I speak maroon
I went to a little dinner party the other night hosted by two vegetarians. The menu was simple and successful: salad, rice, couscous with cherry tomatoes (which I was expressly asked to bring), vegetable curry, and a delicious coconut pie. Some wine, as these soirees necessitate.
And while the food was sumptuous and the company swell, what made the night truly memorable was one of the host’s revelations about herself.
First, a little background information about Jessica: she’s 27 and hasn’t lived in the states since she graduated high school. She’s the coordinator for TEFL classes at the Caledonian School, picks up languages like they were pennies on the street, and her personality is…flighty sounds way too negative, but she certainly is fluttery, and she isn’t so much spacey as operating at her own frequency. So much I thought before this revelation.
Jessica has synethesia, a condition in which one’s senses never fully separate (as other youngins’ do) and thus are connected in day-to-day life. For example: letters and words have colors. “It’s great because Julie’s name looks blue and purple and her voice is in that color too,” Jessica says of her roommate. Yes, she sees voices too.
Some words have tastes. The word metro in Czech, for example, tastes exactly like steam in her mouth. To paint what a song looks like would take several walls. Certain people she can’t stand because of the way their voice looks. Everything she says amazes us. Naturally we have her go around the room and describe our names. Alissa is white and yellow, Luis is green. “Avimaan, oh you are so red. So red,” she says. “A’s are red and so are M’s, so, yeah, very red.”
We go back around for our voices. Julie’s voice is blue-purple rhombuses, which delight Jessica on a daily basis. Alissa, who speaks slowly, rolls out in thick yellow boxes. I speak in incredibly smooth, maroon ovals. This sounds good to me, a man of red, speaking in a stream of well-crafted maroon ovals, if only in this bizarre woman’s head.
The only other time I had encountered such a condition was in Allan Moore’s Top 10. She showed us some small paintings she had made of things she heard: a drum beat, two cases of a didgeridoo. We get so used to the way life works, oftentimes we don’t or can’t even think to realize to try and soak in all we can. Even in Prague, after a couple of months, you’ve seen enough ancient architecture or beautiful Czech girls that you don’t bother to let your breath be taken away. You needn’t waste your breath, perhaps. But learning about Jessica’s synesthesia, I’m wondering if I’m taking in as much as I can.
And while the food was sumptuous and the company swell, what made the night truly memorable was one of the host’s revelations about herself.
First, a little background information about Jessica: she’s 27 and hasn’t lived in the states since she graduated high school. She’s the coordinator for TEFL classes at the Caledonian School, picks up languages like they were pennies on the street, and her personality is…flighty sounds way too negative, but she certainly is fluttery, and she isn’t so much spacey as operating at her own frequency. So much I thought before this revelation.
Jessica has synethesia, a condition in which one’s senses never fully separate (as other youngins’ do) and thus are connected in day-to-day life. For example: letters and words have colors. “It’s great because Julie’s name looks blue and purple and her voice is in that color too,” Jessica says of her roommate. Yes, she sees voices too.
Some words have tastes. The word metro in Czech, for example, tastes exactly like steam in her mouth. To paint what a song looks like would take several walls. Certain people she can’t stand because of the way their voice looks. Everything she says amazes us. Naturally we have her go around the room and describe our names. Alissa is white and yellow, Luis is green. “Avimaan, oh you are so red. So red,” she says. “A’s are red and so are M’s, so, yeah, very red.”
We go back around for our voices. Julie’s voice is blue-purple rhombuses, which delight Jessica on a daily basis. Alissa, who speaks slowly, rolls out in thick yellow boxes. I speak in incredibly smooth, maroon ovals. This sounds good to me, a man of red, speaking in a stream of well-crafted maroon ovals, if only in this bizarre woman’s head.
The only other time I had encountered such a condition was in Allan Moore’s Top 10. She showed us some small paintings she had made of things she heard: a drum beat, two cases of a didgeridoo. We get so used to the way life works, oftentimes we don’t or can’t even think to realize to try and soak in all we can. Even in Prague, after a couple of months, you’ve seen enough ancient architecture or beautiful Czech girls that you don’t bother to let your breath be taken away. You needn’t waste your breath, perhaps. But learning about Jessica’s synesthesia, I’m wondering if I’m taking in as much as I can.
posted by Avimaan @ 10:53 PM
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