I Do Not Remember My Life and It’s Fine

This is a fascinating read! I had a shallow understanding of what aphantasia is before reading this account of trying to remember without access to mental imagery.

This and his list of introspective descriptions can make for an engrossing night’s reading!

@splinter I love this. Thanks for sharing! Marco really does articulate how thinking when you are severely deficient in autobiographic memory works? feels? It’s not often I can nod along and go “Yep, that’s it.” Definitely bookmarked to be explored in depth later 😄

@heyloura @splinter I followed that link you were writing about and it was so interesting. I have very poor recall of things in the past, and so always assumed folks who could chat in detail about their childhood, for example, were just making it up…

@heyloura @splinter Haha. It was only a year or two ago that I learned when some people read a book they ‘see’ all those descriptions as pictures — a sunset over fields, a person entering a room, a house. They were all words to me. No wonder I’ve sometimes dismissed (poorly written) books for having too many adjectives! 😆

@heyloura @Miraz @splinter I was 60 before discovering that “mind’s eye” wasn’t just a metaphor for some people. I wonder if life would have been different had I realized aphantasia & SDAM weren’t “normal”.

@ffmike @Miraz @splinter I’m not sure my life is any different from learning about the ways others have a richer mental landscape/memories. Maybe its made me a bit wistful. But its all just so normal for me I don’t really think about it until an article like this shows up.

@splinter fascinating indeed, made a huge amount of sense to me. My wife is the opposite of me, she is almost a super recogniser, has a great memory and ability to tell stories of the past. She has a terrible sense of direction. I have no or dim recall of things in the past, struggle with faces, but can find my way about. Most of the things I recall well are either remembering retellings or animals I’ve seen which are linked to a location. @Miraz do you remember books you read, I am a happy re-reader. @heyloura @ffmike

@johnjohnston Not always great at remembering books — sometimes I can be a wee way in and thinking “this all seems very familiar”. 😆 I don’t remember faces but sometimes my recall is triggered by a location — “Oh, she’s the one I was talking to by the driftwood on the beach…”. Or, “Oh yes, when we were at that cafe you were telling me about the thing.” I can also often recall computery stuff “Oh, that should be under the View menu, about third from the left at the top of the screen…” @splinter @heyloura @ffmike

@Miraz I am seeing telephone support as a possible late life career change here🤣

@johnjohnston Haha. Guess who already did that back in the day. 😆 Back with Mac System 7, talking people through installing the needed software to get online — click this and that, restart, enter these numbers, restart…