Ishtar's Shithouse Poetry

For most of my life, I was aware that my mind worked differently from others, and that people often struggled to understand me and my reasoning. But I never fully grasped why or how that difference manifested. I strongly suspect that my innate verbosity is, in part, a result of this awareness. Additionally, I always assumed phrases like 'picturing something in your mind's eye' or 'counting sheep to sleep' were just metaphors, so it never occurred to me that some people could actually see images in their minds, let alone that others don’t have an internal monologue—mine can run non-stop! My lack of clarity regarding the nuances of mind persisted until February 2022, when I first came across the concept of aphantasia. The realisation was both shocking and transformative—it was as if a hidden veil had been lifted, revealing an entirely new world that suddenly made perfect sense, all the things that had confused me were now clear. As I began exploring this newfound awar...

Update Feb 2025:  There is now a dedicated space for this type of discussion off of my poetry blog and over over at:   mentalimageryresistance.co.uk   Hopefully this clarified advocacy paper makes more sense to people than my ramblings here:  Locating Unifying Language: Multiple Intelligences, Mental Sensory Perception, and Mental Imagery .  For the Record:  I am no authority on this matter. I am an independent researcher and advocate for more clarity in the language and definitions used in mental imagery research. Raising awareness of the need for more research into what those with multisensory aphantasia possess .  Introduction Aphantasia, a condition in which individuals lack one or more sensory modalities of the mind, has traditionally been defined in terms of the absence of the five external senses. However, this narrow view fails to consider the possibility of additional, unrecognised senses that shape our internal perception. Recently, researche...