Category: Creativity

  • A story uncanny

    A story uncanny

    I’ve been experimenting with ways to help people understand what it’s like to live with chronic migraine. This blog is part of my endeavors, as are the short stories I write under the genre-name I refer to as “Migraine Gothic”. After I’d written a few posts (here), I put several…

  • Haiku for pain relief

    Haiku for pain relief

    Some time ago, I wrote a post titled “The narrow road of healing” which referenced the seventeenth century writer Matsuo Basho (1644-94) and his book of poems written on pilgrimage. The collection of poems included one that is considered ‘the most famous’ haiku ever written – “The Old Pond”: An…

  • Feeling a little Picasso-ish

    Feeling a little Picasso-ish

    A little while ago, one of my blogging friends, Silver Apple Queen, left a comment on my post “Our Woven Selves” to say that when she thought about migraine metaphors, she imagined her migraines as Pablo Picasso paintings. And if you know anything about his abstract art, it’s not hard…

  • Making a monster of your chronic pain

    Making a monster of your chronic pain

    Many, many months ago I wrote about how living with chronic migraine was akin to a horror story filled with darkness and jump scares (here). Elsewhere, I suggested that one way to reduce your suffering was to imagine your migraine-mess as part of a silly sitcom rather than a horrible…

  • Ellipses…

    Ellipses…

    On this blog, I tend to write the way I think. Sometimes straightforward, sometimes in a slightly jumbled way that zigzags cross-country as it were, traipsing into the occasional dead-end or cul-de-sac… ending abruptly or circling back on myself. I try to tidy it up as best I can before…

  • Dream big and (maybe) make magic

    Dream big and (maybe) make magic

    Funny story. My teenage daughter decided to make a cake-in-a-mug. We don’t own the ready-to-go mixes, she just decided that she would start from scratch, presumably with a recipe she found online. The first I knew of her culinary adventures was when she stuck her head around the corner of…

  • Are you feeling paingry?

    Are you feeling paingry?

    There’s a phrase in Australia (and presumably everywhere that English is spoken) which is a play on words; hungry + angry = hangry. It defines the feeling of being grumpy and irritable because it has been a long time since you’ve eaten. I for one, am guilty of experiencing mood…

  • Three wishes

    Three wishes

    The other day I watched the movie “Three Thousand Years of Longing” (2022) because the title caught my attention. Without giving too much away, it spins around the ancient story of a djinn (or genie) who offers up three wishes. Visually impressive, filled with wonder and weirdness, there was something…

  • The Bluesky Dictionary

    The Bluesky Dictionary

    Not long after a famous billionaire bought Twitter and renamed it X, there was a sudden exodus of many members who fled to a chat-app called Bluesky. I ended up with a foot in both camps, but rarely use either. The first app mentioned is filled with negativity these days,…