Changed My Mind

I decided not to move my blog so just ignore the indecisive blogger waving her arms like a madwoman behind the curtain there. It wasn’t because it was too difficult … well, it might have been, but I didn’t get that far. I’m starting up a new enterprise which you’ll hear about in due course and I thought it would make sense to move this blog to practice with all the bells and whistles at the new place.

Not so much.

So I’ll just wait and start up the new one in the new place.

Curious about my traffic while I wasn’t posting, I checked my stats. Imagine my surprise that I get just as many readers when I post as when I don’t. About 100/day.

What might that mean?

One Moment, Please …

Just a heads up to all my loyal readers. And to you not-so-loyal ones, too.

I’m switching this blog over from wordpress.com to wordpress.org for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with today. I have absolutely no clue as to how to accomplish this lofty goal, however, so I might be floating around the bloggy heavens for ten minutes or ten days.

I hope it’s closer to ten minutes, but that’s probably not quite realistic as I’m going to eat lunch now. I don’t work through my lunch. I sometimes lunch through my work, but never the reverse.

I guess all I can do is guarantee I’ll see ya’ll somewhere on the flip side. For those of you who subscribe or visit BeckyLand on an RSS feed, if there is anything you need to do to continue your daily fix of The Becky, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Wish me luck!

What Happens When YOU Poke A Pomegranate?

I wish I wish I wish I was synesthetic. For those of you who haven’t heard me yak about it incessantly, it’s a condition where your senses get crossed. Like if you saw music or tasted emotions. There are a zillion ways to be syn, however. All equally fascinating. Look in my sidebar and archives for more info about it.

Here’s a weirdly fun video illustration of synesthesia by Terri Timely.

This is one of the comments afterward ….

“Did you see all three S’s at the beginning? Most likely all you saw was a screen of 5’s. I see fives as the colour blue and my S’s are a pale orange. I detected the S’s before they appeared highlighted in yellow. Some people taste words, and hear colour.”

I admit I had to go back and see what they were talking about. Clearly, my senses are boring!

If you are synesthetic, please email me at AmpersandPress (at) aol (dot) com. Put “Synesthesia” in the subject line. I want you in my posse. My work-in-progress deals with syn and I want to hear lots of syn stories.

If you’re not synesthetic, what do you think about this movie?

The Taste of Music

The yummy Professor Funk illustrates — to his great peril — what it’s like to have a form of synesthesia where you taste music.

For those of you new to BeckyLand or for those of you who ignore me when I start talking about synesthesia … you know who you are … synesthesia is a mixing up of your senses. Like tasting music or seeing a colored alphabet. If you want more info about the fascinating world of synesthesia, there’s a link under Stuff to Learn in my sidebar (which sounds painful but isn’t really) and just below it, some other BeckyLand posts about synesthesia.

But today you can watch how The Imperial March from Star Wars tastes.

WOW! That’s a great synesthetic sentence!

What song would you like to taste? If you make a YouTube video of your own Taste of Music, I will be honored (I think) to post it here. Just send me the link!

This Is Only A Test

My email subscription service, Feedburner, has recently been bought by Google. Now, of course, I’m having problems with it. It seems it’s not advising my subscribers of new posts. Since I post every weekday, this is quite annoying. I’ve done a couple of things in there to see if it might be a quick fix. If not, I’ll have to go all Becky on them.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

If it doesn’t get fixed, I guess my only other option is to hand-deliver a postcard reminder to you. Maybe with a picture of a cute kitty.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that either.

February Has a Good Sense of Humor

February, my birth month, has a great vibe to it, according to a blogger named Jenny.

This is a very funny blog about synesthesia. Be sure to read the comments, too.

And then come back and tell me what you thought. Do your days and months have personality?

Things I’ve Never Done

I’ve been hearing a lot about New Year’s Resolutions lately. In fact, I even wrote some of my own.

But recently I was reading the little note from the editor at the beginning of a magazine, and she wrote that she makes a list every January of “Things I’ve Never Done.”

So guess what I did?

Here’s my list of Things I’ve Never Done:

• Poked my eye out with a hanger
• Cleared a HazMat site
• Wore a mink bikini
• Lifted a Volkswagen over my head
• Held my breath till my lungs exploded

But as I re-read my list, it occurred to me that the editor I stole this idea from probably WANTS to do the stuff on her list.

So here’s my revised list of Things I’ve Never Done That I’d LIKE To Do:

• Go an entire day without saying, “Just DO it, okay?? Geez!”
• Eat a block of cheese without one pang of guilt
• Cheerfully clean my house
• Get my house cleaned by cheerful people
• Write a manuscript that doesn’t need revising
• Be a synesthetic tuba player

What’s on your list?

Letterman Looks Like #117

I read an interview in New Scientist with Daniel Tammet, a 29-year-old British man. He’s synesthetic, mildly autistic, speaks 11 languages (he learned Icelandic in a week!) and can remember pi out beyond 22,000 digits.

Being mathfully challenged myself, I was fascinated by the way he describes his relationship with numbers. It’s very intuitive to him, much like language is intuitive to most of the rest of us. He explains that we don’t see one word — we see a web of connected words. Like to understand the word ‘giraffe,’ we need to understand its relationship to ‘neck’ or ‘tall’ or ‘animal.’ And that’s how he sees interconnections and patterns with numbers.

He talks about his synesthesia in a way I love. He says all of his numbers have a texture, which immediately allows him to group, for instance, all the lumpy numbers together into their webs and patterns.

He says, “For me, the ideal lumpy number is 37. It’s like porridge. So 111, a very pretty number, which is 3 times 37, is lumpy but it is also round. It takes on the properties of both 37 and 3, which is round. It’s an intuitive and visual way of doing maths and thinking about numbers.”

Isn’t that great?

He attributes his ability to learn languages to his synesthesia too, in the same sort of way — seeing the interconnectedness of words.

In 2005, he talked to David Letterman about his recitation for charity of the 22,000+ digits of pi and his synesthesia. He tells Dave he looks like the number 117 — “handsome, tall, lanky, and a little bit wobbly.”

He’s written a couple of books, too. The newest is “Embracing the Wide Sky – A Tour Across the Horizons of the Human Mind” and a memoir, “Born on a Blue Day,” both available on Amazon. (Yay! Just in time for my birthday!)

Read the rest of the New Scientist interview here.

Are any of your numbers lumpy?

What Color Is Your Alphabet?

Synesthesia fascinates me.

Anesthesia means ‘no sensation.’ Good for when you need dental surgery.

Synesthesia means ‘joined or multiple sensation.’ Good for making your world incredibly colorful and unique. (I’m jealous I’m not synesthetic. Can you tell?)

It’s involuntary. It simply IS … just like your senses. There are many ways it manifests itself … people taste words or they feel them or they see them, rather than just hearing them.

The most common form of synesthesia is seeing letters and numbers in color. Everyone’s alphabet is different — rarely do two synesthetes agree on the color of letter B, for example.

This is a representation of Juliet’s alphabet:

Here is Evelyne’s alphabet …

Here is Nadja’s …

Here is Channing’s …

And here is Corinna’s …

Researchers think about 1 in 200 people have some form of synesthesia. Many don’t realize the rest of the world doesn’t see colored words or taste shapes until they get to be adults. In researching for my novel, it seems folks fall into one of two camps. When they’re very young and learning their letters, they’ll say something like, “Q is my favorite letter because it’s the most beautiful green color.” Their friend will stare at them and say, “You’re weird.”

In the second group, it’s never come up before and as adults they’ll say something like, “Thanks for the perfume. It smells so purple.” And their friend will stare at them and say, “You’re weird.”

If they’re very lucky, their friend — young or old — will argue with them. “Nuh uh … it totally smells red” or “Q isn’t green … it’s brown with white dots!”

For the majority of synesthetes, especially when they’re young, if they mention their syn and get teased about it, they’ll never mention it again. I heard from both groups in my chats with synesthetes from around the world.

Some synesthetes have enhanced spacial awareness and move through their day as if moving around a huge gauzy clock. Some have colored days of the week, but some explain it like their weekly calendar is three dimensional as they move through it. This is how Josette describes her week:

In February 2001 Smithsonian Magazine had an article about synesthesia — “For Some, Pain Is Orange” by Susan Hornik and it knocked around my head for years until I figured out what to do with it. I had also been noodling over setting some mysteries in the wonderful world of marching band, and the two ideas finally collided to create my main character, Dash, who is 16 and plays the tuba. He sees colored music and tastes emotion.

You’ve listened to music that makes you feel happy or sad, or it brings to mind a gritty city or a day in the country, but when some synesthetes hear a tune, it has shape and color and movement, too. This is how Malcolm sees the Bach Toccata:

Cool, eh?

Do you think you’re synesthetic? Take The Synesthesia Battery.

If you ARE synesthetic, I want to hear all your syn stories. Every. Single. One.
If you’re NOT synesthetic, what do you want to know about it? Do you know anyone who is syn? What do you think about it? Are you jealous too?

Subscribe To My Blog

You: Why?
Me: Why what?
You: Why should I subscribe to your blog?
Me: You’re gonna subscribe to my blog? Aren’t you just the sweetest thing!

(See how I did that? It’s all done with mirrors.)

On my sidebar, just above my photo, you’ll see where it says, “Want to be alerted to new posts?” When you follow the directions, you will magically be transported to a page where you fill in your email address and you will never miss one of my shiny, low-calorie blog posts.

Rest assured I will never overwhelm you with big words or good nutrition. You will get an email when I post. If I don’t post, no email. Easy peasy.

If you haven’t yet, please read a smattering of my posts and see what you think. If you roll over the highlighted words with your cursor, you’ll get bonus material. Sometimes a funny picture, sometimes a link to an article or YouTube video. A snapshot screen pops up so you can decide if you’re interested. Click on it if you like, but don’t forget to come back!

So … care to spend three minutes with me most days?

I’ll write about a wide-range of topics — things that interest me and maybe you too. I’d love you to comment on the posts you read so I can see what you’re thinking. We don’t have to agree on everything, either … that’s what makes life interesting. I have lots of ideas jotted down to mention in the future … like when my interview airs on the TV show 20/20 … my adventures with my son joining the Navy … First Page book reviews … fascinating tidbits about synesthesia … marching band escapades … a bit of politics, usually funny … some parenting stories, again usually funny… stuff about my writing journey.

And soon — everyone knock wood — I’ll be able to write about my new book coming out.

You: What?! You have a new book coming out?
Me: Chillax. No. But I will. That’s the kind of wild, unshakable, unrelenting optimism I have in myself.

My goal is to post Monday – Friday, but as the airlines, mortgage companies, and Cookie Monster have taught us, there are no guarantees in life. Wait. I’m wrong. Cookie Monster taught us “C is for cookie.”

On every email there will be an ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom. Of course, clicking it will make me whimper. Like if you took Cookie Monster’s snickerdoodle away from him.

I suppose you could simply bookmark me in your favorite browser, but then you’d have to remember to come visit. Either subscribing or bookmarking is fine with me, as long as my posts don’t get all cobwebby waiting for you to visit.

Come. Play in the BeckyLand sandbox with me. It’ll be fun.