LIVING IN A GEOMETRIC UNIVERSE - On Being an Autistic Synaesthete
Imagine living in a world where geometry dominates your life, where squares, circles and triangles form a mental language that you use every day because it provides you with clues about the people who surround you, and what goes on around you in the world. Imagine knowing that everyone and everything you meet throughout the day will be converted to a shape: someone’s hand, a passing bus, a bird in flight. The hand may become a square, the bus a triangle, the bird a circle, and these will give you specific psychological and emotional information, which others might not have access to.
It is said that there are six geometric shapes in nature: the sphere, the polygon, the spiral, the helix, the meander and the branch, and if we look around we see most of them contained within our environment. Perhaps you may notice the square stone in a wall, the circles a buzzard makes in the sky, the darting triangles of a small fly when it is in the room. But the shapes I see as an autistic synaesthete are by no means regular physical ones. These shapes are in my mind, as well as being out in the environment, and I affectionately call them ‘my signals’.
When I find myself having to assess a social situation as an ‘aspie’, which can be stressful, it is alleviated the minute my geometric universe kicks in. I then enter a state of mind where a language only I can understand is spoken. This means that I will be doing what most other people do - respond to everyday banter, but I may end up (with a bit of luck) doing it just like everyone else: with a degree of smoothness. Exchange of greetings, such as ‘How are you?’ with a fitting reply, is something people with Asperger’s regularly find disturbing. But if the person performing the ask becomes a square, circle or triangle, I will be able to offer a square, circular or triangular response, which may sound odd and somewhat mechanical, but for me it’s geometric simplicity, or communication, at its best.
Synaesthesia is defined as a
condition in which extraordinary experience occurs in response to ordinary
sensory input: for example, sound evoking sensations of colour as a sense that
is extra to the one that is being naturally stimulated. And when a synaesthetic
sense partners Asperger’s syndrome within an individual, it can produce a life
that sets you apart from the rest in many ways.
I first became aware of the
geometric shapes and their corresponding meanings as a teenager. They were
there when I was a child, but I never took much notice of them, at least not
consciously. Having been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in 1996, it took a
lot of time to talk openly about a geometric universe I was fated to live entirely
alone with. It is somewhat easier today, and I can be invited to speak about my
signals in various places. People are understandably curious about how much I am able to glean from their psychological make-up when
they have hardly even spoken to me. When they understand that I am reading them
solely from the geometric shape they are likely to produce, it naturally comes as
a bit of a shock.
The signals tell
all. I
fully discovered the unusualness of this process when I once said to a man in a
bar, ‘You have fear.’ I learned that people do not say such things to each
other, least not as strangers. The man, fortunately an open-minded one - he was
not offended by my directness – was at the time firing triangles into the air,
cold icy circles, and giving off intensely cryptic sensations with his sharp triangular
movements. Imagine the feeling of right angles; it might cause you to feel extremely
tense.
Seeing people as shapes is
uniform. The man who has fear has become a collection of triangles as he stands
at the bar, but then he may change to circles or squares should his fear
dissolve. No one might be talking openly about this, but I see it all going on
from the safety of my parallel universe. I can be conversing in a regular
manner, and a shape can be showing up on the screen of my mind, contained
somewhere to the right, or to the left, at the front or at the back, and it can
be travelling from left to right or from right to left, but a shape can also be
attached to an object at any time, which means that if I am in the presence of
a woman who has pink circles dripping from her painted nails, I am likely to
experience her excitement, her enthusiasm, all of which can cause me to stare
at her nails (a regular aspie habit) because her excitement will be contained
in her fingers, and yet, strangely, her circles will also have entered my mind,
settling to the right or to the left.
Conversations with strangers are
likely to produce signals in abundance, especially if the signals begin
stepping in to help me. I liken myself to a computer when it is uploading. I
see information streaming in whenever an individual engages with me; I see
individuals as files and their thoughts as formats. I believe they press ‘save’
far too often for their own good when most are suffering from what I call
‘information overload’. Humans, as I see them, are heavy with information,
which they cannot process, and I believe this is the cause of so much stress
and anxiety in the world.
My geometric shapes and their
signals sometimes provide liberal splashes of colour, but this is rare. Red and
pink usually feature, on the right side of my mind, while grey-blue features on
the left. Signals are constantly travelling with me: to the supermarket, for a
walk in the park, getting up, going to bed, eating dinner, at work writing, or
even when watching TV - yes, shapes appear there as well, surrounding
newsreaders, politicians, performers, and people in the advertisements.
I am really quite
straightforward, I tell people. I have a square, structured mind in which all
my thoughts are contained and laid out to order. When my thoughts flow, they
look like watery circles: clear if people and situations are concise, but murky
and thick if messages are incomprehensible. A circle can even take the form of
sticky treacle if someone overly sentimental or doting interacts with me. Even though
the particular signal will inform me that sentimentality is taking place, I will
only know how to respond to it because I know how to respond to sticky treacle!
If the treacle becomes too thick, congealed, brown, gluey, and ugly, I won’t
entertain such a person for very long; I simply won’t understand what they are
trying to communicate to me.
Is it strange to live an entire
life in a geometric universe? Perhaps not if you think that our whole
environment is composed of shapes: I am sitting on a square cushion at the
moment, I am drinking coffee from a round cup; my bookshelf beside me contains
a wooden triangular structure, full of right angles that hold it together.
Someone once said that I ‘think
in circles and dream like a stone’. It became the subtitle of my book, and I
consider it to be a compliment. I enjoy living in my geometric universe. Were I
to be told that my square nose is capable and sturdy, or that my circular thumb
has clear water dripping from its tip, or that my triangular foot is swathed in
mist and therefore highly adventurous, I would not be offended.
As a somewhat prolific writer,
artist and composer of music, I am constantly fitting squares and circles
together as words flow out across the page, paint flows across the canvas and
notes flow out into the air. Words are performing this action at this moment. Writing
is an enjoyable puzzle. I might say that this is a circular blog that I am
writing, with squares mixed in. In a moment I may pick up today’s post from the
mat and see triangles because I won’t know what is contained within the letter
I am about to open, or I may look out of the window and see rain falling, which
will be square and stony, even though I am seeing water; I may sweep the stone
floor and see the motion emitting circles because I am performing a watery
activity.
I am now used to the ‘strange’
and ‘odd’ universe I occupy, and if it can make people smile and encourage them
to use their imaginations a little more, that will be a compliment too.
In : Autism
Tags: autism synaesthesia patrick jasper lee.
Here I am often on the telephone connecting this world to the otherworld. Here are my observations, reflections & dreams about the way it all is.
