Lightening flashes across my vision. If I hold my head at a particular angle, and do not focus directly,. I can identify what I see. Now the lightening lingers, shimmers, dazzling, superimposed over the optic neuritis skewed to ultra violet, beautiful and misleading. Sometimes stabbing pain is the price for such glory. Do the bees, with vision in ultra violet, pay a cost in pain? Is their price a short lifespan? The lightening is from another source, aural migraine, an infinite receding, pursued awareness, A samsara of all encompassing agony. Can I ride pain as Quan Lin, riding a Dragon, surfing the waves of suffering? Will my brain implode, bursting outward from my skull, a nightmare, a quasar-burst of light and waves and matter; radio resonating squeal? Or will it not? All the while the Stars scream, the constant, starry cicada song overwhelmed by the banshee screech that only I perceive. So intense the pain it squeezes the bile from my body in waves of vertigo, sailing up and down, and around, and around, whirling. No end to the spiral. Can I dance it all away, to fall in an exhausted heap? Must I dance on, whirling, screaming: When is there surcease? When is there sleep? Will the cat ever relinquish the Cursed Fiddle? . To soar as Buzzards, as Eagles, must we eat carrion? Bear December 13, 2022 ©Bearspawprint2022