From: callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan)
Subject: Lost Mental Facilities of Childhood
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:48:57 GMT

I looked into alt.angst today, and instead of finding angst by any conceivable
definition, all I found was some drivel related to FurryMUCK.  I wanted to
flame but I see it's a monster thread posted to many groups.  What's the use?
Flaming will just make things worse.  Instead of flaming, I will try to start a 
thread about an odd thing that has begun to bother me recently.  It is so 
weird, and so personal that it might not start much of a thread at all.

It recently hit me that I no longer possess a mental facility I had up to age 12
(at least) and lost somewhere along the lines.  It was definitely gone by age 
16.  I am now 27 (for anyone who hasn't read my other postings), and until this 
point, I have not thought about it much.  It was not very useful, but it 
entertained me throughout my introverted childhood, and I wonder why and when I 
lost it and whether it can be made to return.  I started to muse about it as I 
was reading a book called _Nobody Nowhere_, which is the autobiography of an 
autistic woman named Donna Williams.  She describes certain ways she would block
out the world as child, and entertain herself by seeing spots and patterns in 
her head.  This tendency was related to her autism, but parts of it struck a 
chord with me. 

As a child I took it for granted that I could, almost at will, close my eyes
while lying down in a certain way, and see "landscapes" moving under me, as if I 
were floating.  I could control the movement, and actually feel as if I were
going up or down or sideways.  I put "landscapes" in quotes, because that's not
a complete description; there were two types I can remember.  One appeared to 
be actual land: barren, rocky, desert land with mountains and valleys and 
cliffs.  I recall being able to descend into valleys.  The other was not land 
at all, or anything much like the real world.  The best description I can give 
is a set of empty rooms covered entirely in intricate abstract patterns, 
reminiscent of oriental rugs.  In both cases, the "landscapes" would change 
in a manner related to the way I felt I was moving.  I don't suggest that
there were detailed images in my brain.  I suppose it was more like a waking 
dream state in which I thought I was seeing specific things, but if I had 
attempted to discern details, I would have found chaos (like written words in a 
dream, which rarely say the same thing upon rereading).

There are other things I did in childhood (no, *not* LSD, as some of you may be
thinking) which are more easily explained.  For example, I noticed how I could
see spots by applying pressure to my eyes (ultimately forming sort of a bright
yellow donut shape).  Donna Williams also alludes to doing this, interestingly
enough, but it seems to me I knew other children who knew about this, and I'm 
pretty sure it's not what I'm trying to describe here.  

One of the things that intrigues me the most, and that the careful reader will 
have noticed, is that this ability of mine disappeared with the onset of 
puberty.  Is this a coincidence, or a hormonal thing?  Or was it just that as
I came out of childhood, I was less inclined to indulge in such seemingly
pointless amusements.  I really don't know.  It seems to me that I stopped
doing it for a while, then tried it and couldn't quite get it to work, and 
finally put it out of my mind entirely.

After reading _Nobody Nowhere_ I decided to put some time into rediscovering
this ability, but to little avail.  For one thing, it seems to me that the
way I would lie down was somehow important (or I thought so as a child), and 
I've forgotten exactly what it was.  In an attempt to regain this mental state, 
I recently spent some time with my eyes closed, trying to block out thoughts and
see whatever images would appear.  When I managed to stay this way long enough 
(which was not common) I would eventually see a rapid chain of random mental 
images, mostly abstract and asymmetrical.  I still couldn't recapture the 
feeling of control and movement that I remembered from childhood.  A couple of 
times I thought I had it for an instant, but as I child I used to be able to 
enter the state easily, and stay that way for extended periods of time.

There might be a trick to it.  It's possible that I started out with the
spots due to pressure on the eyes and then went into a mental state in which I 
interpreted them in a special way.  However, as an adult, I'm less inclined to 
subject my eyes to this sort of abuse, so I'm not planning to try such an
approach.

The only reason it really bothers me is that at one point in my life I knew with
full confidence that I could do this, yet now it seems so remote and bizarre 
that I'm inclined to discount it entirely.  Is there anyone else out there who
played similar solitary mental games as a child and cannot recapture the same 
feeling in adulthood?
--
"I would rather be torn to pieces by the poison-clawed cat, than to suffer one
instant of acceptance by the resident intellectuals of rec.arts.books." 
     [slightly modified; attribution left as an exercise to the reader]
              -- Paul Callahan, callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu --