This post is mainly prompted by the post on static vision.
I have a sort of related sensation where I can get into a state where I can no longer judge the scale or distance of things. And things will kind of flash from being tiny to massive, it’s as if you could hold a lightbulb, say, like an ant between your fingers or it could be inordinately large (but this bit is very difficult to explain). Whether it’s a pencil or a chair, or whatever, I find it impossible to judge size etc, apart of course from what I know from common sense. It also makes patterns more obvious, like someone sat in a chair, or the relative size of a window to the room it’s in.
It usually occurs when a room is dimly lit, when I stare at something, or stare at somebody’s face on the television. I don’t know whether the odd scale of someone on television, or looking at something from an odd perspective triggers it, or what triggers it. It usually occurs without warning and without my control, but if I concentrate I can kind of hold it.
This only usually occurs about once a month (although definitely not at regular intervals!) and usually lasts for about 5 minutes. If I look around the room, or move around and get a sense of being in a 3-d space it will tend to go away, or fade and click back, but eventually it will just fade away.
It’s something I’ve had since childhood, and when I was young it frightened me a little or disorientated me, but now it just interests me.
I would be very interested to hear if anybody else has had a similar sensation.
18 Jul 2004, 12:32 pm
