The Color of Summer

Just another fog-shrouded summer day in The Sunset. Spring is yielding to summer here in California and there’s no surer sign of that transition in San Francisco than the ubiqutous fog bank that hangs over the Sunset District. In this neighborhood at the western edge of the city, summer days are gray and cool with…

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My First Blogiversary

Vox Synaesthetica has been read in 42 different countries! #grateful Today, May 9th 2016, marks one year since I launched my Vox Synaesthetica blog. I’m delighted to have this opportunity to write about my experiences with synaesthesia, and honored that my posts have been read in 42 different countries. It’s been fascinating to connect with…

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Saints and Synners

From the top: Saint Brendan the Navigator, my grandmother and first generation American Mary Landers Crowley, me with #UKSA2016 friends Dyedra Just and Candita Wager, presenting my poster at #UKSA2016, and me, center, at the Irish Potato Famine memorial alongside the Liffey River, Dublin.   I’m a child of the diaspora; all four of my…

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Leap

On Leap Day, I’m leaping into new opportunities…. I have a vibrant synesthetic experience with the concept of Leap Day. In my spatial-sequential synesthesia, Leap Day appears radiant, a luminous orange glow amid the ever spiraling cycle of late winter days. There’s something hopeful about Leap Day too; it’s a lagniappe, a little bit extra.…

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Strange Days

It’s been a tough few months for me. I had the flu over the Christmas holiday, turning my 10 days of vacation into nothing but chicken soup and recuperation. My career as a massage therapist in the tech sector feels in peril while Twitter transits the “ugly adolescence” of corporate growth. And, a poem I’d…

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Take a Hike!

  Join me for a synesthetic hike through San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury! Very few people are synesthetes; researchers in the field of neuroscience estimate less than 4 percent of the population has some form of entwined senses. But, even though synesthesia is rare, interest in this neurological phenomenon is rapidly expanding. Currently, there are numerous scientific…

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Giving Voice to Synaesthesia

My experience with synaesthesia, and my relationship to it, is convoluted, a blend of fierce sensitivities and fascination. Mundane experiences are magnified by the filter of my braided sensations. I feel pain each day that is triggered by visual stimuli: one look at a shard of broken glass in the street and I feel electricity…

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