Time appears in this 3D sort of calendar pattern
It was 18 years ago that I discovered that I’m a bit weird. Like 10-20% of the population, I have a form of synaesthesia, which is usually understood as a “mixing of the senses.” I do get that a bit, but I’m a less extreme of the example of the “spatial-sequence” synaesthesia discussed in this article.
I should imagine the specific details are unique to each synesthete – which is why I debate what “colour” different days of the week and school subjects are with my daughter. However, I recognise being able to see time in three dimensions. Just as with aphantasia we are very surprised when people have a vastly different life to our own.
It was only in my 60s that I discovered there was a name for this phenomenon – not just the way time appears in this 3D sort of calendar pattern, but the colours seen when I think of certain words. Two decades previously, I’d mentioned to a friend that Tuesdays were yellow and she’d looked at me in the same strange, befuddled way that family members always had when told about the calendar in my head. Out of embarrassment, it was never discussed further. I was clearly very odd.
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While thinking about the moment in time I’m at now, I see the day of the week and the hours of that day drawn up in a grid pattern. I am physically in that diagram in my head – and there’s a photographic element to it. If there’s a concert coming up in the calendar, in my mind, a picture of the concert venue is superimposed on to the 7pm to 10pm time slot on that particular day.
Source: The Guardian
Image: Annie Spratt