“To be honest, you could say that I even enjoyed it a little,” the Narrator remarks of his condition in “Ishihara,” and in doing so pulls the words right out of my mouth. I’ve always enjoyed it a little and, when I was younger, if I’m honest, I enjoyed it a lot.
It doesn’t bother me any more now than it ever has, but over the years I have become increasingly, if softly, frustrated that I can do no better to explain it to others.
“So hang on, what exactly do you see?” a classmate asks the Narrator when his little secret is discovered. I still get this question more often than I would like. I don’t mind the question, which is a good one; I mind that I can’t come up with a good answer. And I feel that as a photographer, I should have one.
Sometimes, when someone becomes flabbergastedly interested in my condition, I ask, “How do you know that the red you see is the same as the red that someone else sees, even if you both agree that it’s the same red, and I do not?”
This is my attempt to ask, “How do we know what we know?” which I cannot do nearly as well as Jeff Carreira, who says, “It doesn’t make sense to question our sensations, but it does make sense to question our perceptions,” which might sound intriguing, but which I would not find satisfying if I had just asked, “So hang on, what exactly do you see?”
The best interaction I ever had regarding my condition occurred when I was nine, between me and my eye doctor, the second time in two years he assured me that I did indeed have the condition I secretly hoped that I did indeed have. After I had once again poured through those tests and didn’t see what most see (or saw things that most don’t) I blurted out: “How do you see the the ‘8′?”
“How do you not?” the doctor blurted back at me, taking me aback with his candor.
The doctor, you see, wasn’t frustrated nor being spiteful. He, I sensed, was being respectful. Even given his profession, he was as naturally mystified as any person without the condition would be by someone with the condition.
After all, we’re both staring at the same thing and seeing different visions. It might happen all the time in real life (You see a hag, I see my beautiful girlfriend, etc., etc.), but how often do we see it so clearly — our lack of clearly seeing the same thing?