But I will try.
The beginning of each month gives me an opportunity to share my synesthetic perceptions. I have always involuntarily perceived text as colored. This is called grapheme-colored synesthesia. I also have colored hearing, or chromesthesia.
Like most synesthetes who see colored text, I associate every letter with a different color. These involuntary associations have remained stable all my life. Each word takes on the color of the first letter.
I can't imagine how people remember things without this automatic color coding that goes on in my brain. I would never want to lose my cross-wired senses, although you need to understand why I need a lot of time to myself and not take that personally. The downside of my condition is that I easily get painfully overstimulated. As long as I can pace myself, I can live a normal life.
Some of my colors are hard to describe, and I call them my Alien Colors.
N is an alien color. If I were pressed to give it just one color I would be torn. First, I would say blue. Then silver. Plus a bit of grey. N is also misty in texture. Not solid, like big, red, dependable letter A.
I am lucky to live overlooking Green Bay, and I can tell you that Green Bay is never green, but it is often the color of the letter N.
Alien colors require poetry. I can't draw them. If I could draw N, it would combine these elements
silver metal reflecting the cold blue waters of a lake
Storm clouds, blue pearls, liquid mercury, ghosts
(handwaving)
November is not just an alien color. It has a complicated emotion, too. The month of November is tied up with my mom's birthday, her death day, her hospice week. All these emotions. Her faith, her joy, her playfulness, and how much I miss her.
Even her handwriting, which was so often done in blue ink, blends into the color of this month. I find it incredible that she wrote this poem about her own death, decades before she died, but in the same month that she died, as if she knew. Her poem comforts me.
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