Once there was Peter. Peter grew up with a failure in his brain. Peter looked different at the world. Peter’s view was a little bit slower than a normal human being. His time to process light takes four time as long. Thus, Peter merges 4 “(healthy people) timeframes” into 1 timeframe. So, when Peter saw something moving, he didn’t really saw it going from place to place. He saw it moving like some kind of blur. Peter’s vision was like a long- exposure camera. When Peter’s cat was moving from the window to the backdoor, Peter saw a long stripe, like a blurry worm ranging from window to the backdoor.

The strange thing was that Peter somehow saw his cat being at all these places in one moment. When he saw the grey blur of his cat across the room, he saw his cat at the window, as at the backdoor, as in all the places in between. The movements of his cat were all happening in one time frame for Peter. For Peter, his cat was at multiple places at the same time. Even though Peter’s cat was able to make different actions when walking from the window to the backdoor, from jumping to crouching. Every action was averaged for Peter into one frame. He saw the average of every action, like some sort of distribution, every configuration the cat made when walking from Window to backdoor, was merged into one large entity. Therefore, the uncommon configurations were less saturated then the common configurations. The body of the cat was clearer than his blurry moving legs.

For Peter, only still frames were sharp. He found sharpness in looking at rocks, houses, and trees, although the leaves of the tree were blurry to Peter. Peter had a hard time being in the city, because large crowds just looked like one vague mess. Peter perceived moving crowds like a fluid flowing across the street. But it had some advantages, Peter could really see how long people have been standing still on one place. One time, he saw a man so sharp, that he must’ve stood there for a long time. As such, Peter loved living statues. they were so crisp, that they gave Peter some sense of stability. He could see their faces in full sharpness.

Thought when writing this story:
This story is written from a view that our human brains might work quite differently from those of animals. A small difference in (visual) processing speed might result in way different perspectives of the world. It makes me wonder how well we see reality. We actually often forget the patterns and dynamics of objects moving through time because we are only able to see the present. I believe this distorts our way of seeing reality as it is.

2 Responses

  1. Yvonne Wilmink says:

    I am fascinated by your observations. Only read the cat worm, but that makes me think already out of my box…

Leave a Reply