Visualizing Migraines: The Attempts of Hubert Airy and Others to Depict Scintillating Scotomat
Welcome to Dream Interpretation for Dummies, where Dear Abby meets Native Americana. Come to the campfire, peer into the yawning grave, and take a dive into the collective subconscious… or maybe just explore some weird clown imagery. We’ll wait for you here.
Dear Dreamers,
Today is a Dream Day, you think. This doesn’t feel like a Dream.
Well, my beloveds, a day or so after the holiday, I started to feel ill. Really sick, I mean. I am a person who does not do well being in the sickbed. It adds an uncomfortable anxious layer on top of whatever I am already feeling. There was nothing I could do, however, but to feel incrementally worse every day, while I tried to rally my mind and energies into business as usual. But that’s not how this works. And I am still feeling very bad. And this hellish combination of laryngitis/bronchitis/no sleep is plaguing me. And I just moved out of the haunted house. And my mind is still whirring, thinking — what a way to start the beginning of the year! Even though my perception of time as Gregorian, unless it for work, of course, has never mattered less to me.
As you might have guessed, there will be no Dream this week, unless you count the ones we will have, together. The ones I will walk through, alone. I always do, but you don’t have to. I have so much I need to do, so much I want to do, all these important things on the horizon weighing on me — but for now, as much as I can, I must let them rest. I must let myself rest. It feels an impossible task.
I’m hoping next week provides a glimmer of wellness for me, but if it doesn’t, I’ll have to re-calibrate. To take it as it comes. Easy to say, of course, harder to do.
That is why on this day, I invite you to center yourself with me. I am not one for hollow affirmations, for half-truths in the face of disruption, but the more I grow, the more I think that the rituals I once thought silly and pointless in the face of other, more intense forays, are the ones that I should be doing more.
Light a candle, a white one, maybe. A scented one. A Cowboy Kush flavor from your mentor. Or don’t. The candle simply signals that this is a time set apart. Incense will work, too. Take a deep breath, several. Close your eyes. Do not think: I shouldn’t be this tired, this is just the beginning. Do not think: How have I already ruined this year? Do not think: Why do I ruin every fresh start I find? Simply let yourself exist in your body. Find where your heart pulses, alive. Let it hum inside of you. Ask yourself what you want from this time in your life, how you can seek it genuinely. Don’t press the answers, just let them float in the space before you. When the time is right, you will not have to grab them, they will float into your hands.
If you can bear it, say out loud: I am ready for what this time will bring me. I am protected. I am safe. I am loved.
Open your eyes. This path we will walk together has only just begun, but unlike before, there is no fear. None.
See you on the other (hopefully well) side,
Howdy
Feel better soon, Autumn! I’m at the tail-end of my first brush with Covid and absolutely exhausted. Here’s to starting the new year off in bed--squint-reading subtitles on YouTube videos without my glasses on--while fireworks rage outside! The beginning does not define the end!
Get well soon! I’m laying in my own sick bed--second time in less then a month UNFAIR--and letting visions and dreams float through my head just resting. I’m sending you a dream of open fields of flowers and warm sun on your back. Hope you get it! ❤️