Choose Your Own Brainwashing, Day 23

With the last snap echoing in your ears and your mind, you just can’t tell where you are. It’s like your ability to think has become uncoupled from your ability to understand; there are images in front of your open eyes, but your mind can’t make sense of them.

Your ears are better, you can hear the faintest of voices whispering to you, of colors and sensations, and how sound and color can be as one for just a little while, and the longer the voice goes on the fainter it becomes, and the fainter it becomes the more vivid the colors in front of your eyes become, until finally the sound is gone completely and a symphony of color is playing out in front of your eyes.

It might mean something to you if only you could remember what color actually was, or music, or words, or silence.

Time passes, and eventually you are able to connect a feeling of warmth about your body to a particular kind of flash, and after that you find many different ways you can feel that correspond with certain flashes, and your body joins the symphony.

That might mean something to you if only you could remember what a body actually was, or warmth, or flashes.

Time passes, and it seems that when certain flashes happen you can smell sweet oranges, or heady roses, or pungent cedar, and your symphony expands.

That might mean something to you if only you could remember what an orange was, or roses, or cedar.

And time passes.

And finally, after a time that is far distant from where you started, or is also still right now, a single thought appears in your mind. You don’t know where it comes from, and you don’t know what it means exactly, but you understand it just the same.

“Mantra.”

And some part of you, a part that you know is there but seems indelibly separate from the essential you experiencing the symphony, responds.

Red flashes of light, and the aroma of hot cider with cinnamon, and a warm flush throughout your body.

(that might mean something to you if only…)

A clear white strobe, and the scent of newly fallen snow, and pin pricks of pleasure.

(that might mean something to you if only…)

A solid green wall, and the smell of charred marshmallows, and light tickles everywhere.

(that might mean something to you if only…)

Deep purple like a prism, and a tingling rush of ginger, and absolute immobility.

(that might mean something to you if only…)

Pick a color.

1. Flashing red
2. Strobing white
3. Solid green
4. Deep purple