I like the term, visual tinnitus - sort of fits in with all the permanently shifting grey pixelated patterns I am 'seeing', no matter if I close my eyes or not, etc.
See article content below. Stay well Jacob Kruger Blind Biker Skype: BlindZA "Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."----- Original Message ----- Do blind people really experience complete darkness?
By Damon Rose BBC News, Ouch.BBC journalist Damon Rose completely lost his sight as a child, but he says his
world isn't pitch black. So what exactly does he see? It's often assumed that blind people experience complete darkness, but in my experience this is far from the truth. I appreciate this is going to sound odd coming from a blind person but whenpeople ask me what I miss most about not being able to see, my answer is always
"darkness". Let me explain. I am one of a very small number of people who have no sight whatsoever. I'm properly blind. A "total" as we used to say at school. I lost my sight 31 years ago thanks to ill-advised surgery, and on my blindperson's registration certificate it has three, now very faded letters - NLP, no
light perception.The logical assumption is that when sight is snuffed out, a person must be left in darkness. If you dive under the bed covers you can't see anything at all. If you close your eyes then everything turns to black. So, blind equals black? It
make sense, right? Apparently not. Though I've had the cord cut between my eyes and my brain, it seems that the world has not turned black. All metaphors, similes, analogies, and literary flourishes about blindness and darkness should henceforth cease to be used because I'm saying it's far from dark. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.So what replaces 3D technicolour vision once it's gone? The answer - at least in my case - is light. Lots of it. Bright, colourful, ever-changing, often terribly
distracting, light.How do I even begin to describe it? Let me have a go. Right now I've got a dark brown background, with a turquoise luminescence front and centre. Actually it's just changed to green… now it's bright blue with flecks of yellow, and there's
some orange threatening to break through and cover the whole lot. The rest of my field of vision is taken up by squashed geometric shapes, squiggles and clouds I couldn't hope to describe - and not before they all change again anyway. Give it an hour, and it'll all be different.If I try to block out all this distraction by closing my eyes it doesn't work.
It never goes away. I miss those peaceful moments of near darkness: walking at night-time while focusing on the streetlights ahead, the atmospheric shadows in a room with areal fire burning, or travelling home late in the back of my dad's car glimpsing
cat's eyes lighting up in the middle of the road.For me, dark has come to signify quiet, and because my built-in fireworks never
go away I describe what I've got as a kind of visual tinnitus.When I first went blind I thought the brightly coloured lights were a sign my eyes were trying to work again. It gave me some hope and I was quite fascinated by it. I used to sit and stare at it. Now I know that it's my brain making up
for the fact that it no longer receives any pictures. Some people of faith have occasionally tried to tell me that I'm seeing theafter-life, and I never know how to respond to that. But what I have never been able to find out is whether other people who have no light perception also see
what I see.And, assuming that full vision and driving a car are not on offer, do they also
long for a bit of darkness? Source URL: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-ouch-31487662 ---------- To send a message to the list, send any message to blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to blindza-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line --- The 'homepage' for this list is at http://www.blindza.co.za
