Tuesday, August 12, 2008

what I learned about myself from hanging around daughters, and no, I would not rather be fishing

I have spatial-sequence (or "number form") synesthesia, my daughter tells me. I look up. Is it serious? She describes it to me (hint: it has to do with the brain). Oh! I guess I gave it to you! I have the same thing. Only I never knew it had a name.

I thought, mistakenly, that everyone’s brain functioned this way: when I think of numbers, I instantly imagine them strutting around in a pictorial sequence. For me, at 10, the sequence bends: the teens stay in darkness, to the right of 10, then majestically climb out at 20, progressing upwards and rightwards thereafter. Until 100, when they start shooting up due north, only to turn left again after 1000. Months are arranged in a circle. December is top right. Autumn drags on the bottom. They spin counterclockwise. Days of the week, on the other hand, are a disc. I bet you could hop across the surface from Tuesday to Saturday if you tried.

It turns out that synesthesia (as described above) is very rare. And so I have to ask, what do people see in their mind’s eye when they think of numbers? I mean, do their minds grow blank?

Weird.

I thought about this biking to work and then to get coffee before an afternoon of meetings. I also noted three different fishing situations and I’m including them here for you. Three. From left to right, springing out from under five: one, two, three.


003 copy
Purchase photo 1957




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Purchase photo 1956




011 copy
Purchase photo 1955
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3 comments:

  1. Ann AlthouseWed Aug 13, 09:44:00 AM

    I've always pictured the months in a circle running counterclockwise, and I only noticed when I was quite old that it was odd that something relating to time ran counterclockwise. But it is so deeply embedded in my mind that I cannot possibly change it.

    I have December 31st right at the top, but the summer months are at the bottom, with July at the very bottom. I was pretty old when I realized this was causing me to have a distorted picture of the length of the months.

    My days of the week are a line though.

    And all of time feels like a line. I cannot shake the picture that life is a process of moving from left to right. I wish I could! Death is over there --->

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  2. ninaWed Aug 13, 01:55:00 PM

    If you are a synesthesist (and it appears that you are), you cannot change your sequential immagery. You're stuck with it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. scrawfordSat Aug 16, 07:47:00 AM

    nina, you might really enjoy Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks. He has a deep love of music and a lot of understanding about how the brain deals with patterns like numbers and notes - there's a beautiful chapter about synaesthesia, which a lot of composers have.

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