The Serrated Knife Incident
My dad returned to the kitchen table with serrated utility knife in his hand. The same knife that he had given me for Christmas. At the first recognition of the knife, I exclaimed, ‘that’s my knife’. ‘What’, replied my Dad. ‘Is that my knife’, I said, assuming that he must have bought one for himself, or I had brought my own back home and not remembered.
It was not my knife, it wasn’t even a serrated knife with a black handle like my own one has. It was a simple dining knife.
I walked up the narrow road, uphill, at night, and turned to where I assumed the horizon was, and for a few small moments, maybe a second, I perceived a natural luminous object just above the horizon line, maybe a huge moon protruding from the ocean or maybe a ball of fire simmering on a faraway visual plane.
What immediately proceeded was a visual perception of a highly lit ship offering an intense light, increased by its contrast to the surrounding darkness
A Cat, Then A Black Bag In A Hedge
Whilst driving at night, I focused on a black cat. It was on the far side of the s bend I was moving through. In the same second, as I moved closer to the cat, which was curled up just off the tarmac, it turned into a black bag, a rusting bin liner, that had the movement of a cat’s tail flicking.
When driving up a familiar road, (but one not driven on for a while), I had an experience of seeing car lights in the hedge coming from a vehicle coming down the road. This happened two more times, an in fractions of seconds after this experience, I gained more visual data and gave more thought to what it could be; that it was just a particularly luminous part of the hedge, or the angle, or the corner was just right, so to create more shine.
Due to the immediate believe that the patch of light was coming from an oncoming vehicle, I react before the hard data has corrected my perception.
In this particular case, an oncoming car is the potential next visual object that would cause me to react more severely on seeing the lights. This can be seen as a dangerous/life threatening experience that could be imminent.
Is it this expectation of danger that control and dictate our predicted perceptions.
The casual saying, ‘Always expect the worst’, isn’t something we decide to inforce or not, it happens before choice. Instinctive.
I glanced down and left and saw a big ochre/yellow/light brown mosquito. A moment later, there was no insect, but dancing light of the sun’s angular beam, percolating through rustling leaves of a nearby tree.
New weather removes clouds. In the naked sky, the slightest shape discernible is noticed.
Because the planes are visible and because they own the stage of the sky, they are noticed more.
The twist, clouds have appeared, there are no planes above, but on a cloudless ceiling, lines of them, now occupy.
Not like hard/straight lines that trail out from the metal craft. But for clouds, these shapes were very line like.
Streams of vapour are not errors of judgement, they just share the same visual imagery of clouds, in particular conditions the way they appear minutes after the plane has gone could not be distinguished from the real thing.
I saw reams of smoke pirouetting in several tall vertical vortexes, as milliseconds went by, the smoke took a more material surface, then became thin, transparent plastic sheeting. The sheet billowed close to where I keep my solvents and mediums and the worst expected perception was a wisp of smoke caused by a fire.
It wasn’t rational but from an initially peripheral angle, it was as much smoke as it was plastic sheeting, until the ‘truth’ concluded with visual input.
An orange light, the brightness far surpassing any star in the naked galaxy, hovering a quarter distance up from the horizon line, its shape seemed like it might be determined if it wasn’t for the muffled glow around the spherical object. The colour of the light appeared the unique in the usual night sky. The size was large in respect of other lights within the STRATISPHERE, but it was the colour that shocked me. The shape and colour was closer to earth bound light bulbs surrounding the ground, in relative terms, to the orange light.
I looked for a while, then looked through binoculars at the object, it appeared to have two vague structures protruding from the bottom of the block shape.
I had a different relationship with the light with the binoculars on, it consumed a bigger percentage of my visual field, it became a focus and not a dot.
However, the object appeared larger through the lenses, I still had a strong sense that I was the same distance away from the light, as I was before the lenses.
I had little recallable reference to what this light may be, so until collaborative information provided fact, I was going to experience this light as a U.F.O., not one that had to be controlled by an ‘alien’, but literally an unidentified, floating, hovering, suspended, celestial object.
Two days after experiencing the glow of orange above the black sea and within the black sky I discovered that the light was Mars.
Predictive perception took me on the long con with Mars.
Whilst finishing cooking dinner at home for my Mum, I saw the biggest saucepan we have, on the worktop, with a tiny amount of peas at the bottom.
Whilst having this momentary experience, it was funny to me, because me and my Dad are chefs and to choose the biggest saucepan for a tiny amount of peas is so impractical and makes no sense to a chef, and why she hadn’t picked up any of these choices that Dad makes in thirty years is funny.
In the second of humour and seeing the pan on the side, I moved towards the sink and saw the same pan in the sink, with some water and washing up liquid in it, water that I had just put in the pan forty seconds ago after using it for boiling potatoes.
At this recognition of what must have been in the sink, I moved back along the kitchen to the pan of peas, to see them not in biggest pan, which resided in the sink, but the second biggest pan, still an oversized pan for the amount of peas, but a completely different shape and size, with a distinctly different handle.
(The clouds became the trees and the trees became the clouds)
Whilst driving along the motorway at 10:15 on 03/08/18, the very dark clumsy mass of tress stretched right out to the horizon where they were meet by a slightly lighter amorphous shape, that had been tamed to a dense line that covered the vertical (a bit) and the horizontal space. These two areas meet with ambiguity and offered a constant fluctuation between each other, at the point of merger. This could be believed due to the light being closer to the area further away, making the trees on the horizon line the same phenomena, just lit from a closer point.
As I drove closer to the source of light, I concluded that the lighter shape was clouds and the merging of these things was a hallucination.
The way I perceived the mass of trees blending with the mass of clouds brought awareness to how the phenomena of the sky (elements) can be emulsified with the phenomena of the physical world, be that natural or man-made.
Downderry hill, one of the two hills in my village.
The entry and exit points.
Entry of white/yellow lights and exiting of red/orange.
I caught two mackerel in ten minutes.
After a further five minutes I saw a fish jump out of the water, this made me want to continue fishing.
Minutes later I saw a fish , jumping through a rolling wave, that was full of froth, bubbles and streaks. The mix of turquoise, blue and grey water with shimmering light of the wave tricked me, not illusion, but hallucination.
In less than a second, the fish turned into the colours and movement of the tunnel of water.
Expectations of good are happening as well as bad.
As the conditions of light dim, so does the ability to focus upon the weight and feathers…………
At this moment of crux, between visible and not, I follow my weight from its launch point of the sand behind where I am stood, and watch it disembark the road on its leader of nylon line and I follow its position, as it arcs further out to sea, expecting the plunge and splash of the submersion.
At the time of this expectation, I saw a splash much closer in to shore and at a different angle to where I was focused on…..
As I drove down a hill in Ivybridge I saw an archway, a cream covered archway that contained a green garden that had its own perspective and receeded down a drive. I was approaching the archway whilst driving down the hill, for two seconds, the archway only became more in focus and believable and then, before it passed out of sight, it turned into a green hedge that was dome shaped, almost the negative shape of the archway and drive I had just seen.
Red light where there must be a road, but with nothing but darkness, there is no road, no hill and no reference point or perspective for the light to have, except for it to be far away and visible.
It was like a worm hole to a different spacial plane had briefly opened up 200 meters above the ground, in the middle of the sky, that i had vision of.
Circular cloud above the Eddystone lighthouse, about four times the height of the lighthouse above it. It moved to the left, like all the other clouds above the horizon.
However, whilst it was above the lighthouse, it appeared to be because of the cloud science, of clouds being situated in isolation above areas of rock.
A lamp 100 meters from the ground, made up of eight circular metal discs that were illuminating.
Quite a sci-fi experience at the right time of day, which the right conditions of light, because the pole on which the lights are elevated on, disappears.
(However) This scene sen through a water covered circle of the glass window infant of me, gave the eight separate discs a dulling effect and made the technological appear natural, referencing the moon and petrol effect the surrounding clouds have on it.
Dark blue grey cloud in a narrow tunnel shape. It decreased in thickness at the bottom.
The oddness came from the vertical orientation of it.
Like it had been puffed out of a factory but then lingered. But there was no factory and the cloud was far above the visible horizon line. If the same shaped cloud turned 90 degrees, then there would be no excitement or interest.
As I moved closer to the (cloud), it started to rotate clockwise a small amount.
Was it due to my position changing or was it the movement of the cloud anyway.
A small bright light bellow my orange chair, turned out to be a smooth piece of circular metal, that appears to appeared to be a screw or bolt.
It had rained all day and then all evening.
The wind was blowing right off the sea.
River full, hours ago, now banks lines are redundant.
White seagulls illuminated by the little light left in the air. They soared in a vortex, making their way towards the epicentre of the storm: the sea’s edge. Where the crashing waves met the beach and the where the overfilled river cascaded into the oncoming sea. When the birds came close to the water, they merged with the froth, becoming sea foam, then being swept into the vortex above. The close me and my dad got to the beach, the clearer it became that there were no seagulls in the air.
The houses which cast the light were in the same place as I am used to them being.
Yet the majority of the floor space has a different surface, a blanket of water, it has taken on the light of the houses. Not as reflections but as tonal transfers.
The interest came from the movement the light had.
With this new surface of clingy wet volume, loose shapes were harboured. The movement of the water was not just caused by the wind, it came from the other water sources feeding in and out.
Log Drifting Up the River
Stood on the perimeter of the cafe, I looked down on the river, that was full of logs and debris all being hurtled down the river, exiting the mouth and being spewed out to sea. Concentrating on the logs, I noticed one moving up the river away from the sea. In the same second a log went into the reversing log and broke the hallucination. My backwards log turned into the black patch of water that had mercy changed shade, that similar to the logs, because of the motion of the river.
Feeling my phone vibrate in my pocket before or after getting the call.
I mean, did I go to, or think about going to check my phone before or after the vibration.
Having a similar experience at an earlier time of feeling the vibration in my pocket, then seeing my phone on the table five foot in front of me.
The Man Who Turned Out To Be a Fire Extinguisher
I saw a person in a red top, with black hair, through frosted glass. with a semi-transparent checked pattern, from seven meters away. It turned out to be a fire extinguisher, with a black shape onto of it.
This happened four more times in that day, and then once more the following morning. This makes me question the capabilities of learning from prediction errors and how quickly the learning happens or doesn’t happen and with repetition of error, what is the time that learning happens in.
I heard some music, from an unfamiliar output, not a usual speaker, maybe a speaker in an object of some kind, after this first second of music, I turned around to the source of the sound, which turned out to be some one stirring coffee in a metal cup
Through two sets, then one single door windows, I saw a black cat curled up in the middle of the hostel corridor. In the same second that I passed through the door in, the cat became something else. It was no longer a cat. It became a small object indecipherable at this distance, able to see what it wasn’t but not what it is.
A huge red light in my left periphery, which could have been the break lights of an enormous vehicle. In the second which my head was turning, the vehicle light became a bright red cloud, the majority of which was hidden behind the hill, this was why the small circular shape of red appeared.
The moon as a giant illuminated whether ballon.
It was because of its size, abnormal colour and low positioning that steered me away from the idea of the sphere being the moon.
Pale Yellow/ Light Orange
Pale yellow/ light orange with a tint of green to it.
A spherical orb appears. It has a piece missing, not too dissimilar to a nearly full moon.
It hovered in the sky, about a thumbnail’s distance up from the horizon line. It stayed for less than a second before disappearing as I turned my head, which I was doing before I saw the orb.
A sail of a ship that has risen to the sky.
A ballon gliding below the storm that rages above.
A ball of gas, that has risen from the depths of the sea, only to float just above, once surfaced.
In fact what the shape turned out to be was a hallucination. A shape subjectively implanted into the distance.
What the shape truly was, an eye floater, generated within my eye, and due to my position and contents, the shape in my eye was placed in a clearer part of the sky, so to give it a chance of standing out.
I looked at the sun, just risen, bright orange and yellow and for the quarter of a second I focused both eyes upon the centre of the ball, it became deep electric blue. Once I turned away to look at the sky, void of sun, a semi transparent blue/grey/white orb replaced the familiar transparent squiggles. It was singular and didn’t have the scudding movement that the usual floaters have. The transparency became less with every second after the focus on the sun. Less blue are the wrong words, it was the same colour blue as it faded, just that the transparency has been decreased, when I found a sky with little distraction.
A Black Cat; For the Third Time
I was in my kitchen and turned and walked towards the door and just outside the doorway I saw my black cat, curled on the floor, in the split second of sharpening focus, my cat, who died five years before, turned anatomy parents dog, who is also black, who has lived in the same house as me for two years.
Fishing Rods as Children’s Scooters (and in the same second)
Through the cafe’s window, whilst moving through the kitchen, I looked to the beach, and saw a cluster of people, the small groups, I saw two fishing rod rests placed about four meters apart, just before the window exited from my sight, with the pace of my walk, the rod rests adjusted to children’s scooters, the stem of the handle pole and handles protruded from the sand and were clear in vision for a part of a second.
When driving through Ivybridge I saw my recently ex girlfriend standing at a bus stop. She had the same length hair, but the colour appeared red-red-is and not blonde.
After I had driven past and the tug in my stomach faded, I realised that there are three bus stops which go to Plymouth, which is where I assumed she would be going on a Friday night, that are closer to her house. It didn’t make sense that she was stood there. Having only broken up one week ago and this being her home town, the association leaned on my perception.
Faces in the dark, whilst moving.
Walking the beach in the early morning light, I saw the body of a cow, sunk in to the sand. The head was gone, its discoloured while fur was soaked through; even from a distance, this could be seen. The cow had a distinctive black patch on its rib. As I got closer the fur became more realistic and vivid and the likeness grew, until I got within meters away and the dead half a cow turned into a rock with seaweed patches.
Driving through the valley at dark, in the wind and rain, on my left was a white/grey piece of material, draped over a branch of a tree. As I drew closer the sheet turned into the drooping branches of the tree.
Especially when the land is cropped out of vision, the sky has many layers. It has layers of colour and texture, soft amorphous shapes lay behind sharp rays, and it also has the ‘foreground’ layer of inner eye phenomena.
Rather, the sky is one layer, which consists of many layers and infant of that is the glistening static, made up of eye floaters and shooting stars, that combine to make a cinematic field in front of an atmospheric backdrop.
