Tag: synesthesia

d’Verse Poetics-August- A Place on a Map

On By Susan St.PierreIn Words 'n' such Poetry16 Comments


For today’s Poetics, I want you all to write a poem about August. Feel it in your bones. Come tell us what the month means to you. You can write about it in terms of weather and mood, write inspired by the examples shared above or opt to compose a darker, more philosophical piece. The choice is yours!




There you are, August,
One step below the ‘top’.
Stretched longest on my ‘map’
Born from a child’s viewpoint.

Lazily I’ll climb toward September along your pathway.


[ I was 60 years old before I found my answer to a lifelong question. “Doesn’t everybody visualize months of the year in a 3D realm?” After years of blank dumbfounded responses to my statements about “seeing” numbers, days of the week, and months of the year, in three dimensions, I found out that I have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia! Those with this viewpoint have uniquely individual “mental maps” of all kinds of sequences. It’s a fascinating gift/defect caused by overlapping senses. Children are born with overlapping senses but supposedly outgrow them. Not everyone! Synesthesia takes MANY forms. I encourage everyone to look it up.
As for my poem, the mention of any month draws an immediate visual personal response. I’ve attached a link to my former post on the topic.]
https://sillyfrogsusan.com/2018/08/29/spatial-sequence-synesthesia/



https://dversepoets.com/2022/08/02/poetics-sometimes-august-isnt-recognized

Six Sentence Story: Kaleidoscope

On By Susan St.PierreIn 6 Sentence Stories, Writing Prompts36 Comments

Rules of the hop:
Write 6 Sentences. No more. No less.
Use the current week’s prompt word.
Return here, link your post Wednesday night through Saturday late…
Spread the word and put in a good one to your fellow writers 😀

PROMPT WORD:  KALEIDOSCOPE


“Mommy, why is seven always blue and six always yellow? ” was the last question that Simon, age 8, ever asked about SUCH things because the consideration that he was crazy had formed, and was confirmed, by his mother’s predictable answer of “They’re NOT!”… a notion, like that, had to be hidden.
But numbers DID have their own specific colors, he could “see” them in his head: a kaleidoscope of repeated colors and patterns, and those numbers occupied space in a constant three dimensional realm!

Young Simon decided to bury any curiosity about his “nonconformity” forever.

It was his 4-year-old granddaughter’s announcement, that she would be five soon and “being pink” would make her happier than “green four” did, that exhumed a part of Simon he had secretly longed to explain, and at age 63, he formed a new notion… he was not an anomaly, and not, crazy.
With the help of the internet, he found those lifelong answers and breathed a validating sigh, because Simon, and subsequently his granddaughter, had a gift known as synesthesia which can take many forms but is NOT a kind of insanity.
A month later, Grandpa gave his birthday girl, who was an heiress to his nonconformity, a two foot tall plush pink pillow in the shape of a number 5.



{  A person with synesthesia, a condition in which the normally separate senses are not separate. Sight may mingle with sound, taste with touch, etc. The senses are cross-wired. For example, when a digit-color synesthete sees or just thinks of a number, the number appears with a color film over it.}
For further investigation: Synesthesia | Psychology Today


PS… I was 60 before I found, and figured, out that I have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia. Validating doesn’t even begin to explain that discovery. 😉

Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt! – GirlieOnTheEdge’s Blog (wordpress.com)
https://girlieontheedge1.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/its-six-sentence-story-thursday-link-up-147/

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Spatial Sequence Synesthesia

On By Susan St.PierreIn In my humble opinion..., Sideshows9 Comments

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Imagine you can step from one day to the next in three-dimensional space. I can.
Not only that, but I have a three-dimensional “map” for everything that has a numerical sequence. They aren’t all the same. I didn’t copy anyone.
Since I was a child, I’d ask people (when the conversations seemed most intimate), “How do you ‘see’ numbers?”. It took me decades of blank stares and vacant expressions to find out I wasn’t crazy… I have a gift.
My mind created my own personal universe of dates and times!
The study of this phenomenon is quite new. Compiling statistics is difficult because, for many who have it, it’s natural. You may have it.
My discovery was made possible by explaining my “sight” to an online poet friend. After all, poets exist in an alternate realm and especially appreciate bizarre viewpoints, right?
So I took a chance.
She said, ” That sounds like a form of synesthesia.”
I’d never heard of synesthesia! Whoa! My search was about to end and validation was about to be mine. Not only did I learn about myself, I found out about dozens of kinds of “synesthetes”. Some are way more unusual than I. Thank goodness, I feel my synesthesia is a gift. Many find their own version a curse.
Please explore this topic. If you have a lot of interaction with children, learn to watch for signs of them pointing to numbers in space, or looking down toward Saturday. You may have the answer that they long to hear.

~Special thanks to Jamie Dedes. Poet extraordinaire!~

https://jamiededes.com/