Wednesday. Something is Wrong: Early in the morning, around 4 AM I awake with a pain in the brain. In the Cerebellum and Primary visual cortex the savages of Migrainia were at war. I got up a stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water and some of the pills I have been prescribed when such skirmishes arise. I went back to bed only to get up groggy and still suffering at 6:40. I took two extra strength pain relievers and prepared to head out to work, thinking that in a couple of hours I could take another Midrin if need be. Need Did be, and then some. Nausea sat in as the Prefrontal Cortex got into the act. Vision blurred words slurred and an early exit occurred. I was home by 11:15, and agonized in the bedroom waiting for quiet, dark and peace. An eye pillow provided the dark, the balance never occurred and I fell in and out of fitful repose. The hypersensitivity of all my nerves made the bed feel like it was covered in glass dust.
Jenni came home and brought Rally's Fish sandwiches. My body and my hunger took neutral corners and the bout began. Then the new Harry Potter Movie went into the DVD player and we "watched" it . I had trouble getting the oculars to organize images on the macula and retinal surfaces and it took all my good humor (vitreous and otherwise) to make heads and tails of the tale. Having read all the books I can say that I was not lost, but I still will replay the DVD when I have time for a better reckoning with the images to the minds eye. Had Hermione been available she may have uttered "Oculas Repairo," but no, my woes were not due to broken glasses but instead broken brain. After moving pictures were phosphors slowly fading from the persistence of vision I again retired to the silicated surfaces of sleep to fight my way onto a morning. I knew immediately upon waking on the first alarm that there would be no way I could leave the confines of agony or address.
Thursday did not take place. I can't prove it but I'm sure it was no more than two hours long at best. Charlie woke me at 10 something with a dookie-pee pee ballet-tap improvisation number, I struggled on loose shoes and hoodie over sleep pants and tee and took the hound to his business spots. He read and left canine-p-mail, dropped a load of relief off at the base of a evergreen, and we came back in. I saw to it that there was food in animal dishes, and went back to the crypt and eye pillow. 6 something, Jenni is home and asks if I had the good sense to eat. I have no sense that is not enraged. She provided Wendy's shortly after waking me again to say that there is one of each for us. My one of each was a double w/cheese, a collection of slender potato planks and a cylinder of Sprite with straw (So was hers). I watched Smallville, then soaked in a tub of salinated hot water before returning to bed.
Friday: Not Working, not an option. More Midrin and pain killers, situation little improved, vision back to nominal and work on the horizon. I went to work, mostly because I had to, there I made a difference in the lives of camera cravers, fueled jets with ink for picturing a better world, and lest we forget sold memory for the express purpose of enriching memories. The meds were making inroads and I was merely in agony (no longer suicidal) when the day ended at the camera ranch. I went to the bowling alley to make a decision. I paid for my place to be vacant, and ordered a shot of Jägermeister (Deanne's migraine modifier) and a small coke back. I did the body shiggles* all the way to the car and drove home.

Work away today, think about tomorrow
Never comes the day for my love and me ...
Justin Hayward, "Never Comes the Day,"
The Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream, released April 2 1969.

The selling season is upon us. Sort of sounds ominous to me: like the killing season, the hunting season, the trapping season. Its none of those things really but its a part of all of those things too. To far to many people giving has become more a sport than a expression of love or caring. It is a part of life, it has been this way since I can remember. It will be this way after I am no longer remembered at all.
You know how some things are there, and have always been there and you don't really think much about how the got there or where they came from? That is a kind of faith I guess. Not in any religious sense but in an acceptance sense. Which I guess is the basis of much in religion too. The first religions were based on the physical world, and an attempt to understand them, that is why the sun was (and is) worshipped. Why it was believed the moon brought mystery, music and love and so was also worshipped. Mighty rivers, biggest trees, mountains, you name it. To the observer these were there at the beginning, they were timeless, were not susceptible to human weakness or frailty. These were the eternals. These were gods. Then came the grapes, and the barleys, the fermenters, and they were then new gods, for they brought release and new candor and feelings of euphoria.
I lost what-ever track I was tracing in my head above to something akin to sleep, something nearing but not reaching rest. I started that last night before another hapless night of tortured half-sleep. In it I half remembered an Edgar Allan Poe dream, er I should say poem. A short one not so hard to remember, but I had read it and memorized it when I was 11, when I could sleep to dream and awake to a day of renewed optimism and promise. When no avenue was yet closed to me and no dream to foolish or unobtainable. I checked when I got up, I remembered the second and final stanza almost accurately. I found after waking from my dreams that my best sleep was between the first and second alarms, that was the period, that 9 minute reluctance to wake is when I dreamed my own dream within a dream.