Synesthesia and related

I've mentioned my synesthesia here, but never really gotten into what it is or how it affects me.

Back in the summer of 2001, I was working as an office temp for a medical office over the summer, and often ran out of things to do by 2 p.m. but had to stick around until 5 to check in patients and answer phones. As a result, I was reading the copies of "Time" that were in the waiting room for the patients, and I ran across this article. And I kind of freaked.

Synesthesia is when your senses are, for lack of a better term, cross-wired. For example, I can hear tastes and taste sounds. Because I also see sounds as colors and shapes, this means I often translate tastes into color and shape as well. For example, one time while explaining this to my friends, I explained that watermelon-flavored Blow Pops taste like Irish music (specifically, a reel —and there must be a fiddle, because they have a very fiddley sound). This is now, on a side-note, the "catch-phrase" they all associate with me. Anyway, they also taste very much like burnt siena, not because that's the actual flavor, but because that is what fiddley Irish reels tend to taste like. Note I said taste and not look — that's 'cause I'm all screwy. And yes, that's in addition to tasting like watermelon candy.

I do also have grapheme-color synesthesia, which is the most common form; most (but not all) people with other forms also have this. Which means that, for example, the title of this blog is red ("siya"), orange ("that") and green ("girl"). These are not colors I associate with those words — those are the colors that the words are. They've always been that color, they always will be that color, and I didn't choose them. That's just what they look like to me.

Not everyone experiences this the same way, and we can get very frustrated when confronted with someone else's synesthesia (not its existence, but their specific experiences). For example, I once had to leave a classroom when the professor was sharing a Rimbaud poem, because the colors he gave letters in the poem were so completely wrong it upset me. Sean Day (in the "Time" article) sees harmonica music as blue-green; for me, it is a very sharp reddish-purple with yellowy-orange highlights.

One of the reasons I've always had this intense curiosity to try LSD — not that I am brave enough to break the law or stupid enough to try it without someone around who could get me through a bad trip intact — is because it is supposed to cause synesthesia-like experiences for people without the ability, and I want to see what would happen if someone who already had synesthesia used it.

Anyway, I kind of freaked because I had never heard of this before, but I did know that most people did not taste music or mix up 2 and 6 because they are EXACTLY the same shade of blue, and finding out that not only was I not the only person who did this, but there was actually a name for it and scientific studies about it, was completely overwhelming to me. But it was really cool to find out that I was not, after all, completely insane. Always a plus, yes?

As I did a little more research, I found some other, related issues issues that I have are connected to synesthesia. Like my inability to tell my left from my right (I can "set" myself for the day with the "L" hand trick, but all bets are off once I've slept or if I haven't needed it for the day), a very good memory (I don't have a great visual memory, so it's not technically photographic, but I remember details of everything I've ever read* or heard and I have a very good spatial memory) and trouble with mathematics — if a formula is right in front of me, I can do it, but give me an application for it, and I can't begin to figure out what information is needed or how to put it together. Word problems destroyed my math grades from third grade on and killed my dreams of a physics degree.

What's interesting to me is that my sister, my grandmother, my aunt, and several of my cousins also have the left-right confusion, and most of them have dyslexia except one cousin who also has synesthesia (I found out after I found a name for it) — and I've heard that the two are related. Kind of weird.

I was mostly thinking about this today as I read another blogger's description of faceblindness and realized I'd never really talked about this. I think it's really fascinating how different all of our perceptions of the world are.

*The "Time" article? I found it again because I remember reading it in the beginning of August in 2001, I remembered that it was from that year and the month was red, so it must have been April or May, that it was in "Time" and that the story was about a little boy named Sean and it talked about how he saw music. I have not read that article since August 2001, nor did I have a copy saved. I just did a Google search for the key points I remembered in order to find it. I don't remember the other stories in that issue because I think I just read that one and then went on an "OMG THIS IS IT, GOOGLE" spree, but I do remember that Timothy McVeigh's execution delay was the cover story, because that's why I was reading that particular issue. This is how my memory works, and it's not as awesome as you'd think.

Oh, and the left-right thing? Sucks, by the way. I can't tell east and west apart, either.

So I forgot...

... to have this thing e-mail me comments. :-(

Identity and politics

Not identity politics, thank you very much. I'm not going to go into the problems with that phrase here, but let's just all agree that most people's identities play a role in their political choices.

Anyway.

The thing that has bothered me most about this race is the nasty attitudes coming out about Sen. Obama (and to a lesser extent, Sen. Clinton and Gov. Palin, but I want to focus on the other thing right now). People have problems with him that they would never have about a white candidate — he has been accused of being an Arab and a Muslim (and, to paraphrase Gen. Powell, so what if he was? Young Americans who happen to be Arab or Muslim shouldn't dream of one day being president?), his image has appeared in racist propaganda — including proposed "food stamp" bucks that portrayed his face with a bucket of fried chicken and watermelon — and rumors have swirled that he "hates white people" or "wants to enslave white people" (that last one even showed up on PostSecret).

Ouch. Do people forget that he had a white mother, or that he was raised by his white grandparents? Do they forget that their values are the ones he learned? Anyone who has read "Dreams From My Father" or listened to him talk about his childhood knows that his mother and his grandparents were just as important to him in his formation of his identity.

I grew up in a similar situation to Sen. Obama. Though both of my parents are mixed, my mother's family identified as German and has for generations. They are the people who raised me, and I grew up mostly identifying myself the same way — but never have I been more aware of my mixed heritage than in this election, where it has become quite clear that people who are not "pure" can be horribly mistreated in public opinion with very little opposition or even attention. And when they point it out gently ("They're going to say I don't look like those presidents on the dollar bills" — and, ironically, one of the McCain campaign's ads does just that), they are accused of playing the race card.

And then a few days ago, I read an article that interviewed Democratic McCain supporters — and many of them gave Obama's heritage as their reason for supporting Sen. McCain. One person even said that he felt it was a sin to mix the races.

Ouch again.

I have no problem with people voting for the candidate of their choice, and in fact encourage it. I don't expect everyone to support the same person I do. But I wonder if people know how incredibly hurtful it is for those of us from similar backgrounds to hear their opinions on Sen. Obama's background? I wonder if they realize that attitudes like this are why so many of us who are part-white identify with our non-white ancestors more? I wonder if they realize that this kind of attitude is just as much "identity politics" as anything else?

And it's really hurtful to see people you thought well of use these tired, racist insults without even thinking that they might be offending or hurting someone.

Oh sisters

My sister has been sending me bumper stickers on Facebook for, like, a month, and I finally broke down and accepted the application so I could see them. 90 percent of them are jokes about being short, Asian, and a geek and the other 10 percent are hot guys.

My sister knows me way too well.

Working nights

I really love working nights a lot, honestly. It's nice to be somewhere where there aren't a lot of people and isn't a lot of craziness during my working hours, and heading home is so quiet. I like being able to sleep in and still having time to play around or do household shit before work.

But I'd really like to take a class or two, and this isn't a real good schedule for that, unfortunately. Nor is it all that conducive to having a social life.

You win some, you lose some.

Save a place, I'll be there

I'm really starting to feel stifled and ready to move on. Unfortunately, my financial situation (and lease) mean I am going to be stuck in this place until at least June. I'd been feeling somewhat restless and ready to shake the vineyard dust from my feet, but it was just a vague sense in the back of my mind. When it was time to leave New York (and time to head off for New York), it took months to build — almost a year, even. So I figured I'd be content with this place for a bit longer.

Nope, my gut says. Time to go now! Well, it's going to have to wait until I line up a job, sell off some of my crap, and figure out what's going on — and all of that will need to wait until after Christmas, because of the aforementioned lease.

I'm looking at New Mexico — I had planned to move to Arizona, because that's where my teaching certification was going to be good for, but since I withdrew from the teaching program, I'm not tied to Arizona anymore.

I've wanted to live in New Mexico since Gram and I drove through the state when I was in seventh grade, though. Specifically, I kind of fell in love with Santa Fe and Gallup — Gallup being smaller than my current town of residence, though, I think I would prefer Santa Fe.

So what to do until it's time to go? Well, I can start getting a feel for the area. I can start slowly getting rid of all of the crap I have accumulated in the past couple of years. I can start researching companies out there and keep an eye on who is hiring and what jobs are most plentiful. I can figure out what the transportation situation is like, and if it's as lame as here, start working on some sort of moving vehicle license. And then, when January rolls around, I can start sending out my resume for places to keep "on file" in case something opens up.

And hope my itchy feet stay quiet for a little while longer so I don't go crazy.

A photographic memory is not all that cool

Seriously, it's really annoying remembering random-ass details about everything you've read in the past, but not that you have to pick up flea stuff for your cats.

I am boring

No, really.

See, I have two other blogs, plus a paid blogging gig at my place of employment. You can find the blog devoted to my current hobby-of-choice, World of Warcraft, through my Blogger profile.

The political commentary blog I will not be linking here, though I might repost the occasional entry, because I hold some very unpopular opinions rather closely — while I'm not worried about scaring anyone off over here, I do plan to use THIS space to discuss a lot of personal stuff, and don't want to give ammo to the haters.

The work-related blog? I don't know. I'm hesitant, for some reason.

But anyway, a lot of what I have to say ends up at those places or on my Facebook, leaving me with little to talk about over here. Something I will need to rectify.