is cool.
i like to think that this is the way we were meant to perceive the world, that God created everything to appeal to all of our senses, but that in the generations since the fall we have degenerated so far from perfection as to lose this ability almost entirely. maybe someday we’ll get it back. i know i’d be excited.
I’m a synesthesetic. (I’m assuming that’s how you describe it…) I had no idea. I knew it was different, that other people don’t see numbers the way I do. But I didn’t know that it was research quality stuff. I thought it was just an oddity. I see numbers in a specific pattern that repeats through space going to the right and kind of spiraling upwards. I think it helped me identify what numbers were if they had a specific place. It was horrible trying to do math though– it still is. To think of a number and try to subtract another number from it– I think of the places where those numbers are and the distances between them, which gives me a rough guess of about what the difference is. To learn how to add or subtract where you carry 1’s and 0’s, was a nightmare because you had to abolish the place to even try and get the mechanics of adding and subtracting to work. Learning negative numbers was horrifying. They just go backwards from 0 into oblivion, but they kind of descend as well. Once I memorized multiplication tables, it was a god-send– you can still think about the place where the number is, and figure out how what 5 X 5 is for example. Because years are also numbers, I see the years in this same spiraling spatial pattern as well.
You know what’s really awesome?
“Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained.”
Both my parents perceive time in spatial patterns. The calendar year to be precise. My mother sees the months in a giant ellipse that hangs vertically. My father sees the months in a H shape. January is at the top left of the H and it goes down through May on the left side– June and July are in the center– then August is at the top right side and goes down through December at the bottom.
I have a very mild form of synesthesia. i can see colors in plain black text, i associate certain colors with emotions, days of the week and even sound. The Phantom of the Opera overture is black and electric green, the song Prima Donna is pink and beige. I can tell you what color your name is just by hearing it (Nichole is browns and gold).