William Gibson is well-known for his science fiction writing, which I love, but my favourite book of his is a non-science fiction novel. Pattern Recognition’s heroine, Cayce Pollard, is highly sensitive, and that plus Gibson’s mentally chewy writing has made me a happy re-reader of this novel.

Cayce Pollard is highly sensitive in a very particular way. Not only that, but she makes good money selling her sensitivity:

“Google Cayce and you will find ‘coolhunter,’ and if you look closely you may see it suggested that she is a ‘sensitive’ of some kind, a dowser in the world of global marketing.”

In all sorts of ways, Cayce endears. For those of us who are constantly fighting the fashion industry’s insistence on clothing tags that scratch and itch and generally get in the way to the point where we are as eager to cut off the label as we are the price tag once we get home, Cayce could be our champion. She takes fashion-provoked irritability to whole new levels:

“CPUs. Cayce Pollard Units. That’s what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention.

“What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity threatens to spawn its own cult.”

But that’s not all there is to Cayce. Using her particular sensitivities and following her curiosities, she gets into odd and dangerous trouble, gets out again, makes friends, and solves mysteries.

Thanks to William Gibson’s skillful creativity, Cayce has a lot to offer as a role model for living the truth, for being ourselves – all freaky little quirks included.

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.”

~ Patricia Alexander

Curiosity is like a flashlight beam. We aim it at what we want to see more clearly. Or, rather, curiosity aims us. When we’re curious, we’re the beam of light following the feeling of wonder to the next illuminated view. It’s not about answers (that’s where creativity comes in); it’s about loving the questions.

Curiosity Energizes

There’s a difference between information input that overloads and questing that enthralls. For highly sensitive people, it can be important to know the difference. Pursuing wonder purely for wonder’s sake renews the batteries rather than drains them.

Curiosity Enlightens

Wanting very much to know something opens us to being changed by what we discover. Allowing ourselves to be drawn when we don’t know why we are can, over time, show us recurring themes of interest, which then become nameable and even more pursuable.

Curiosity Lightens

“What the…?” With our heightened senses and our appreciation of subtlety, HSPs tend to notice oddness. Seeking the unusual in the everyday can net a host of curiosities to hoot about. More intensely, emerging from a deep concentration on the absolutely riveting is like coming out of a trance or a meditation session. Time has passed unheeded. Breath has slowed and calmed. There may even be a bit of a noticeable humming buzz. Weights have lifted.

Curiosity Directs

Following curiosity, indulging in delving, changes the view. What we discover shifts the place from which we look, redirects perspective. New worlds heave into view.

Curiosity Connects

When we’re plugged into what makes us light up, when we’re enthralled, we’re beacons that attract others (that’s where community comes in). But that’s not all. The best thing about healthy curiosity well-pursued is that it connects us to the power source that’s both within and beyond us, making us feel more connected to our best self and more tuned in to the big picture.

What turns on your curiosity switch to full beam? Holding a camera in your hand? Walking into a library? Wandering through a flea market? Exploring nature? Having unscheduled blocks of time? Travelling? Identifying the switch makes the power of curiosity biddable.

“Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding?”

~ Russell Hoban

Middle photo by Michael Mundhenk.

I’ve rarely read a book more gripping, whether fiction or non-fiction, and it’s gripping on many levels, from learning first-hand about the shipwreck from records left by survivors to being privy to Thompson’s creative process in trying to locate then recover the treasure to the mastermind tactics needed by Thompson and his crew to avoid the cutthroat competition from other treasure hunters closing in on their find. Gary Kinder shadowed Tommy and his crew to write this well-researched book and his words compellingly convey both the history and the action.

“For years [Tommy Thompson] had carefully cultivated a creative mind-set, worrying that if he ever stopped being different, if he ever stopped experimenting, if he ever stopped pushing and questioning and exploring and looking at life upside down, he would no longer think the thoughts that could lead him to ask the questions that no one else had asked, which is what made him unique, which is what allowed him to be what he had always wanted to be since he was a small boy: an inventor. He wanted to take old ideas, turn them inside out, and apply them in new ways; he wanted to suck the world through his senses and exhale a vision.”

By the end of Ship of Gold, I was full to the brim with mental pictures, replete with the reality brought to life by Kinder’s tale, and I was glad to let the book’s words inform my mind’s eye without outside assistance. Then I discovered Tommy Thompson’s America’s Lost Treasure, which is filled with stunning photographs.

By the time Donna and I sat on her couch and opened the cover of America’s Lost Treasure, we had both finished reading Ship of Gold. When we saw the lush photographs – of the treasure, the machines and equipment Thompson and his crew engineered, the crew itself, and more – we found ourselves laughing with the glee of being reunited with dear friends. We kept saying things like, “Look! There it is!” – as though we’d been on Thompson’s ship ourselves and were now looking at photos of our own journey. It felt like making the discoveries twice, getting double the pleasure from the story of the recovery of the “Central America.” Her story, told through Gary Kinder and Tommy Thompson, is history brought back to vivid life, a fascinating look inside the process of invention, and a window into the world of high-stakes treasure hunting.