Synesthesia

I sat smoking my pipe in the armchair that my grandfather had sat in, smoking his pipe himself, all those many years ago.  The hearth was crackling and sending popping coals against the metal curtain that hung across its glowing aperture.

The conversation from the ride home had kept me thinking all evening.  The man that had sat down next to me, the stranger in the trailing coat, the brown eyed man with the subtle implants surgically buried beneath the skin of his temples, had never heard of it before. 

There was a strange tone in his voice as he tried to convince me how much of a liar I was, how nothing of the kind could be, not without sedation at least.

And I had been thinking all evening.  The smoke curled in strange fingers from the warm briar bowl that sat in my hand, and as I smelled the old tobacco blend of Cavendish and vanilla oil, my vision danced alive and then fell still again with the pulse of my breath.  

This particular blend of spice and smoke had always, even as a small child smelling that aroma on the collar of my grandfather, made me see streaks of green, ambient and transparent, a whispered breath of a thing, that ran across my field of vision like aurorae.  The emerald belts would slowly drop in cascading spires and then whisp to nothing.

A man can grow accustomed to so many fantastic things.  It's strange what it takes sometimes to remember the beauty in the world.  

The conversation with the brown eyed and technologically savvy man, it got me thinking once again.

And so I lit my pipe, turned down the ancient oil lamps that guests would complain were so antiquated, and lit a real fire in the fire place, one of the few left in the city, and sat in the dim, smoking.  

And seeing.  

And remembering.