Colours, Numbers, and Letters

They talk about people seeing 'things', normally neutral, in colour. This 'process'/'condition' is known as synesthesia (other connections are also made amongst things that are normally seen as being disconnected). Days of the week are always a particular colour and so are numbers (unless numbers are seen as characters), among other things. Some see these and other 'things' in colour. I was reading this and that and I was wondering whether all people possess the trait - like most things - to a lesser or greater degree. I have a feeling that this is one of those 'traits' that run along a continuum rather than existing as a binary (yes/no) trait/condition.

I don't see each day of the week as being a definite colour but some days are filled with a hazy or a lime-green air and other days are filled with a pale wispy mountain blue or a deep, dense blue. Some days are a shimmering and dazzling grey. Some days are grey puffy mushroom clouds - polluted and polluting and ravaged (or maybe it's me who is the walking smog-cloud?). Other days are filled with white light else I am the one immersed in an expanse of silent white light. Never had a rose coloured day although some days come across as greyish-pink and others as reddish and angry and bruised. There are pale lemon days with grey specks and some are lavender. Some sure are colourless. Sometimes washed out, sometimes translucent, and sometimes transparent and liquid (with or without colour).

Numbers aren't imbued with any specific colours in my mind but they do seem to be characters, and these don't shift but only 'grow' (as characters do). Double numbers are characters of their own. I won't go through all of the numbers (haha) but to take some -

7 is serious, quiet, brilliant and somewhat shy, and thoughtful and quick-witted, and given to a sudden somersault, and is boyish.

9 is a little like 7 here and there (...actually 9 is 7's elder brother), and has a temper and broods and is given to deep laughter ( '9' should never be written with a curvy end but should end in a long and straight line).

6 is graceful, fast, is musically gifted, and is a blithe spirit.

5 just sits there, and is slow, and lazy, and dreams too much and is rather pudding-y.

2 is alert and quietly bright, sometimes noisy and sometimes quiet and lonely in a corner near a window.

1 simply is - observant and smiling - either it's enlightened or high or maybe both...

and the 0 is as it should be - perplexing. It is everything or nothing or both or what? The 0 feels empty and feels full.

...Some of the numbers make faces.

Letters don't seem to have specific characters for me (nor are they filled with any colours) apart from the usual sharpness or 'curviness' or in-between-ness that comes with each letter - especially when hand-written and the colours of a day become blurred when I think too much of them. They seem clearer in the passing or in one sudden blast when I'm in the day. The numbers are the sharpest and remain constant in that sense, and have well-defined personalities and come with their quirks and manners and all. They remind me of people.

Each year is always set as it should be - in an *elliptical circle (*and sometimes like a horseshoe), and one travels around with it (and one is sometimes 'late' in 'placing oneself in the right spot) and the cusp between one year to the next is arranged like a spiral....there is a mini-leap between one year and the next and then begins another one and another one (*wonder what I saw when human beings believed in/followed the geocentric model). But take decades and they are stacked but stacked in shelves that slant downwards to the right (the centuries all merge in my head, I can't deal with centuries. No wonder I have difficulty remembering dates, I say). One's own age and that of others come arranged in neat columns.

There is, I'm sure, some sort of a nice story that has to be lurking around amongst these numbers and days and colours...but I can't find it. Not even with my poking forks and prodding prongs.

Talking of colours, I'm also reminded of that interesting experiment on coordination where you have one colour written in another colour. So for instance - for the following list one has to rattle off the actual colours and not the words that are spelt out.

GREEN,

YELLOW,

WHITE,

BLACK,

PINK,

GREY,

ORANGE ...

It's not impossible but one does trip. It's apparently to do with one part (of the brain) being more involved with reading (and all our linguistic abilities) and one part being involved with visual perception.....