Chris Colin in The New York Times:
On Day 3, I started seeing Rothkos. Immersed in darkness, I was hallucinating abstract expressionism, smears of pink and blue pulsing through what I knew to be a room in Massachusetts, though it was also a cave and somehow a black hole. A strange inner cinema comes online after enough time in absolute blackness, a kind of backup generator for imagery. I sat. Had sat for hours. It was daytime, or maybe nighttime, one of the big two. Was I unraveling? Raveling? What did I know for sure? I knew to breathe: Om ah hum. If I truly freaked, I could find the door. I didn’t want the door. I wanted to boil existence down, see what remained.
Another hour or four. No light, people, activity, screens. A brain in the dark, and a warping one at that. I watched a wolf’s head drift past. Memories slid in. Autumn afternoon in Virginia, rusty rake tines snagged on a willow root. That Belgian boy from summer camp who knew just one English phrase, “bed of nails.” My daughter home with the flu, head on my chest, lifting it sweetly to barf. The crook of an unusual tree in Mexico 20 years ago. Om ah hum. Enough with the breathing. Tea? No more tea. I opted for a journey to the bathroom, mostly recreational — edge along bed, feel for far wall, left at dresser, don’t knock over soap dispenser. Sitting again, more staring, more blackness.
More here.
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