, but because I can't visualize in my mind, I draw.
On “I only see black when I try to visualize, EXCEPT during this one situation...”
I was given fentanyl at the hospital a while back, and I didn't respond to it well. For about 2 weeks I was able to conjure up all sorts of images out of thin air. And every time I closed my eyes I would see these morphing symmetrical geometric patterns. It all went away after a couple of weeks. Really wierd.