The Scent of Color

When eleven-year-old Hannah finished one of the songs she had practiced for her piano lesson, she pointed to a particular section in the musical score and said, “That measure sounds like yellow.”

I looked quizzically at my granddaughter. “The music sounds like yellow?”

She nodded and went on to explain that she and her younger brothers had been assigning colors to things. She gave the days of the week as an example.

“Mondays are blue. Light blue.”

“Interesting,” I said. “What else?”

“Fridays are green.”

“Green as in go?’

“Yes. Fridays are green…and skinny.”

I gave her comments a lot of thought and then finally turned to Google to see what I could learn about senses triggering other senses. It’s an actual thing, called synesthesia. Webster defines it as a subjective sensation or image of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated. Wikipedia says it’s where stimulation of one sense results in unexpected stimulation of a second sense. It can cause a person to experience a color when listening to certain music—thus explaining Hannah’s sensing yellow because of a section of music. In a similar way, words can trigger the sense of taste.

It’s no surprise then that Hannah said of the six bookmarks she made for my birthday, they were for “all the delicious books” I’m reading. The bookmarks, strings with beads at each end, were of different lengths and colors. The shortest, nine inches long, displayed blue beads and a tiny white seashell. Next in line, at eleven and three-quarters inches, came one in turquoise and green shades, anchored by a small silver fish. Then came the bone marker at twelve inches, beads in brown and ivory made out of, if not pieces of bone, its closest match. And then came the purple horse-charm marker, at fifteen and a half inches, followed by the camel-charm marker in shades of purple at sixteen inches. Finally, came the starfish marker, measuring sixteen and a half inches.

Friends asked if a book’s genre determined the bookmark I chose to use. Nope. Maybe my senses aren’t all that sensitive, since the length of the marker is my biggest motivation.

Dangling things disturb me. They’re not neat and orderly, in a prescribed place. So, I’ve chosen the bookmark that most closely fit each book I’ve read, leaving only the beads exposed and none of the string to swing about in unwieldy ways.

I never have liked loose ends.