Internal astigmatism

[supergee]

People who can’t visualize. I’m pretty much one. [Guardian]

Comments

[lydy]

Huh. I have a fairly limited ability to visualize. I was...in my twenties or thirties before I realized that a description of a character with black hair and blue eyes was meant to evoke a visual image, rather than being a description of temperament or character. (I had a complex taxonomy of what hair and eye color meant, and what those combinations meant.) I often have a more kinesthetic understanding of things than a visual one. I was stunned to discover that "Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse" worked for me, even though regular comics mostly don't. and I strongly suspect it was because the images were moving. I once had a terrible argument with a good friend who didn't like a book I suggested because it "had no descriptions." I was baffled. Then he lent me a book, and I couldn't get through the first chapter, because it was entirely a description of the physiognomy and mode of dress of the main character. It was a stupid argument, but really points up how completely oblivious we were to each other's mode of understanding.