synesthesia

each time i visit lizzie's 922cats, it feels like walking into a clean, white room. there's a window open somewhere and minimal furniture- lots of space to walk freely, swinging your arms.

she's using a beautiful, simple template with so much restful white space that text and pics just pop. as i'm mentally swinging my arms, feeling the breeze through the imaginary open window, and poring over pics of ppeettunniiaa, i remember a story i just read in my new cookbook.

the story is about a man who experiences combinations of sensations. it's called synesthesia. so while eating chocolate mousse, for example, he feels the smooth contours of tall cool marble pillars. after serving a friend the fried chicken he had just baked, he tasted a bite and said, 'it's not pointed enough!'

nabokov was a famous synesthete. letters of the alphabet, when he imagined them, were each tinged with a different color. duke ellington saw timbre in color.

kind of related to this is the bouba/kiki effect. take a look at the two images here. assign one image the word "bouba" (regardless of this word's meaning (it has none)), and assign the other image the word "kiki."

when many, many people are asked this question, 90-something percent answer the same way. how do you answer?