So I decided to walk home from work yesterday. It's not a big deal: it's about 3 miles or so, sidewalks all (ok, well, most) of the way, decent neighborhoods and it was still light out. It was nice to be out and about with just my thoughts for a while anyway. I do wish I had sunglasses, but hey, at least I had a hat.
Did I mention I wear hats now? I dunno who reads this anymore, but it's become a "thing" so it's probably important to mention at some point. One of my friends out was really surprised one day when I didn't have one on, so I'm guessing it's kinda become part of my look now.
Ah well, story for another time.
Musings
So as it often does when my feet go wondering, my mind decided to take a similar trip. The thought process started as I was thinking about animals crossing pavement. It's always been an interesting phenomenon to me, to see a squirrel, so confident in the grass or on a tree, to become confounded as soon as its feet touch a road. A squirrel new to the concrete jungle will lose all sense of distance and need, and sometimes in a moment of sheer confusion will even completely lose direction. Meanwhile, squirrels that make their home (or find their food) within the bounds of human-dominate areas will have no problems, moving across it without a problem and often preferring it to the more earthy areas for quick getaways.
It's not a surprising revelation or anything, it's just fascinating. There are a lot of creatures who can hunt and track through movements felt on their pads of their feet. There are even more whose survival instincts are tied to it directly. The ground transmits vibrations from most any disturbance, and plants make it transmit even better.
Pavement has its limitations on such senses. It's much the same as putting a cup up to your ear; everything becomes muffled, but you can "hear" things from much farther away, in some cases almost miles. Metal is even worse, as the muffled effect doesn't exist; everything transfers, so anything that would get transferred through the metal is felt or heard anywhere along the piece. Wood, however, is a nice middle ground, as is tile and similar items; you still tend to feel everything, but the distance of transfer is far less, giving you a sense of your surrounding much like dirt but with a bit more detail. It's why raccoon, for instance, have a hard time crossing the road but will bolt through a house with no problem.
Some Background
Feeling movement through my own feet has been something I've done for a long time, a skill I picked up ages ago when I was trying to compensate for my poor sight and honed when playing soccer, studying martial arts and during meditations. It's actually a bit frustrating in buildings; movement transfers so well it's hard to stop being aware every time someone comes anywhere close. In fact, I've developed this horrible bird-like reaction where I swing my head to glance at almost every person I feel or hear come by if I don't immediately see them (which is all the time thanks to my lovely limited peripheral vision).
I've learned a lot of things through this "new" sense. First of all, it is my general belief that our tactile sense are HIGHLY underrated, at least consciously. It was once pointed out to me that, despite our dependence on our other senses, there is only one sense that truly defines our reality: touch. If we hear or see something in front of us, but we cannot touch it, we tend to assume it isn't real. If we haven't touched an object we know about, it seems separate from us, almost like we lose a sense of understanding. If we're not allowed to touch it, it seems above us or more important than us. There is so much inherent to our sense of touch that we don't even realize all the ways it affects our lives just on a subconscious level.
One of the things I learned through martial arts is how someone holds their weight and shifts. I can tell how aggressive someone is becoming, and sometimes even how they're going to address the aggression, through the ground they're standing on. A sudden shift of weight to the front leg indicates a charge, most likely using fists. Sudden weight on their rear leg often indicates a feint; a lighter weight can mean they're going to kick. Slowly, it became than that: it started to register as something akin to body language. A heavier tremor in the ground indicated anger or determination; a constant pulse or push suggested fear or trepidation; a solid presence, confidence.
Leading in
So as I was thinking about the squirrel and its senses (and I practiced my own once, trying to recognize cars and bikes coming down the road without looking or listening), my mind wondered to a few conversations I had held recently. One had been about a perception of auras, something I've understood but bought into only slightly. I've never doubted that the people who said they see auras do, in fact, remember seeing them, and I've never doubted their accuracy. I've just always viewed it as an intuitive empathy. Most people who read auras seem to get the same "read-outs" as someone who is genuinely empathetic or can read people.
The other discussion that popped in my head was one I had about synesthesia. The relationships we were referring to was about sound and sight, of course, as we were discussing music at the time. I explained that, in a lot of ways, mine was reverse of the typical musician who could see the music; I tend to relate people and objects to sounds I associate with them, and I will often recognize someone's voice before their face.
It was a strange pairing at first to be sure. However, as my thoughts started to come together, it seemed to be pretty obvious why both of these things popped in my head around the same time I was considering how one could receive more than just movement through the ground, but can also tell aggression, fear and confidence.
A New Curiosity
It was a slow thought, so I'm not going to say that it "suddenly dawned on me." There were a lot of implications to consider, and honestly it didn't seem very likely at first. The more I thought about it through, it was strangely starting to make more and more sense.
Aura perception, in a lot of ways, makes sense as an synesthetic response to an intuitive empath. In general, a lot of people don't have a cognitive process to explain intuition in any sort of way the mind will respond to in a comprehensive way. An aura would be a way for the mind to make sense of the input its getting without overwhelming the conscious mind with a myriad of sensory data.
There are a lot of different ways this could manifest too. Synesthesia itself can come and go involving both cognitive and sensory processes. Various inputs could "manifest" as these auras: things felt through your feet, changes in air felt through the hairs on your hand, the sound of their joints creaking as they flex muscles and even the process of figuring out body language could all be taken in by the subconscious, molded intuitively and manifested as an aura around a person. In a way, "aura perception" of other people could be a completely scientific process.
Strange Logical Movements
I began to wonder if there were other "supernatural" items that could be further explained through synesthesia. It made sense; as one considered the possibilities around people who are able to "see" things that others didn't, the idea that the brain is actually interpreting a different or generally unused sensory input as something one sees makes sense.
As I delved deeper and deeper into this train of thought however, it felt more and more "unreal". In seemed like, on the surface, a ton of different things (from future telling to ghost reading to prophesying) could be related, on the surface, to synesthesia. It started to become an excuse more than anything else; with how easily it seemed to fit into everything, it became hard to believe it fit into anything.
And then... I ran into some sleeping ducks.