10.30.2007

The Cliche Pie

Last night Elijah and I were talking about a question that has been floating around the back of my mind: what do blind people dream of? Not people who have lost their vision due to accidents or macular degeneration, but people who developed having no sense of sight whatsoever. This came up due to a recent Something Awful thread posted by a blind person, who had been asked about this very subject:

It’s a little hard to say for sure since it’s not like I’ve experienced someone else’s dreams. I don’t really see in my dreams if that’s what you’re asking, but I will have more of an awareness of what’s around me and I’ll intuitively know whatever I would ordinarily be able to sense. For example if I’m standing next to a building in a dream, I’ll know where all the entrances are, how to get to them from my location, the types of doors, if people are around them, etc. but I don’t scan the building with my eyes and pick up the information as I go.

As one who has extremely vivid dreams, the idea of dreaming without vision is absolutely fascinating to me. So I mentioned how inconceivable I find it to dream with no imagery, no visual information whatsoever, and E said, “It’s not that hard to imagine. It’s not like you actually see things when you think of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can you? Like, if I tell you to think of a pie, can you actually see a pie? With your eyes closed?”

“Of course I can. Wait, you mean you can’t?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I think of a pie, but I don’t really see anything.”

“No colors, nothing?

“Nope.”

This proceeded to blow my mind on multiple levels. “You don’t see anything? What’s in there then? What happens in your brain when you try to conceive of ‘pie-ness*’?”

“I don’t know. It’s just…blank.”

We then spent the next hour trying to communicate what the other ’sees’ mentally when trying to evoke various images, images that haven’t necessarily been ‘perceived’ by the eyes but nevertheless are within the realm of the familiar. For instance, the pie I ’saw’ is not a pie that has ever existed, at least to my knowledge, but rather a composite pie, incorporating elements of both pies I have seen and what I tend to associate with pies. The pie has a golden flaky crust, scalloped edges and is sitting on top of a blue gingham tablecloth. A cliché pie, two parts Betty Crocker and one part Country Time. It looks delicious.

Elijah can see the cliché pie, especially after I describe it, but it doesn’t appear that he does so spontaneously at the mention of a pie, nor can he ’see’ it very clearly. “I can see what you’re saying, but from far away, like I’m looking through a blurry lens.” A blurry lens that blocks out color information.

Now, the cliché pie isn’t perfect in my mind, despite borrowing from the uber-hausfrau Betty Crocker’s aesthetic. The image changes as I cycle through my memories and concepts of ‘pie-ness’ and update the image. When I first visualized it the pie was in a blue tin, then the tin was modified to an aluminum one. But the pie still exists for me. It doesn’t for Elijah. He has to really concentrate in order to visualize that pie, and even afterwards, it sounds as though it is a much dimmer version of what I get.

Should Elijah get himself to a neurologist, stat? Am I the one who is strange? Do androids dream of electric sheep, and if so, are they black or white? I know some of you (three) who read my blog are cognitive scientists; please chime in with your ideas!

* Edited to make this look less like another word.

10.26.2007

The Quark Slimming Challenge

Yesterday I took Quark in for his annual checkup, anticipating that all he’d need are shots to make sure he doesn’t get rabies and give me some awesomely radical cat brain disease. When the vet pried him out of the confines of the loathed carrier, he took one look at him and said, “Hey, your cat needs to lose weight.”

Yes, yes, I know, I explained, but then the vet put him on the scaled and clocked him at 15.7 lbs. “Wow, that’s quite a jump up from last year.” (He was, might I add, too fat last year as well). The vet proceeded to explain that since my cat is getting up in age, he is at risk of developing diabetes. Unhappy images popped in my head of chasing my cat around the apartment with a needle full of cat insulin - at least since he’s tubby, he’s slower and easier to catch, right?

The vet then listened to his heartbeat and discovered that Quark has a (slight, low-grade) heart murmur (!). Apparently they will have to keep tabs on him and make sure it doesn’t get stronger, or more erratic, or whatever the hell heart murmurs do. It could be a congenital condition that has existed for awhile and has just now presented itself - but, I have my suspicions that it might have to do with the unhappy fact that my cat is a lard-ass. A cute, round and wonderfully affectionate lardass, but a lardass nevertheless. A dead cat is never cute.

So I am embarking on a mission to make Quark shed some kitty flub. The primary potential pitfall in this plan (pah) is that, living in what is basically a studio apartment, I have no door on my bedroom. Hence, no way to shut out a hungry headbutting cat in the middle of the night when he decides he wants food and I want sleep. Yes, the little turd knows exactly when I am at my weakest, and though he can’t quite figure out how to not get his head stuck in a doorway, has somehow managed to calculate when I am deep in the throes of a sleep cycle, and act accordingly.

One of us will make it out of this alive. Barely.