Fuente: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hypnotism-posters-ca-1900/
It happened at the beach club I used to go to with my parents when I was a child.
I was about eight years old when they brought in a hypnotist, I think they called him “The Third Eye.”
The cinema was packed with people, of course children weren’t allowed in, but I watched everything through a small hole on the wall.
I didn’t understand anything the hypnotist said, but I clearly remember that, when he finished speaking, he called to the stage those who had been “bewitched”, so to speak.
I remember him giving them orders, which they obeyed. It’s cold, and everyone was shivering. It’s hot, and they took off their clothes. There are mice, and everyone was climbing up on chairs and pretending to shoo them away with a broom.
By definition, hypnosis, that altered state of mind, also called trance, is a human condition that involves focused attention and an enhanced ability to respond to suggestion. Today it is used for therapeutic purposes.
I have never considered it in my life, but I was interested in this form of communication through words to achieve feelings of security, consideration, care, delight.
As I have been a little worried the last few days, due to those “obstacles in life that are life”, I decided to start a hypnosis session.
I let myself be carried away by the slow, rhythmic, intense words.
In a few seconds I fell into a trance.
The hypnotist began to give me commands, just like in my childhood memory.
– There are no time barriers, have fun, he told me.
– There are no distances, jump to new continents, he continued.
– There are bridges between heaven and earth, cross them whenever you want.
– Defy history, ancestral languages, abysses.
Each order transported me to a memory, a desire, a caress, love, a kiss.
My hypnotist, whose name is Coleridge, snapped his fingers and finished with these words:
“The ship has suddenly become calm.”
So did I.
I snapped out of my trance and closed my book of poems, my third eye: English Romantic Poets.
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com