Yesterday, I wallowed in the midst of a terrible electrical storm, which shrieked through my brain. The migraine formed thanks to the convergence of many factors: seasonal change, caffeine and video game withdrawal, broken sleep patterns, sloppy eating habits. I survived thanks to Doolies’s attentions. I expected to wake to a P.H.D., excited by the prospect of productivity and inventiveness that usually follows bad days. Instead, I found myself in the wishy-washy motioning of an in-between world, where the pain had subsided but had not been replaced by anything more interesting than a slight fatigue and the wonders of emptiness.

My brain cranks as if it skipped a gear and I search for the missing gear. I’m not much help in finding the slot. I stare into space with a blurred vision and make no effort to focus, relying on my apathetic feeling to grope my way towards something. My mind swishes too much to afford a search for stories. I again question whether I have any stories within me that need uncovering.

I think of new techniques: Maybe slower, maybe throwing words as fast as the brain thinks without the editorializing is not the way to write. I’m searching for the way—not the easy way, since I know there is not an easy way, but the way that will push me forward, as if any technique will recover what is absent from my searches.

I flounder and wish I could catch it and fry it and call it well done. Zonkers cover my lights and I walk blindly in the darkness. I don’t bother trying because down that path I imagine only darkness. I find much to blame for this darkness, but all of it is me, me, me, and what fun is blaming oneself for failing.

Crying rates as the highest fall out for large bugs that wander over the course riverbank. If only chairs raised on their hind legs to roar at those who approached and threatened to lower their enormous rears onto the comforting seat only to be thwarted by would-be contrarians in green overcoats. Spitting words across the table into plastic cups filled with used chew irked the local Peabody association of retired nuns. Needles of sparkling rage singed the naked rears of the streakers as the attempted to cross the campus.

Such foolishness leaves my fingers in its dazed state. I welcome it, welcome the escape and change from days of blankness in which I forgot to form words or hide behind heavy covers to forget the unforgettable pains.