bloodyrosemccoy | The Colors, Duke! THE COLORS!

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A quote from near the end of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars that rather puzzled me, as they talk about people with eidetic memory:

“Yes,” Ursula said. “He was less of a freak than some of the others. The so-called calendar calculators, or the ones who can recall visual images presented to them in great detail—they’re often impaired in other parts of their lives.”

Marina nodded. “Like the Latvians Shereskevskii and the man known as V.P., who remembered truly huge quantities of random fact, in tests and in general. But both of them experience synesthesia.”

Huh. That’s all the characters say on that subject; they don’t even indulge in a line of exposition to tell each other what synesthesia is.* But they clearly imply that it somehow gets in the way of normal functioning.

Which is odd. I can’t remember a time that synesthesia has actually impaired my functioning—the worst I get is when I’m irritated that letters on signs or bulletin boards are the wrong color. Other than that, it’s either completely neutral to my life—just something I do automatically—or it makes it more interesting. It’s even a handy mnemonic device—I can remember things by their color, or personality, or where they are in the Synesthesia Dimension, and I think it’s one of the reasons I spent so many years as the Human VCR. I’ve heard that some people actually see the things outside of their minds, but really for me it’s not even a nuisance.**

Of course, this is from someone who had the following conversation earlier this evening:

妹: I’m having a bit of trouble remembering things today.

DAD: (cheerful) Are you suffering dementia? What month is it?

妹: (playful) Purple!

AMELIA: No way! Purple was last month! (points) It’s right over there!

妹: …

DAD: …

妹: You really mean it, don’t you?

AMELIA: Yup. We’re in the middle of scarlet-orange-and-greenish now.

So what do I know? Maybe I get lost because I can’t find my way between the grocery store and Thursday. But it never seemed like you’d describe it as an impairment.

It just goes to show—pathology isn’t always an easy thing to classify.

*Given Robinson’s enthusiasm for describing SCIENCE! in mind-boggling detail, I can only assume this is the work of a desperate editor screaming “For god’s sake, Kim, you’ve got eight pages devoted to the quantum possibilities of consciousness—cut something out!”

**It’s other people with their failure to grasp that the letter o is clearly red who are the nuisance.