Synesthesias

I am downloading, downloading, downloading, and this is just another part of the overwhelm. I am filtering for what is known among all that isn't... the sites, sounds, patterns that fit into recognizable rhythms. English, Dutch, and Spanish are familiar refrains, and welcome- and I am floating effortlessly between them. I translate the Dutch for the Castillaños, and blend my English like a wild new jazz number. It is the Hindi, Farsi, Turkish, Indonesian, and dialects that are hard to bring in... I listen like tuning a radio to stations... French and German sound like songs I am still learning the lyrics to, but these other languages are new rhythms with syntax and notes I have yet to learn. But come, they all will...

They say synesthesias are often reserved for the Autistic, but I have always found comfort in this skill. I reign mine own in to deal with all this:

My student number? A code of blue-blank-green-green-blank-blue. That is the easiest code to follow, the color of numbers.

To use it in words? Let's try 'sisu' (my next Finnish vocabulary, and a favorite candy) is black rimmed with blue, and white all the way through.

The language spoken in our kitchen here daily? They are tinged with smells and flavors, like the spices they are cooked with. Some soft and sweet, a caramel color of language. Others are peppery and tangy to the tongue, full of spice, colored yellow, red, and orange. The word 'kurma' drips off the tongue like honey, a beautiful version of English 'date' in Indonesian.

And to understand this city? It becomes an open fan in my mind, an outstretched pattern of peacock plumes, extending from the body of the center. Some of the plumes are full and rich, vibrant and new. Others tattered and bent, utterly used, and ready to be dropped by this bird of a city, picked up by a passerby and used in some gaudy costume.

And this is how it works- this downloading, this digesting, this letting it all in. The ongoing information station that my body has become, a radio receiver of transmissions, a t.v. antenna of images, all the varying wavelengths and codes to decipher and uncover.

Confused yet? Welcome to my head...