I Love Mind Hacks

"Everyone loves Mind Hacks," sez old-hand blogger character to me when I profess my admiration of the Mind Hacks blog. "Well, I've got the book, so I'm a true fan," I counter, even though the blog is more readable to your average interested lay person, though only because I don't like picking at a book every now and then, preferring to devour it in one go (or, at least, in several goes).

Today, the bloggers pointed me in the direction of the Migraine blog on the New York Times, which I've never spotted, even though I was perusing their blog listing on a few days ago. As a person who rarely gets ill, my migraines frustrate me because I have no control over them and cannot prevent them but as I have at least four unread books on my shelf and two on my Amazon wishlist, I can't bring myself to put the additional pressure of purchasing Oliver Sacks's book on the subject on myself by buying another book (he is one of the blogging team on the NYT blog).

I love Mind Hacks even more for pointing me in the direction of Robert Graves's love as a migraine / migraine as love poem, which I've never even heard of, even if it makes me feel inadequate to have compared landing at Luton in the fog to a migraine rather than something grander:

However, no one seems to have touched on a poem by Robert Graves where he uses migraine as a metaphor for love (or is it the other way round?) capturing the beauty and pain of both.

Symptoms of Love

Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens and nightmares -
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.

Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?