a single bird sits outside of my window on a branch of maple his beak sharp orange shrill bits chirp from it he pauses and considers — my concerns aren’t his
I once set out to create a religion as a prank, in true Prankster tradition.
You know, just to see if I could… like everyone does, right?
Now this was back in the days before Photoshop existed. And at the time I had unique access to systems that could perform that kind of “image magic”. And as an added bonus I could also print stuff in color, which was practically unheard of at the time.
This religion itself centered around a friend of mine who had long hair and a beard of the requisite brown color usually found in your stereotypical Hollywood-style light-skinned Jewish carpenter.
And as an added bonus, the guy’s name it got based on just happened to be a linguistic variation of yet another significant religious figure’s name.
And neither of these religions are known for their sense of humor in some areas. But I’ve always had an irreverent side. In hindsight, I am probably lucky I didn’t end up with some curse on my head, or much worse.
It lasted for a couple years. Myself and a few friends spread ‘The Word’ by sending out unsolicited prank mailers to our friends in far away cities.. We would include poster-sized color images of the (what I always thought was) buffoonery. And we would include some textual reading I wrote up that were probably about 2 steps above fortune cookie.
The whole thing ended because we met some people one day whom we didn’t know, and they way they acted made us wonder if they really believed this crap or they were just never breaking character in their own prank! Either way, it was time to put away the pulpit and hide for a while.
It’s a complex world, and some people are really susceptible to these kinds of ideas. But what is worse is that there are too many who would have looked for any opportunity to take advantage of these people.
slow morning crawl coffee and stare far away look minutes become breath at a time metronome sets to forward go the way of you hurt begets pain pain begets scars scars become hard yield not to wrath a goal for now
A migraine isn’t just a bad headache. A migraine is a big chunk of time where I can’t do life. I can’t cook, drive, shop, eat, or even talk well. And if I am not careful, I can cause much bigger problems for myself just by the way I act when I have one.
I don’t build up any sort of tolerance or immunity when I have a migraine. When I recover from one, that doesn’t influence whether I will have another at all, as far as I know. Yes, I have tried everything: plenty of water, OTC meds, meditation, acupuncture, dry needling, vitamins, adding and removing different foods, etc. And no, those essential oils won’t cleanse my salty chakra.
I don’t even look at migraines the same way as I used to. Even with all of the neurological and physical symptoms I have, and everything I have learned about how they work. A migraine has just become nothing more to me than a multi-day long period where I am a useless lump.
A migraine is that time period where I don’t get to do any of my daily life, that extends through to being a partner, a parent, an employee, or a even a reliable friend. And there’s a whole bunch of other side-crap I let pile up as well. I also don’t make lots of long-range plans, because everyone gets kind of sick of me breaking them.
Each time I have a migraine, I also get less healthy because I don’t move around as much. I certainly don’t exercise. I don’t eat right. I give in to cravings a lot more, and reach for easy stuff. And of course I end up taking lots of medicines. Eventually, those take their own toll on your internal organs, surreptitiously damaging my health in other ways. And, so many of the medicines that are designed to abort a migraine have such horrid side-effects for me that I realized I suffered almost as much with them, as I did without. Hey! How’s about a little dose of serotonin syndrome for your entertainment pleasure? Good stuff man!
Opiates have helped in the past, but they have a problem built into them. One, the body’s tolerance to them can climb like a caffeinated squirrel up a tree if you don’t use them exactly the right way. And even you do, you can still very quickly find yourself with a very persistent monkey on your back. Since the death of my own brother from an opiate overdose, I quickly realized that regardless of their effectiveness they must remain a “For Emergency Use Only” medicine.
Then there is medical marijuana. I mean, pot! No, wait… cannabis, right?!
The Middle Way 