Have you ever had a pounding headache that just consumes your whole being? This is no small business we’re talking about here. This is the headache of all headaches. You try to find the pulsating veins hidden under your scalp and rub them to no avail. You massage your eyebrows, and that just makes you sleepy. Usually, a shower makes headaches go away. Sometimes, however, they just seem to stick to you through all possible cures. The worst ones are the ones that plague you even when it’s time to sleep. Nothing should disturb or prevent your sleep. It’s probably one of the most inhumane things that can happen. Worse than kicking a baby. Okay, no, kicking a baby is probably worse. My faith in mankind convinces me that baby-kickers must lose a lot of sleep at night.
I don’t take aspirin because 1) I can never find any and 2) I’ve convinced myself that I’m allergic to it. I don’t know how being allergic to aspirin works, but the human mind has power that frightens. Someone told me that you can hypnotize a person to not only believe that they are actually getting burned when touching an ice cube to their skin, but a burn’ll actually show up. That’s just crazy talk. Crazy. Talk. My aspirin is math and trail mix.
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter described how everyone has a part of their body that they guard all the time. For Singer, it was his hands. For me, it’s my head. I think that’s why seeing people who have lost their minds really strikes a chord. Forgetting everything you’ve known, all the most meaningful and the most trivial things that turned out to be even more meaningful in the end. All the times you screwed up and said something stupid, all the times you were unintentionally rude. All the trees you saw silouhetted in front of the dusky sky that make you want to take a mental picture to save forever. All the substance behind things. All the stuff behind a word. Behind a name. Behind a face. Everything, everything. People cry, and you don’t know why they are. They shake you indignantly and scream in your face, they shout to God and ask Him why you won’t wake up. And all you can do is sit there and smile and tell them everything is okay, and you really mean it because okay is all you’ve ever known.
A headache doesn’t seem so bad.
