I do have photographs aplenty in my media file here on WordPress. Taken with the iPad camera. Always taken with this iPad’s camera actually. I use it for blogs. Even the Black and White prints from the darkroom, uploaded to blogs, are iPad screenshots off my uploads onto the Flickr site.

The iPad photo app has very few photographs saved in comparison to the WP media selection. But they are the little reminders that give memory clues.

I have Aphantasia and have written previous blogs on the subject. I am one of the approximate 1.5 to 3% of the population that possess this condition. It is a condition with the simplicity of having no imagery whatsoever when eyes are shut. No ‘mind images’ can be brought in to place. I always only see a black canvas. Well unless light shines through the eyelids to bring lighter blackness.

This means no visual memories of my past life exist. Not one. No faces, places, events, moments that were profound, etc. I cannot bring anyone’s visage to mind. No past life in visual entity exists. Sorry to repeat, but it’s reality for me. So photographs are the only clues. I can watch a film, read a book, read a letter, look at a photograph and it is as if it is all brand new. I can see dream imagery when in sleep. But it totally disappears on awakening. I believe dreaming comes from a different part of the brain. What was seen in the dream no longer exists. No PTSD from nightmares. Only a sense of dread. Which quickly disappears over a short time.

My learning skills are awkward too. I cannot ‘mind’ taste foods or smell odours. No gathering of language skills or abilities to speak other languages. The written words I proffer are full of nuance. Subtle changes, simple and playful. I possess empathy. But because I know how it made me feel at the time. But do not remember the full impact of how it truly affected my psyche. I don’t care at all about this ownership of Aphantasia. I’ve lived and coped with its presence my whole life. I know of the special moments in life. But can never see them again. Unless in a photograph.

It is a strange condition to have. And if it were not for my teaching Mindfulness within an ‘Activate your Life’ course to the local Machynlleth community when I was nursing, I would never actually be aware that it was not normal for all people. After I adopted the use of my ability to talk in a ‘deep voice’ (a nice ability to own) in one of the sessions and narrated the classic scenario of ‘Close your eyes and imagine sitting by a gently flowing river…..etc.’ I stated to the attending group that ‘I don’t know why I advocate such therapy in imagery, as I see nothing at all. Zilch. Only blackness’. The awareness of my owning Aphantasia there and then dropped into my life. A friend, a doctor who I accompanied on hospital ward rounds, was in the group attending the session. She asked a few more questions and highlighted that I may, indeed, have something called Aphantasia.

I can’t say, upon reflecting over the last few years and since the bombshell dropped, that it hasn’t affected life. It has and still is. But somehow you compensate. In ways you cannot put your finger on. Repetition allows long oft used car journeys to be taken. As soon as you see something again, a familiarity comes into the equation. But it is almost holistic in how you decipher. It belongs to the ‘I’m sure I’ve seen this before’ scenario. Comes from images that truly are of individual nature. I know a cafe down the road in the next village, having passed it on the way to work hundreds of times. However, I cannot bring its image into my mind’s eye. It exists when I see it in reality.

Hence my photographs here on the blog. They give an idea of what the blog is about. But not the full story. Once written? Forgotten.

Way back when I was writing songs for the band, I wrote a lyric. A song called Audience.

“Blurred images

With no direction

It’s like looking in a mirror

With no reflection

I’m laughing

And you would be laughing too

If you could see

What I see”.

On reflection the lyrics were part realisation to the situation. But also on reflection, ‘blurred images’ should have been ‘no images’. I do believe images exist in another part of my mind’s dimension. I just can’t get at them. There is a terribly frustrating and tenuous link that I know they are there in the background. They have to be. It’s one of the most frustrating things to explain. Another part of the brain is struggling to bring a picture into existence. But totally fails because nothing is ever there but an unseen whisper that they still exist. Possibly in a hidden neural pathway.

So, there you have it. My revisit to explaining this phenomenon in my life. Not preaching education here. Just the facts of how life can be for some others out there. So I shall put up a few photographs that I see and then say ‘Gosh! Of course. I remember now that I have that book, compass, notebook, pen, etc’. But where I’ve put them? No idea.

https://aphantasia.com/article/science/history-of-aphantasia/