What You See With Closed Eyes

I had a truly bizarre experience recently. I closed my eyes and I saw images. Every time I closed them, I saw scenes, complete with people in outfits, doing actions, interacting with the scenery. It was like I kept flitting between the real world and these alternate ones, every single time I closed my eyes.

I know this sounds like I was either delirious or tripping balls, so let me explain why this was so strange to me. I am perfectly aware that people in general are creative. The mind sees or hears or otherwise conjures up things regularly. My mind does that constantly, just like everybody else's. My mind never conjures images, though.

I always think about mostly intangible things. I conjure relationships, interrelationships, choices, beliefs, applying one's beliefs to the choices they are presented with. I don't see faces or outfits or scenery in my mind, not ever.

The more I dwelled on this experience, the more I realized how much this fact has affected me. I love visual art. I love graphic novels. All the stories I write, I want to have illustrated. But I can't draw. I don't see images. I don't see scenes. When I watched my friend illustrate our comics, I was constantly blown away at how he could see the things I never considered - things like the background and outfits and camera angles and everything else that is absolutely crucial in visualizing things.

I have always been a writer, a communicator, because that is what I have always seen - the emotions and explanations of people, but not the people themselves. What you see with closed eyes is a powerful thing. It shapes you deeply, for longer than you can remember, and you could easily go your whole life without realizing that it has done that, or that other people see different things, at least not unless you have an experience that shows you what else is possible.