synaesthesia

These notes came directly from my journals ~ they are ramblings on my tendency to see time, numbers and other abstractions as having form, texture, color.

I discovered in 2002 that I am a synaesthete. I had no idea that the way my mind works is unusual - I figured that everyone, for example, sees numbers only in relation to each other, and time as a shape. The realization came when I read an article on synaesthesia in the local newspaper. Since then I've begun to explore synaesthesia through journals, and art.

The words here are exactly as they are in the journals; I haven't edited anything yet. Thoughts, as written in a small notebook ~ thus the short lines. [Brackets] mean there is a small drawing which is not reproducible in this text document.

from the Synaesthesia Journals

it's about light.

INTEGERS

an inchworm stretching
or a snake
(NOT
a caterpillar
in shadow)

puffing out from 0
like a black hole!

sexy negative numbers
enticing
added to themselves they
are less
in the blackness ~
they are tarnished
silver!!

(OH
too many!)

pink
pools of
light
in afternoon
bedroom
windowsills

The Universe in both directions.

what it looks like
&
what it is

what it looks like
and what it is

purple tunnels
purple tunnels
my breath -
and each contraction
of my chest
is a flower blooming
and a
petal of silence

PURPLE
PURPLE

purple pain
& arms around
my shoulders
(I've always liked arms.)

way to describe
numbers. spiraling
into infinity?
. don't think.
------------------------------------------------------------------

white

.numbers.

negative is silver
beyond zero, the
blackest black.
( and silver -------
small & perfect

-12 -11 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

-- 0 --
like a jewel
black on black
the terrible sweetness
the moon
& all things
open to interpretation
as all things

.OPEN.

bamboo
raindrop
grace

the velvet
shoes
that no longer fit

(
how it is & how it will be
how it is.
and how it will be.

what it looks like
and what it is
)

4.
)*(

too much.

snowblind,
butterfly
angels ~

kale.

yellow
doorstep,

damp
mat

spoke too soon
jumbled syntax,
always been.
dyslexia of the mind,
or a brain fashioned for
a forgotten tongue.

(maybe left-handed's to blame)

a dark light turns silver
to gold

1. increase into space
2. into whiteness: motes of light
fall into black & the change
comes. above numbers

more than a line ----
an organism,
like mitochondria.
or a drop of rain.
the ends can't be seen

negative to 9
positive to 100
others called into existence
((DREAM NUMBERS))
numbers along a path
dark charcoal or black
part of its surroundings
like a trail, not a sidewalk

everything relates to everything else ~~

like a hologram

or a weaving ~ each thread weaving in & out
over & around
the rest

vanishing point
can't see the other side

numbers don't stand alone - all numbers are part of a continuum, they stand only in relation to other numbers

years exist only in relation to other years.

perspective on, say, 1940, varies depending on where it's viewed from.
1940 is different viewed from 2002 than it is from 1972. but all part of the same continuum.

currents of sand at Carkeek Park, Seattle

				

under each camellia leaf a universe of time & experience.
time in the darkness.


butterfly
     feet



		in the dream

	in the dream it was awake
_______________________________

	the spark in the lock
	.each one. 
	the darkness lit by the spark
	the feel of the gleam


	dusty slats,
	back of maple

microscopy photograph of a lotus - digitally altered colors

EDGES

an ion,
or eucalyptus
smoke
in the chimney

the raveled edge of blackness
cut velvet.

the wind-frayed raven wing
poised on grasstops
shifts
back
into silent strata

the black edge of yellow

the brown velvet scent of
pine-smoked tea

monarch butterflies in the white camellias.

candy cigarettes & plastic motorcycles & the green green grass

shards of memory light. the forgotten beginning.

pink pink daylight through naptime camellias & old buttons turning to dust below the sash.

concrete donkeys painted bright!

fences.

finding it. getting it to come. coming to it. valleys of thought, rivers of light, neural rainbows!

& it's always been. colored scent & textured dreams. purplebrown sex on a saturday afternoon by the river of shadow.
this is what the angels see - white falling into blackness. dissolve into numbers. particles of white dissolve to black.
numbers emanate. ENERGY, black black energy, or maybe a black hole. 0 steady. beginning & end. too much, too much,
too much, too much. like the fat numbers again, terrifying in their plumpness, in the black eyeswirl.
the comfort of zero, the taste of black & silver. tiny numbers.

i remember what came before.

little boxes of time. tunnels of weeks & days & noontime alleys with chrome. milkglass fantasies. time sashaying through
golden glasslight & coming out pure. the green glass candydish with the butterscotch wrappers, on the mediterranean
table with black iron handles. solid as vision or thought ~ only what is in the moment. in the moment. again, again, in
the moment. lost in the middle of the tunnel of time.

There is no present or future ~ only the past happening over and over again ~ now.
~eugene o'neill

"Just as the sun shines through a glass - as though divested of body & substance - so the stars penetrate one another
in the body. For the sun and the moon and all planets, as well as all the stars and the whole chaos are in man...
the body attracts heaven." ~ Paracelsus

thick.

thick light. thickkk. purple is brown is purple = 0. mixing colors with hands, with eyes, with heart. with the memory of what
was before, and never was. reaching for it. calling it home.

time&spacetunnels.

came first.

millionth-second: a veil of magnetic blackness between two points.

time's form reveals its essence.
the essence intertwines with the form.
time unveils its form.
the essence expressed.
time dances within itself.
the path & the journey are one.
time's essence is its form.
the cloud is the rain, the action is the thought,
every particle is a universe of time.

"It is possible to tell by the shape, form, and color, the qualities and virtues of each herb and root;
these are their signs....and the same is true of silver and gold. Nature also forges man, now a gold
man, now a silver man, now a fig man, now a bean man." ~ Paracelsus.

mexican flowers. the crying Oaxacan mask on red cloth on the wall of the silver Airstream heading south.
grapes in a plastic bowl.

rattlesnake & sweet creosote bushes beside the highway morning. the smell of the sun.

(DREAM ALCHEMY)

the alchemy of dreams

the color of knowledge
the color of history
the color of time

of the path & the sphere
of plane & dimension

the color of the source
the hue of the creation
in a bluegreen eye

the dream of your eyes in mine.

the light under the maple tree, the moss in the grass. black mailbox with a red flag. always been
always been. pale carport dirt on my hands. basement paint, workbench, vise. the smell of hot
sawdust on the blade. the window we didn't use. where it all flowed from, where it all went. the
yellow light and thick pink paint. boxes & forgotten corners only I knew. the fuse behind the door,
lonely window. upstairs thick mexican glass & green velvet. iron & glasslight, dark screens. seattle
sunshine through glass fruit in a maple bowl. what everything is, and was, and will be. butterfly
canopy & everything white, but shadows were my dream. caterpillar shadows & holly; deodara &
oregon grape. the fuschia in the eaves. all shadow, moist, real. your eyes. I'd never seen your eyes.

bluegreen & brown & gray. the colors of us. what we make together. what it's always been before we
knew, and what it is now.

((when the moon fades to blue.))

age ten, hidden poems, secret books.
time's motionless under the bed.
time. like numbers, dark is closer to zero & infinity ~ they braid themselves into one.
past zero, "the blackest black" time stands still, or moves backwards into itself.
ouroboros

illustration from an old alchemical text

				


			Kali.
		


gradations of energy.
a dove, or black rain.
                    ashes.
          summer shadows ~
the surprise beneath the leaf.
								grace.
		

		
					time's form reveals its essence.

					1. shadows	
					2. path
					3. truth
					4. hologram
					5. green (black & white)
					6. accordion
					7. gradations
					8. magnetic
					9. (	)

							particles.

				blooms.


fallen.
beauty.
	surrounded.
	inside.
time observed from within.

last August my sight changed. traffic lights are bluegreen. sunlight's more saturated. light oozes from
 everything, even the rain, the grey pavement, typing paper. the space between blades of grass is
 blue.

	
time's a hawk diving across the hood of a speeding car.


some angels. particles of love.  your eyes, dreams made flesh     !			

green flecks in brown.

meaning		less.

magnetic freedom

						pieces of it. each piece the whole. 
						or ayin.


			imagine deep purple impressions in earth, black gaps in white marble. 


shade at the crumbling edges of old sidewalks. 

sand.

blueberries in the backseat, pink toes.

					antique pencils, & watercolors cracked in the tin.
					painted ducks.
					dark green shadows.


Yah YHVH Tseva'ot....created the universe in three ciphers: boundary, language, and number. Ten
 sefirot belimah - numerals of nothingness, entities of emptiness. Ten sefirot belimah, corresponding
 to the ten fingers, five opposite five, with the covenant of oneness precisely in the middle. Ten
 sefirot belimah. Their number is ten, yet infinite. Their end is their beginning, their beginning their
 end, like a flame joined to a burning coal. Ten sefirot belimah. A vision flashing like lightning. Their
 limit has no end. 
					      ~~ from the Sefir Yetsirah (3rd-6th centuries)


"their beginning their end, like a flame joined to a burning coal"

infinitely small & infinitely large are one. the beginning of time, the end of it. a circle, a cycle, a totality, a truth. 
a cell and a universe are contained in each other.
each is whole.


it flows out of itself


			 blunt velvet purpled. in the small 
morning light blooms in pieces.
			
				mushrooms

a bite of blackness ~ torn.
like meat. like meat on the bone. conception of a fossil, fossil time, fossil grave. each particle of dirt
 is a grave! we live on the peril & grace of our ancestors. their time & ours is pure black, infinitely
 small & immense. the skull in a cardboard box in the garage carries time in its empty crania. we all
 eat time. 

						color blooms from no color
						
(("The earth is black, brown...but all the hues - green, blue, white, and red - are concealed in 
it....the noblest and most delicate colors arise from this black." ~ Paracelsus.))
		
					0 is black.


		the numbers spill from it along a black path ~ black tinged with the colors of the
 		integers, 		each set of tens, of hundreds, of thousands, millions, trillions,
 		the color of the 		infinite 			white~black.
		0-black is the mother of time, of no-time, of color, number, of no-number
		it's the single cell 
		it exists always & nowhere & only when seen
		it's the slit of light in the screen, 
		the womb, the place you don't remember, the place that's always there. 
		the place long gone & fossilized in the ridges of your skull. every skull.



				(0 is australopithecine moonlight)
				       0 is the fire in the cave.
					         0



					         .

					
				          the place you drown.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

mecury & sulphur, from an old alchemical text

time & space conceptions of the body

the dimensions & perceptions of the body exist in space, are formed from within & without. dark
purple dimensions of body systems. lips, throat, toes. elbows & eyelids. shivers. the curve of thighs,
the heart, red blood cells. a virus. lungs, spine, vertebrae, uterus. too many to name. each has a
shape apart from its observable form. shape & texture & color. viruses like prickly round pods.
arteries on the left, or body's right, reaching toward the heart. circulation spiraling toward the feet.
light green, nothing blue. the thought of blood blue beneath the skin. ova in a smooth pod, like fresh
peas. waiting. the spine silvery grey, alive, almost like a mind. intestines like smooth, supple madrona
skin. breasts mysterious, tender ripe fruit. not so. the hidden labyrinths of the mind, neurons.
neurons behind the forehead, incomprehensible unmeasureable time. the red & orange ocular
pathways, and blue. the back of the eye a part of the brain. nose brings offerings to the mind ~ scent
the most potent perception. perceptions shape the body. the body shapes the perception. all of it,
again.
[more on this later, too tired, not making sense]

dream in circles like when I close my eyes. tight. the smooth surfaces of the sacred.
adobe dwelling in a dream. blessed to spend the night there. terracotta & buff & sand white. the
colors of desert light. when everyone else left I was alone there, the smooth waterwashed surfaces,
no corners, just love. ultimate peace. a building within a dark building, but this was light. the next
morning i watched myself die and it was fine. after night in round adobe kiva peace, everything's right.
someone else given the shark, it's okay, it's okay. left alone in adobe, there's a reason. the way the
light reaches polished sloping surfaces, even at night. desert in the city. a spiritual place in a jewelry
shop! where they sold shark pendants, wanted one so badly but it was given to someone else. but i
was the one spent the night in the sacred place, chosen. it chose me, i was the one left after the
others were gone. anointed with bliss. no silver, no blackness, just the colors of light & rounded
edges. comfort. how i never knew it could be.

when i close my eyes tight, dark green and burgundy & purples. streaks of silver. black eyeswirl.
the patterns love me & i love them. something my own. the place fat numbers float other times.
my own headspace, universe. what i think of in the universe. further back in my mind, but in this
same place, the small conception of it, in the abstract. lightspeed & distance to the moon live there.
spacecraft, sometimes (from earth only). a narrow slice of the galaxy. can't see the sun, mars way off
upper edge. in the deep distance, hubble photographs of gaseous pillars in the eagle nebula. much
further back, every small thing, deep into blackness, and the first impossible moments of our universe.
further, what there was before. before the big bang, before time as we understand it. blackness &
the absence of it. a dark, transparent black. [getting abstract here, need to come back to detail].

[daydreaming,
thinking of the quality of my writing - or lack of it! and about organizing my notes. maybe time to quit
for the night, can't concentrate. earlier tonight thought of time/space conceptions of the body for
the first time, hadn't realized before, consciously anyway, that I do this. I imagine interior parts &
systems of the body in particular ways, often these conceptions are independent of the part or
system's actual form. Though body parts are not abstractions like time or numbers, they are abstract
in the sense that they are not visible, or at least my own are not visible (of course you can see them
in xrays & photos of other people but it's not the same). How when someone says, for example,
"cigarette smoke is bad for your lungs' I think of my lungs in an abstract way. more of a feeling & a
shape than their actual form. the shape image I get when I hear 'lungs' probably does not correspond
to the actual shape/size of lungs. (I think it's bigger than it should be & composed mostly of my
textural & spacial idea of lungs). ]

maybe should make a list:
time (in many different units)
numbers (in many different units ~ & even including the tv channel lineup)
body parts
space (in many different views)
geography
there must be others as well. so integral to who i am,
it's hard to separate it. all just 'normal' to me.

***
From a letter to another synaesthete, who asked me about my conception of time:
Individual years have form, as do months, weeks, etc. The form will vary depending on my perspective
(say, the year viewed from April or from July will be a little different). What I imagine for the year is
sort of like a regular calendar - but much vaster & with more detail. Imagine that you have a calendar
with each month below the next on one page. Now imagine that it is immense, like a landscape. You are
standing in January, looking toward December which seems dark & tapered (perspective - because it is
in the distance). This is hard to explain.

There are subtle colors to the months, and textures. A week is sort of like a square transparent charcoal
-colored tunnel (square if you were to view it from the end) with the wide part being where I am now (Thursday)
and it tapers in both directions, forward and back. It's really more complex than just this, but it would take
forever to explain all the detail.

And days, days and hours have forms too. And so do decades, and centuries, and particular years. And millennia.
And eras, AD, BC, BCE, the Pleistocene, the Eocene, the Ice Age, and many others (my educational background
is in the natural sciences). Any time unit you can think of, I've got a form for it in my mind. And a fraction of a
second, very tiny fractions of time are like a veil of blackness between two points. Kind of like a magnetic field -
like what's between two magnets of opposite polarity when you try to bring them together. There are so many
units of time...and so many ways to view them.

(((I remember when I was in kindergarten and just learning about the week. I remember telling an adult
(my teacher? I remember I was in the breezeway outside the classroom when I said it) very proudly: "I know the days
of the week! ~~ Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...."
and she said, with sort of an amused look, "Whoa...stop, no, the days of the week are just Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, a week doesn't go on and on like that."
But I insisted that it did. And it does, because a week doesn't stand alone, it is part of a continuum, of course after
Saturday there is another Sunday....And I know that I had the same 'vision' of the week in my mind
that I do now ~ always been)))

Numbers are like this too - when I visualize '3' in my head for instance, I don't see just a '3' but I see it in relation to what's
around it, as part of a continuum, on sort of a path which sort of begins at zero (I can 'see' negative numbers to about
-9 or -10 too, they are very small, silver, and surrounded by the blackest black) and goes to 10, then the teens, then
up to 100, then to about oh, 120, and the line - path - extends up a little, and gets more distant. The line is sort of
charcoal black but is surrounded by more and more white as numbers get larger... the line is more like a trail than a
sidewalk - it is not sharply defined. Its blackness blends with particles of white at its edges - the white extends out, out ~~~

The colors of individual numbers are subtle and are against the charcoal background of the trail.

I could write about this forever. It is both pleasureable and frustrating to write about this, so much detail, so much
to wrestle onto paper (or into pixels, as the case may be!).
***

***
written in response to a letter from another synesthete:
You know, I hadn't thought about it til you asked, but yes, I do experience height & weight in a visio-spacial way too.
All this is very new to me, and I'm still sorting it all out. My ways of thinking about such things are so ingrained in me
that it's hard to pick out what might be different from the way others think ~ but yeah, height and weight, wow!

It's very interesting about how your numbers & letters share some of the same space ~ all my 'visual' schemes for numbers,
time, alphabet, etc. occupy different spaces, they don't intersect, or even occupy the same space at different times.

I'm fascinated by the diverse ways of visualizing the same same thing ~ this whole phenomenon astounds me.

I'm going to have to think harder about what other measurements/abstractions I think of in this way - there must be more.
***

a new list:
time (in many different units)
numbers
(in many different units ~
& even including the tv channel lineup)
body
space/the universe (in many different views)
geography
height
weight
distance
mythological figures & places