The Sack’s Inner Light
These geometric and scrolling motifs seemed somehow familiar to me, though it did not dawn on me until years later that this was because I had seen them not only in my environment but in my own head, that these patterns resonated with my own inner experience of the intricate tilings and swirls of migraine.
This is from Oliver Sacks (‘The Sack’ if I can borrow a nickname from a friend) writing in the NY Times on the visual patterns, the scintillating scotoma he lives with as a migraine sufferer.
The above image is a crude depiction of what happens in my visual field (and has for as long as I can remember) when I put the slightest amount of pressure around my eye sockets. The brown-tinted checkerboard undulates, the semi-translucent clouds cycle through, the purple stars and the green ring of fire. As a kid, I thought it was a magic trick or superpower unique to me, and years ago I attempted to find out whether it was actually a shared phenomenon.
The closest I came was finding a person in New Zealand who has developed the practice of pushing on one’s eyeballs into a deeply meaningful spiritual method he or she calls The Inner Light Technique.
Until 3quarksdaily picked up the Sacks piece, I had no idea the patterns were associated with headaches, but I’m speculating that a similar type of pressure is being applied to the visual apparatus of migraine sufferers without the aid of fingers. Lucky them.
I’d be curious to see what other people see.
UPDATE: A reader named Matthew tells me that the phenomenon I’ve described is a common entoptic phenomenon known as a phosphene. From Matthew:
I used to have a Sesame Street record that had all the characters talking about what they saw when they closed their eyes. Oscar insisted he saw only darkness but the other muppets tried to explain you could see all sorts of patterns and stars and stuff.
Thanks, Matthew. This made my day.
