Kage Baker suffered from migraines. She left them to me, along with all her writing notes and Beatles memorabilia.

I had no vestige of a migraine until menopause heaved over my personal horizon. Kage, Kimberly and Anne all did – I held a lot of hair out of the way of helplessly vomiting siblings, and dispensed a lot of strong tea and black coffee in darkened rooms: but me, I never had so much as a hint of an aura.

Then, about the time that I developed hot flashes and a 1000% increase in chocolate appetite, the migraines started. I’m lucky even so – they are rarely painful. Instead, they mostly rely on vertigo and visual distortions to do their evil work. And thus, the only way to get through is still to lie down and sleep ’em off. I can’t even rely on a painkiller to help, since the buggers don’t have the good grace to hurt.

Instead, I get black and silver patterns of thorns growing all over my visual field. It’s like Sleeping Beauty’s castle being over-run by roses in fast forward, and in a Gothic style. Metallic lace, mirror-and-jet thorns, a rose garden out of a Cocteau film … rather lovely, really, but when you’re peering at the world through the edges of the daggers and thorns, it’s very confusing.

Besides, I can see them growing. Unnerving to the max, lemme tell you.

Anyway, I spent this afternoon lying down and sleeping it off. The Orange Fluff Cat came and slept with me, which was very nice; and I managed to stay actually horizontal in my own bed for quite some time before Harry decided I had probably died and started bugling in alarm. A bored parrot will reliably raise the actual dead, Dear Reader. I am sure one travelled with Jesus and the disciples.

Anyway, I am still sorting through my thoroughly disabled sensorium this evening. The exploration of how lucid dreaming and good painkillers effect post-surgical awareness of spatial relationships will have to wait. Heaven only knows where I think I’m waking up in the middle of tonight – last night, I thought I was in the Great Cabin of the HMS Surprise from the film Master and Commander. She lies at anchor these days at the Maritime Mueum in San Diego, and I was privileged one very early morning to run all over her with Kage before the day’s crowds appeared …

It’s the only way to get through the little hiccoughs that crop up during migraines and post-surgical healing. Use your thoughts’ disorder to make your dreams more interesting! If the brakes are off your imagination, head for a good downhill grade and let ‘er rip!

Sometimes I understand why people want to do drugs …