Synesthesia

Tulips for Padme and Leia
Originally uploaded by nodigio

I am a synesthete. It has been confirmed by several neurologists.

I see color in sounds – which is one of my clues that I am losing my hearing. I am seeing less color overlays for the higher ranges. One of the reasons I love the original Fantasia so much is that in many places, they got the colors right. When I listen to music on line, I have a program that converts the sounds to color splashes and so I “hear” through color in the ranges I no longer physically hear.

I also feel texture in temperatures and can tell when a dish is properly cooked by the number of “points” I feel, like pressing my hands on the lead end of an upright bundle of sharpened pencils. Not all points are sharp, though. Some feel like the pins in those little square pin sculptures where you press your hand or face or something in them to get an impression. Not all temperatures come across as points. Heat is pointy, high heat gets sharp and pointy. Cold gets fuzzy, then slick, then slick and sweaty/greasy.

Scents come to me as colors and sometimes as textures. Foul or dangerous scents almost always come through as textures, usually sandpaper along my insteps, which makes me jumpy. I don’t even have to actually register the scent in my nose; my brain takes smells I can’t consciously detect and gives me prickly feet if it’s dangerous to me. If it’s not dangerous, it feels like fresh rose petals on the backs of my hands, or little ghost touches. Roses have an orange sheen to them, which is why I get such a kick out of “blue” or “black” roses. Chamomile smells green, a chartreuse green that prickles just under the skin of my forearms.

Texture has to match the color I “see” which makes me very picky when I shop for clothes or fabric or anything I have to touch. It’s – disconcerting – to touch something that is a different color than what I perceive it to be. This makes me both reluctant and eager to touch things.

Color – real color, not the overlay colors I perceive with sounds or scents – provokes flavors in my mouth and nose. Purple, for example, tastes of raspberries dipped in powdered sugar and yogurt with a salty tang in my nose that makes it itch a bit, and green tastes of pumpkins and asafetida. When I look at really colorful things, I tend to open my mouth a bit to taste all the colors.

I don’t have the most commonly known form of synesthesia – I don’t see numbers as colors. In fact, if they are mixed with symbols I can’t see the numbers at all, although I do see the symbols. I developed dyscalculia after long term chemotherapy, so that messed up my abilities here. Now, numbers not only disappear when mixed with symbols; if they are in the wrong placement, I can’t see them. I can’t write out numerical formulae, even the simplest first grade addition, and see it. I can’t read or write mathematical proofs anymore. I can speak numbers and calculate in my head, though. I don’t “see” numbers when I do this, I see something resembling graphs and I can speak the number of it, but I can’t “see” it, not on paper, not in chalk, not in my head. A few numbers, placed side by side, I can see. If I look at a number pad all at once, the keys are blank, but if I look at it one line at a time, I can see the numbers on the keys so I can, with difficulty, use a calculator, but I’m prone to lots of errors.

I am rather partial to the theory that synesthetes are people who didn’t lose their multiplicity of sensory connections as they grew up.