The Independent (UK) describes the world of Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant who has an extraordinary sense of numbers and words, yet struggles with everyday issues that most of us take for granted. A few excerpts follow:
Daniel's world is a rich and strange one, where every number up to 10,000 has colour, texture and emotional resonance. "The number one is a brilliant and bright white, like somebody shining a torch beam into my eyes ... Four is shy and quiet, like me. Eighty-nine is like falling snow ..." More remarkable still, he has described it all in Born on a Blue Day, his memoir of his life with synaesthesia and savant syndrome, a rare form of Asperger's. Dr Darold Treffert, a leading researcher in autism, says: "Such first-person explanations of savant abilities are extremely rare, in fact nearly non-existent."...
Mental arithmetic is a gorgeous kaleidoscopic process for Daniel. "Squaring numbers is a symmetrical process that I like very much," he says. "And when I divide one number by another, say, 13 divided by 97, I see a spiral rotating downwards in larger and larger loops that seem to warp and curve. The shapes coalesce into the right number. I never write anything down."
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Generally, Daniel feels he is progressing all the time towards "outgrowing" his autism. He cried for the first time in his adult life a few years ago, when his cat died. "My face was wet, and I knew that I was crying." Latterly, he has acquired a strong religious faith, which grew from an intellectual appreciation of the writings of G K Chesterton. And he is getting steadily better at social interaction. "Every experience I have I add to my mental library and hopefully life should then get easier." In this, he seems to sum up the progress we all hope for.
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