I promised God, as you recall, in the hospital where I lay nearly dying, that, if I was allowed to live, I would write the things which I most feared to write. snip Ever since I was first conscious, I was aware that I perceived some things differently than did many of those around me. In kindergarten, I realized (without, of course, having the word for this) that I had synesthesia — the condition in which one sense spills over into another; people with this form of perception hear colors, or taste sound, or in other ways activate different senses...