Yeah, I know it's been a few days... but I've been busy! Some of you already know what went down but for those of you who don't, I will now post my weekend experience in great detail.
My Blindfolding Chronicles
Thursday night: Initiated the blindfolding! I had my welding mask covered with three layers of black paint to make them opaque, a sleep mask fitted securely over those, and an ace bandage wrapped around all of this to hold everything in place. I was a little concerned that the goggled would dig into my face, cut off my circulation and then make my eyes fall off. Really, they just gave me a headache, so I adjusted the goggles to be a little looser and didn't take them off for the rest of the weekend.
So Thursday night I basically just staggered around, bumped into things, and drank tea (I could drink tea blindfolded!), wondering how I was ever going to survive the next day.
Friday: I woke up early, around 6:45 because the goggles are kind of uncomfortable to sleep in. Jana didn't budge until 9, so I spent the morning exercising, making myself a bowl of cereal AND a cup of tea (neither of which I spilled). The pouring of the boiling tea water was heart-stopping, but did not end badly. After that, I went back upstairs to find Jana still asleep, so I listened to my iPod, hoping the hallucinations would come.
When Jana finally awoke, we watched a movie or two, then she had to go meet her museum group for a couple of hours. She plunked her piano in front of me and told me to stim on it, and I plinked a few keys for about 20 minutes before giving up (I can't play piano even with the use of my eyes). So I went back to listening to the iPod. At this point, I started to see lava lamp-esque swirls of light, some revolving light like a lighthouse beacon, and some small flashes of light in my peripheral vision. These were not as luminous as real light, but I have equated these visions to the after image you see when you turn off a bright light you've been staring at in a dark room. It was a greenish sort of glow that was neither bright nor bothersome.
Saturday: Jana and I ventured outside to the city centre! As I walked, I felt like I wasn't going anywhere, as if I were on a treadmill. I felt like I was going places very quickly because Jana would suddenly tell me "We're in Victoria Park" or some such thing and I'd be like "Wha, I thought we were still on Queens Road". Which made me somewhat disoriented. As we walked, Jana had to do her Amelie impression, but as there was nothing all that interesting to see, she decided to ramble off all the mundane things she could see in the park.
"There's a litter box attached to a tree, there's poop on the sidewalk, there's a huge rat right in front of you, there are kids playing soccer," she said, grasping me firmly by the arm and parading me down the park walk. "So far people aren't staring at you, they're so polite. Nope, there's a rude one, a starer, he just squinted and kept staring as he walked past." And of course, the ever helpful, "Oh, there's a big stick, but we're going around it" after which she promptly steered me strategically into the big stick. This experience followed by cries of: "Oooo puppies! Eeeee they're so cuuuute!" Etc etc.
Once we made it to New Walk, Jana whispered fervently in my ear, "I think that's your friend William, but I'm not sure. He's walking past right now!"
"William!" I shouted, turning around to face him, or at least I thought I did, because I couldn't see him and didn’t hear him. Believe it or not, it really was my friend William, and we all went down to the New Walk Museum to play in the bouncy castle. That was a lot of fun, but I did not hallucinate. I did, however, experience some uncontrolled mental images that just popped into my head, like what happens when you're about to fall asleep and quick mental images start to jump out before you actually dream. I "saw" the Arabic cafe Jana described to me, and I imagined the place where the bouncy castle was, as if it was set up like a science museum. These images, however, did not move into my visual field, so they were not hallucinations.
After New Walk, we went to Waterstone's bookstore. By this time, I was feeling slightly queasy, either from the elevator ride to the second floor of New Walk, or just from walking around with no real perspective of things. When we got back to Jana's house, as soon as I got inside, I saw a grid of the same greenish-colored lights in front of my eyes. The pattern was kind of like the grid in the game Battleship, and it persisted for only a few seconds.
Saturday night, Jana made pancakes and we watched movies and had a great time.
Sunday: I was getting antsy. I hadn't seen any complex hallucination and doubted I would. And it's true, I didn't. I kept the blindfold on anyway until 6PM. The strangest part was the half hour/ hour after I took the blindfold off. My eyes had gotten used to light deprivation, so when I was able to see again, everything looked really strange.
Everything was in weird contrast, and when I put my hand in front of my face, it was really sharp with a black glow around it, while everything else in the background seemed washed out. The room spun, and Jana said my eyes were dilating in and out. When we went downstairs, I was pouring water into the tea kettle, and the water seemed to jump haltingly up the side of the kettle instead of fluidly filling it. And for the same length of time, I saw black spots in my periphery. All of these things went away within the hour, and my vision returned to normal. The lines around my face from the goggles were not as bad as I'd suspected, and they went away pretty quickly, as well.
So I didn't experience the hallucinations I'd hoped for, but I did think the invasive imagery was a little strange. I think maybe some people get that strong imagery and perhaps mistake it for hallucinations. Then again, maybe some people really do actually see things like faces and animals and buildings, and I'm just unfortunate.
No comments:
Post a Comment