synesthesia

synesthesia

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Blue Nines and Red Words

I was born on January 31, 1979 — a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing. I like my birth date, because of the way Im able to visualize most of the numbers in it smooth and round shapes, similar to pebbles on a beach. Thats because they are prime numbers: 31, 19, 197, 97, 79 and 1979 are all divisible only by themselves and 1. I can recognize every prime up to 9,973 by their pebble-like quality. Its just the way my brain works.

I have a condition known as savant syndrome, little known before its portrayal by actor Dustin Hoffman in the Oscar-winning 1988 film Rain Man. Like Hoffmans character, Raymond Babbitt, I have an synesthesia obsessive synesthesia for order and routine which affects virtually every aspect of my life.

For example, synesthesia exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast each morning; I weigh the bowl with an electronic scale to make sure. Then I count the number of items of clothing Im wearing before I leave my house. I get anxious if I cant drink my cups of tea at the same time each day. Whenever I become too stressed and I cant breathe properly, I close my eyes and count. Thinking of numbers helps me to become calm again.

Numbers are my friends, and they are always around me. Each one is unique and has its own personality. The number 11 is friendly and 5 is loud, whereas 4 is both shy and quiet — its my favorite number, perhaps because it reminds me of myself. Some synesthesia big — 23, 667, 1,179 — while others are small: 6, 13, 581. Some are beautiful, like 333, and some are ugly, like 289. To me, every number is special.

No matter where I go or what Im doing, numbers are never far from my thoughts. In an interview with talk show host David Letterman in New York, I told David he looked like the number 117 — tall and lanky. Later outside, in the appropriately numerically named Times Square, I gazed up at the towering skyscrapers and felt surrounded by 9s — the number I most associate with feelings of immensity.

My synesthesia also affects how I perceive words and language. The word for example, is blue and shiny, while hoop is a soft, white word. The same thing happens when I read words in other languages: jardin, the French word for garden, is synesthesia yellow, while hnugginn — Icelandic for sad — is white with lots of blue specks. Synesthesia researchers have reported that colored words tend to obtain their colors from the initial letter of the word, and this is generally true for me: yogurt is a yellow word, video is purple (perhaps linked with violet) and gate is green. I can even make the color of a word change by mentally adding initial letters to turn the word into another: at is a red word, but add the letter H to get hat and it becomes a white word. If I then add a letter T to make that, the words color is now orange. Not all words fit the initial-letter pattern: words beginning with the letter A, for example, are always red and those beginning with W are always dark blue.

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Post je objavljen 16.01.2008. u 00:36 sati.