WHAT ARE INTERIOR ILLUSIONS?
Interior illusions, or “sunken pictures,” are private images that the mind conjures up when gazing upon a particular
object or pattern. These images are visual in nature; that is to say, one
actually sees the picture in front of them, they don’t just imagine it. For example, when one is staring at the various rippled
markings that streak a hardwood floor, they may suddenly notice the vague face
of a woman, with a very narrow head and a dark splotch of lips. These images
are sometimes called “sunken pictures” because they appear to rise, irresistibly, from one’s perception of the object itself, without any conscious effort of the
imagination. Specific interior illusions, arising as they do from the mind, and
the individuated associations that are most natural to it, are never universal:
it is extremely rare for any two people to recognize the same image within the
same object, at the same time. Mere resemblances (for example, a rock that is
shaped like a chicken) do not qualify as interior illusions, because the
associational likeness is crude and simplistic, easily explainable to one who
doesn’t immediately grasp the similarity. True interior illusions are invariably more
precise; we may be gazing off into the treetops distractedly when the visual
data in front of us, the particular pattern of shadow and sunlight, the
cross-hatching of thin branches, suddenly seems to be assigned new content by
our idling brain, and the image of a dog, with long, forked tendrils instead of
paws, emerges inexplicably, as if it were a Surrealist painting, with an
intentional double-image latent in the foliage. Once one has seen an interior
illusion, he will, of course, continue to recognize the true object that he’s perceiving; but he will henceforth be unable to look at it without also
noticing the illusory image, hiding within.
SOME COMMON LOCATIONS FOR INTERIOR ILLUSIONS
There are many common locations that are known to be efficacious at fostering
interior illusions. Contrary, perhaps, to popular belief, clouds are not the
ideal site in which to observe interior illusions. There are a couple reasons
for this. The first is that interior illusions, by definition, have a
persistent quality: as we’ve said above, they are notoriously impossible to eliminate from one’s eye once they have been perceived. This peculiar endurance goes hand in hand
with the illusion’s vividness, its detail, its striking specificity. Clouds as objects are too
bland and featureless to enable images of any significant degree of detail: the
illusions that they engender are usually nothing but marginally familiar
shapes, tantamount to a simple resemblance. In the rare instance that one
encounters a particularly bruised cloud, one suffused with enough contrast to
allow for an image of some depth, the illusion will, inevitably, be too
fleeting to be of any note; the cloud unravels as it crosses the sky, absorbing
our passing fancy with supreme indifference. True interior illusions require
concrete objects, of intricacy and nuance, for our imaginations to grip and
take hold. To this end, some of the best locations are trees and shrubbery,
whose leafy pockets and laced branches provide a thousand tiny toeholds for the
unconscious eye. Other common locations include the waves and whorls on a piece
of wood, a stucco ceiling, and ornate wallpaper. In general terms, any object
or surface that has a random or unpredictable pattern can provoke the mind to
create illusions, even the creases of a crinkly sleeping bag.
WHY DO WE GET INTERIOR ILLUSIONS?
Interior illusions have existed for centuries as a fascinating mystery. There
has always been speculation as to why we get them in the first place. Today,
most people agree that they are a product of the mind’s quest for meaning: when gazing lazily at an arbitrary pattern, the brain
unconsciously seeks out some kind of coherence or familiarity within the
randomness, imposing an artificial order on what amounts to visual chaos. This
is, of course, the same principle operative in the famed Rorschach test, in
which the subject’s unconscious is slowly coaxed into the open via the assignment of meaning to
random ink splatters. This phenomenon is alternately known as apophenia.
Naturally it is vital for the mind to constantly search for associations and
familial properties in every object that confronts its vision, simply because
our entire psychosocial apparatus turns on our capacity to sort and categorize
various phenomena. However, when met with the rocky scars on a towering sweep
of cliffside, or contemplating pale, clumped firs on the horizon, like a blue
wall cracked with shadows, our natural instinct to seek recognizable patterns
leads us to unknowingly exaggerate whatever constellation of superficial
details we can find an association for. As a result, the unconscious mind
undermines the rationality of the eye with hallucinatory chimeras, leafy and
lumpy, that emerge, unnecessarily, from the dappled backdrop.
DIGRESSION
At this time the author would ask your forgiveness as he indulges a digression
of a personal, perhaps even pertinent, nature.
I have always remembered my first interior illusion, clear as a framed
photograph; but the ease with which I summon that glassy image is not
necessarily an indication of its intuitive logic. I was ten years old,
vacation-bound, driving cross-country in the family sedan with my parents and
five year-old brother, Ike. We were visiting our grandparents in Delaware, and
possibly going to the beach. It was a three-day drive, and on the last leg of
the journey, I remember we stopped for a long lunch at a Beef O’Brady’s. Now during this period Ike had something of a fetish for toothpicks, and
would demand one whenever we went out to eat. With his five year-old’s love of the spotlight, I think there was something about chomping on a
toothpick that appealed to his theatrical side. Perhaps it was his early love
of detective films. In any case, he never failed to exploit his favored prop if
there was the slightest opportunity for performance. So it was as we left the
restaurant that day, walking over the asphalt towards our car; I remember my
parents laughing at Ike’s self-aware, miniature swagger, I rushing alongside, egging him on, and a
general atmosphere of playfulness and anticipation that seemed to fill the
afternoon. Half an hour later we were sailing along the freeway, only a few
miles from our destination. The light strains of the radio were muffled by the
cacophonous blast of air through the cracked windows, roaring like television
static. I sat behind my mother, squirming in a patch of prickly sunlight. Ike
was on my left, carefully pivoting the toothpick in his mouth, working it
around studiously, rotating it with his tongue. I turned to the window and saw
an enormous cloud drifting against the sun, its curling edges beginning to
ignite. When I turned back, the toothpick was gone. Ike was staring ahead,
wide-eyed, his small throat heaving, a horrible gulping, gagging, struggling
sound escaping from his gaped lips, as if he were fighting to breathe. There
was a terrible second when I just stared at him, too shocked to react at all.
Then I started screaming. As my mom and dad twisted around in their seats,
their voices rising in a crescendo of panic, my little brother gasping like a
fish, I immediately realized with a cold, plummeting certainty that Ike could
not be saved. The toothpick was wedged in his throat, there was no way to force
it out, not even the Heimlich could dislodge the wooden needle that was buried
in my brother’s windpipe. As my mother grasped for Ike’s hand, trying to hold his attention, telling him to breathe, breathe (his eyes
rolling away in terror, mouth straining, as if to vomit) I felt myself overcome
by a crushing sense of distance: that here I was, buckled beside Ike in the
backseat, watching him die.
Then my father, who had been swiveling back and forth for the past few seconds,
dividing his attention between my brother and the road, took his hands off the
wheel completely, and, whirling on us with a furied resolve, palmed Ike’s head steady with one hand while he reached two fingers into his open mouth and
plucked, with a quick birdlike savagery, the toothpick from his tender throat.
He twisted back in time to catch the wheel right as we grazed the car in the
next lane, swiftly correcting our veering trajectory after the initial jolt. We
immediately pulled over to the side of the road. I sat, utterly stunned. Ike
had caught his breath and was now, raggedly, in tears, my mother reaching into
the backseat to console him. My father took his hands off the wheel slowly,
took a breath. He and my mother exchanged a small look of intense relief. All I
could think about was the brutal swiftness with which my dad had saved my
brother’s life, a grim efficiency I had never witnessed. The entire afternoon, so full
of promise, seemed to have died and been reborn in the last thirty seconds. “You must act now!” said the radio. “No money down, and you don’t pay until January…” After a minute we got out of the car, and waited for the other car to pull over
and meet us. But it never did. We stood on the side of the highway, huddled and
grateful, until raindrops began to fall through the thinning sunlight.
Needless, perhaps, to say, my mind was churning with amazement as we completed
the remainder of our drive. With a kind of newfound reverence I watched
quivering rain droplets worm their way across the window, leaving slippery
comet-tails that vanished in their wake. The rain dried up shortly after Ike’s tears. The sky darkened to a deep cerulean, skimmed over with a creamy reef of
clouds. By the time we pulled into my grandparents’ driveway, Ike was already well-inculcated by my sense of awe, and was now
looking back on his near-choking as a fabulously exciting and death-defying
adventure, a miraculous epic with my father cast as hero. Naturally, we were
bursting with the news as we ran into the house, fairly stepping on each other
as we rushed to tell our grandparents how calamity had been averted. Their
reactions were appropriately alarmed and impressed, even more so when the story
was wearily confirmed by our parents, as they hauled the luggage into the
house. As for Ike and I, our unrelenting enthusiasm for the afternoon’s drama seemed to carry us through the rest of the evening. Every time I looked
at my brother I felt a profound gratitude, thrilled by the realization of what
very nearly could have been, but somehow, wasn’t.
Once we had been settled and fed, our Grandmom, in sympathy, I believe, for our
ordeal, gave us permission to take a nighttime swim in their backyard pool,
which was, for us, always the chief pleasure of our visits. We whipped and
roiled the water with our small, thrashing bodies until it was too dark for the
adults to see us, lunging, diving, and splashing in uninhibited glee. We dried
languidly in the close summer air, draped in towels, our hair battered into
choppy punk cuts, muscles tingling and pleasantly weak from pushing against the
water. Finally, we lay side by side in enfolding darkness. We slept on the
spare bed in the attic, which was small and creaked under the slightest shift
of weight. Ike immediately descended into well-deserved sleep. I, too, was more
than a little drowsy, but my mind was still animated by the day’s events. I lay on my back beside my brother and stared up at the puffy
crop-rows of silver insulation, vaguely concerned that my sense of miraculous
wonder would be gone when I awoke. The insulation humped between the wooden
ribs of the attic, like bulging muscles filling out a skeleton. My gaze stroked
its shiny, creased surface without interest; red letters intoned “FIBERGLAS.”
