Today is April the 14th. Sometimes referred to as “Ruination Day”, this date always makes me think of the gorgeous, melancholic Gillian Welch song linking three early spring tragedies. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. The Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, before sinking in the wee hours of the next…

Chromesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which sound gives rise to involuntary experiences of color, shape, and movement. Sometimes referred to as “colored hearing,” a person with sound to color, shape, pattern, or texture synesthesia might perceive a friend’s voice as a looping blue ribbon. A mourning dove’s coo may flicker emerald at the…

I woke this morning to find a message from the editors at Ad Anima, the literary journal published by the medical school at UC Irvine. They shared a link to my personal essay “Mirror,” which appears in volume 2, issue 1. Ad Anima is hosted by eScholarship, the open source academic platform created by the…

It’s been a few years since I’ve had an ocular migraine, but the flashing lights and zigzag crenellations paid a visit this past Saturday. I was helping my friend Julia with a gorgeous headband she’s creating based on an ancient Assyrian headdress when the first flickers appeared in the periphery of my left eye. I…

One of the people I love most in this world celebrates a milestone birthday today. Her name is Lisa, and although we live a continent apart, she is in my heart and on my mind every single day. Lisa is funny, kind, and just kooky enough to join me in odd adventures, like spontaneous chocolate…

Any visitor to a museum or gallery expects to see a familiar placard. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH, or another iteration of keep your hands to yourself is often posted next to an exhibit or on a nearby wall. This reminder that contact with the art is forbidden frustrates those of us who want a multisensory…

I am a natural redhead, part of the less than 2% of the global population that is inherently ginger. Genetic testing has confirmed I carry the melanocortin 1 genetic variant, otherwise known as MC1R. This means I lack the receptors to pick up a biochemical signal to create eumelanin, the brown form of skin and…

I love the word quiescent, meaning “being at rest; inactive or motionless”. I fell in love with the word the first time I read it on a box of Popsicles, the treat that is quiescently frozen. I imagined the brightly colored twinpops, dormant as winter flowers, resting peacefully in their box under the spell of…

On Saturday evening, I made a Creole gumbo for supper, loaded with andouille, okra, and shrimp. It takes several hours to make this traditional Louisiana stew, starting with a classic roux that bubbles and squeaks in the pot as it morphs from off-white to brown over the course of an hour. The hissing and popping…

Please join me on Wednesday, September 20th at 15:30 GMT for Art in Conversation, a multidisciplinary seminar. The University of St. Andrews is hosting this online event in collaboration with The IASAS, the International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists, and Scientists. The link to join is here: Art in Conversation.

I feel so fortunate to be featured in Aurore Dupont-Sagorin’s mini-documentary about mirror pain. Aurore is a fellow mirror-sensory synesthete and filmmaker. Her BBC Reel Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia: feeling other people’s pain is a beautifully crafted short film about the joys and struggles of living with the conflated sensations of MTS. I am glad to know…

Which to take? The blue pill? The white pill?

It’s a pleasure to talk with neuroscientists; their curiosity about the brain is endless, and I always learn something new. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Eva Higginbothom, the host of How We’re Wired, a podcast from Fresh Air Productions. How We’re Wired explores the brain via true, personal stories of people’s…

For the first time in my 30-year manual therapy career, I’ve given a client a code name: Italian Beauty. She is indeed gorgeous and has ties to Calabria, on the “heel” of Italy’s boot. But, my reasons are not about her visage or heritage. My neurocognitive differences have long fostered problems for me at work,…

May 6th 2023 marked the coronation of King Charles III in London, and across the pond, the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby. I didn’t watch either, but I did take Monday’s New York Times quiz on headwear to see if I could accurately pick which hats were worn at Westminster Abbey, and which at…

Grapheme-color synesthetes, what is the color of your letter M?