Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Reddish Green and Bluish Yellow

There are colors that the human eye tends to cancel out.

My vision is odd.  I have no trouble tracking those concepts.  Japanese Maple leaves, for instance, are reddish green ... also purplish bronze.  I can track all those colors in them.  It's why I like staring at those leaves.

On the other hoof, I can't see 3-D when it's red/green or red/blue; my brain disassembles what is supposed to overlap.  Evidently my visual wetware is a nonstandard model.
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  • 8 comments
lyonesse

lyonesse

May 18 2012, 04:31:12 UTC 9 years ago

i find it boggling that anyone *wouldn't* perceive maple leaves as reddish green (or greenish red, depending on the time and variety). though i guess i don't see it as a unified color, but more a description of the leaf as a whole, which has both in it -- like a strawberry roan horse, having in it both chestnut and white?
ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

May 18 2012, 05:15:22 UTC 9 years ago

To me its a unified color, but ... it's like seeing purple made by a red layer and a blue layer. I can kind of tell that there are different substances, one of which is green and one of which is red. But they don't separate in my eyes the way red/green 3D does.

English so does not have words designed to describe this. Fortunately I've tracked through other languages that do.

Oh! What else it's like: when you hold something brightly colored that is also glow-in-the-dark, and the light is dim, so you can see both the glow and the surface color at the same time. I have a luridly purple dragon that glows green. I love that crazy thing.
lyonesse

Re: Hmm...

lyonesse

May 18 2012, 05:32:28 UTC 9 years ago

what other languages, and how do you mean...?

i do think of the layered and glow-in-the-dark experiences as being of two things simultaneously as well, but this may just be an interpretive rather than experiential difference between our experiences.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

May 19 2012, 22:12:21 UTC 9 years ago

>>what other languages, and how do you mean...?<<

haikujaguar's Jokka aliens have more complex vision, and the color words in their language reflect that. My desert elves do too, in different ways, and that shows up in the vocabulary for Seshaa, the language of the Whispering Sands. And once you have words for something, it's easier to organize thoughts on the topic than if you don't.
dhyvd

Yeah,

dhyvd

May 18 2012, 13:54:53 UTC 9 years ago

A lot of people have special eyes nowadays,
e.g. seeing into Near-UV and down into Infa-Red as well.

Old genes being re-activated or new genes being formed, I dunno, it's likely an optional growth cycle for the 4 eyes (2 obvious plus the "third eye" but also there is an "eye" in the chest area, I think the... thymus "gland"...),
anyhow, I'll now go read the article, thanks for sharing the link.
judifilksign

Re: Yeah,

judifilksign

May 21 2012, 20:20:55 UTC 9 years ago

I used to see into the infra-red. It was like an aura around people and animals like deer. I could also tell right away whether someone had left a burner on the stove, or the oven on after getting something out.

When I got diabetes, and older, my eyes degenerated and I could no longer see the infra red auras.

I miss being able to see the deer at night before they cross over into my headlights. As a super-power, it was pretty low-key, but also pretty useful.

I often wished I had words to describe my perceptions.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Yeah,

ysabetwordsmith

May 22 2012, 06:29:18 UTC 9 years ago

I barely get into infrared. My ultraviolet is much better. And I can see which things will glow in the dark even if they aren't lit.
dhyvd

Re: Yeah,

dhyvd

June 6 2012, 13:50:04 UTC 9 years ago

Perhaps with fat-soul-able vitamin A and D, you might be able to regain it. And of course, changing to a mostly protein and vegetable diet will solve diabetes, as only your brain uses sugar. It thus helps to study difficult things.

That's how I helped repair my own vision, and sugar problems... and I go to a personal trainer 3 days a week... no motivation at "home" in my apart-ment.