Connecting Wires I

The experience of realizing I have aphantasia. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I haven’t been this sure of something in a long time: my mind’s eye is blind.

Black. Blank. Barren. Empty. I pulled those words from somewhere, as I always have, reaching for them in the invisible chasm that is my brain. It’s called aphantasia, if you’re curious, and I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t think it was illustrative for you.

(Not to worry, stick to the end for a preview of other stories I’ve been working on.)

In practical terms, it means that if I say to you, “Imagine a yellow Porsche 911,” your mind should be able to, quite clearly, be able to conjure up a yellow 911 parked, oh, I don’t know, beside a red taco truck overlooking the ocean. There are surfers in the distance, and the shoreline stretches beyond the horizon in either direction.

Me? If I try to “picture” the above, it’s closer to a word cloud written in black ink, floating in star-less space. It’s no better when I’m drawing from memory: I can think of the one time a former colleague, Matt Bubbers, had a canary gold …