Subjectivism is mandatory. When I look, I don’t see the same as you – I can’t. I’m sure my brain processes the inputs in different ways, sparks different neuronal connections. But I’m also aware of the filters in the way of what I see.

My vision occupies a wide space. I’d say it probably covers a shape a bit like a cucumber on its side. I suspect that’s wider than most people’s because my eyes are narrowly spaced, but have an outward squint – when I look you in the eyes, only one of my eyes is ever looking straight at you, which can be disconcerting. 

(I sometimes play the game of looking people in one of their eyes then the other, and asking which one they feel themselves to be “in”. Some people are plain confused, but others answer promptly that they feel themself to be in one or the other.)

The area of actual focus though, it’s much smaller. Of the total visual cucumber, I probably only can focus on an area the size of a two-pence piece, for non-UK types, a cross-section of a small egg. I can still see outside of this area: because of my squint, I can see to my right and left simultaneously, and can watch parallel movement near to both my ears at once, though it is blurred. 

I can always see my glasses in my vision, as ghostly blurred borders. The glasses themselves are scratched and not always the cleanest, so I can see smudges and reflections on them. As my eyes are close together, I can also see the bridge and sides of my nose, ghostly brown in the middle of my sight. At the top of my vision, I also see my hairy beetling brows, and a secondary frame of faint blurred eyelashes, like a torn edge of trembling paper. Afterimages stay around most objects as my head moves.

Beyond the shapes and frames, my vision itself isn’t perfect. There are the dancing rainbow sparks of photopsia if I stand up too quickly , but they aren’t the most intrusive elements. There is a texture to my vision, like blotting paper or drifting static, with patches of brightness and darkness. It trembles and roils, never keeping still. This may be ‘visual snow’ or the texture might be part of another layer I can see, a liquid one with small bubbles in it. The bubbles drift slowly across my vision, sometimes giving me bokeh or lens flares, so presumably sits in my vitreous humour or on top of my lens.

Finally, floating in the fluid inside my eyeballs are floaters, which look like hairs or shrimp, twitching and moving with my eyeball. I understand that these are elements of my internal sclera (the tough white ball) that have become detached and will float there forever. I have some in each eye – the largest is in the centre of the vision in my right eye, the second-largest down and right from the centre of my left eye’s vision. They do move around and sometimes annoyingly overlap, leaving a dark twisted knot in the centre of my vision. On a sunny day, I’ll lie on the beach and chase them around, trying to unfocus my vision to keep my eyes still whilst keeping my attention on them. 

Of course, I am also short-sighted (hence the glasses) and colourblind (deuteranopia), so I do not see the same as you. Without my glasses, anything further than a foot aware starts blurring. But, I think because of my astigmatism, it is a consistent blur, like a camera autofocus that never quite hits the mark – I can see distant small details in a blur. In contrast, I can see very fine details on objects due to the short-sightedness – perhaps why I love tiny linocuts and models. And of course, everything lacks the full range of colours that yours do, though I have lived with all my life, so cannot elucidate the difference, as I have never experienced the alternative (only dreamt it, richly.)

None of this, none of it, stops my enjoyment of the world, of seas, clouds, paintings, photographs or my children’s eyes.

Headline image: As I See by Boris Artzybasheff