Sunday, May 29, 2011

Two lefts make a... Wrong?

What follows is a shortened transcription of a hypnotic story, which I myself found quite amusing and fun to read. So without further ado, our story begins...

There are so many directions that you can follow when you allow your unconscious to do it for you. Just as there are many different directions you can follow physically; I'll give you an example. Some summers ago, I was traveling all alone on the highway in my car, just paying close attention to the sound of the engine and knowing that slowly but surely I was heading into another state. And in that state there was a particular person I wished to see, a particular experience I was looking forward to in that other state. However, while I knew the general set of directions regarding how to get where I wanted to go, I could not for the life of me remember the proper order in which those turns occurred ...

I did know that from where I was there then, I thought to myself, I don't want to be here now. I take a combination of three right turns and three left turns... But I don't quite know which is the right series of rights and lefts.


[ Try not to get confused now! ]

I'll take a right here- I think that's right, and then a left, which means I'm left with two lefts and two rights. So all right, I'll take another left, which means I'm now left with a left and a right and a right. If I take a right, I'll be left with a right and another right … But I don't think that is right, so I'll take a right first, and then a left, and now I'm left with a right, and so I take the right, and … Dead end. It's the wrong way. And so now I've got to go back to the starting point, so as not to get completely left behind … So I begin to back track and now take three rights and three lefts again, except that each turn is now the opposite from the other direction … Everything is reversed ... Now which was then a right is now a left … And that which was left then is now right … So for every right then it is right now to take a right, and now I'm back at the beginning, ready to begin again... and so I begin again... [etc]

And after a while I became so tired, so confused, that I didn't know and didn't care where to turn next... I couldn't tell a right from a left, now a left from a left … I couldn't figure out whether taking a left was right, or whether taking a right was right. So I pulled off to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and sat there with my eyes closed and said to myself: “To hell with trying to figure it out. Stop all this activity and just relax...” And I did.