When people hear the word Synesthesia they automatically think of associating colors with numbers or musical notes. Well, that is one form of synesthesia, two actually– grapheme-color synesthesia (color with letters and numbers) and chromesthesia (color with sound). Feynman had the first kind, the photographer Jaime Ibarra has the second. But there are other types of synesthesia too. Spatial sequence synesthesia (SSS) is where you see things (usually time in hours, days, months etc) arranged in a particular order. People with SSS also have extraordinary memory. Another is Number-form synesthesia where you see numbers arranged in space. Francis Galton is said to have had number-form synesthesia. 1 in 23 people have some form of synesthesia.
For example, when you think of a day or date, this week or next week, or you set up an appointment or receive an email with a date/day on it or someone calls you about an event later in the week, what do you see? I have hand drawn some of these images that exist in my head (mind?) but I'll describe it here in words. I see a ribbon. Well, it's either one circular ribbon or two flat ribbons pasted together at the ends to make them a loop. It's not exactly circular though. The curvature at the ends are a bit abrupt. The ribbon stands on its edge, sometimes it lies flat too. Sometimes part of it stands up and part lies flat and it twists back up again. The two abrupt curvatures at the ends are the weekends. And the smoother parts are the two weeks. The ribbons have segments or panels corresponding to days. A lot of the times I am usually closest to the current day. Sometimes I am hovering over it (if the ribbon is flat) and sometimes I am standing next to it (if the ribbon is standing on an edge). And I always see two weeks at once. No more, no less. I cannot think of today without seeing the corresponding day next week, or last week. I cannot see one Friday without the other one or one weekend without the previous or the next!! Fridays are right before the sharp bends at the ends. Saturday goes into the bend and the bend ends on Sunday. The ribbon flattens after that for the rest of the week till it comes up to Friday again. I am not sure if the panels for the days are colored. Sometimes they are. I think Wednesdays are green/greenish and Mondays are ashen. That's how I see days/dates in the near future. That's also what weeks look like to me at any mention of a "day". Names of days, events or dates coming up in the near future, the mention of weekend and a host of other things triggers this image in mind.
How about time? It's also a ribbon or tape but instead of lying on its edge or flat, this one is vertical and hangs down. It has panels as well, corresponding to the hours, of which there are twenty-four, of course–twelve for each half. This one definitely shaded, night hours being dark and morning hours being lighter or white. The darker shading starts around 6PM even though where I live may have daylight way beyond that. However, not all panels are the same size and since they are grouped by shade, the individual hour isn't visible to me unless there is a specific time that I need to heed. Oh, and unlike the week ribbon, there is no relative motion between me and this time ribbon. It simply hangs there and my _attention_ moves from segment to segment as needed and that segment gets magnified with all kinds of detail.
Then there is the circle of the year. This looks more like a circular strip or ring than a ribbon where January and December go seamlessly from one to the next. I have no awareness of the actual year, just the relative positions of the months on this circle. Not all segments/months are the same size: some are large, some small. And I am usually stuck somewhere in August/September. Well, not exactly in it, but right next to the ring. This makes other months further from me. My birthday is in February so I don't understand this placement! Stuck isn't the right word, rather let me say, I find myself in that part of the year a lot of the times. I am free to move to or hover over any month, but it's easier for me to go to the current month. Each month has a matrix of dates, but they almost never emerge to my attention unless there is an event (like birthday) associated with it. Every year when December is over, I just start over at January again. I see one single year. I do not see the passage of the years. To do that I need to look at an entire century which brings us to the next point.
The only way I can see years (plural) is in the context of a century. I see one hundred years on a matrix. And there are different slabs for each century. The centuries themselves start in antiquity... I actually see mist and fog. Some parts are closer than others and often I seem to standing somewhere in the rows of 80s and 90s in the beginning of those rows. But I also see the current year. Right now that's on the next "slab" compared to my usual position.
Lastly, I not only see centuries like this, but numbers in general. I don't see a number line, but number slabs starting from 1 to 100 in a square matrix. Since this aren't years, so I am actually stuck near the early 80s and 90s and see everything from this vantage point. 101 is on the next slab to the right and up near the top. Zero isn't a number but a corner and negative numbers go backwards in slabs to my left.
So it appears that I have both SSS and number-form synesthesia. I do have very good memory and people are either surprised or incredulous about it.
What do you think of all this? Do you have any kind of synesthesia? Do you have any such experiences? If so what kind?
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