I have a weird headache today; but the good news is I know that I get these headaches, I know the migraines they are going to become and I don’t have to worry about brain tumors (which crazy enough I always think I am going to have).  The headaches are ultimately caused by stress I believe, and they always center right behind one of my eyes.

The headaches cause blurry vision, upset stomach, and eventually the need for complete and total solitude.  I know it is coming, and while I will take the appropriate meds to stave off the migraine for as long as I can, eventually there will be nothing I can do but let it come and rage.  Rage through my mind, through my eyes, through my soul like a fierce hurricane blowing all the debris and collected thought away so that I can start again.  It happens; thankfully it only happens every long once in a while.

But as I am reader, an internet explorer, and an incredible devotee of learning this major ache can cause frustration and sometimes a disaster born out of it.  With blurry vision it is especially hard to read on the internet, and even now I am sitting here looking at my fingers rather than the screen as I usually do.  So I have to find other ways to keep my brain engaged.  A bored brain, at least in my world, is a recipe for madness.

Because I can’t read, I instead search for art.  I positively love to look at statues, especially those in great monuments to art like the Vatican or the Louvre.  I love to see the emotional pain captured for eternity, or the incredible devotion captured not by pen or paint but by a knife – a symbol so much more dramatic.

Sitting here, I can think of thousands of statues that have blown me away.  The veiled and sorrowful lady,  the man cradling a dead child, the passionate embrace of dead love.  The ability of a good artist to capture the reality of such powerful emotions helps my soul to recognize emotions that I often think I alone know.  I am bipolar.  I feel it all, but through art I can find a cathartic way of releasing that emotion without ever moving.

My dream is to walk through the Louvre in Paris, and the Vatican in the city, and simply stare.  I don’t want to go for a couple of hours, but days.  I want to take my time to stand before the emotional firestorm that artists are so well-known for, and get lost in others misery.  To feel that misery on the outside, not simply on the inside where I never speak.

Art has been used greatly through the centuries.  It has been used as messages, as ways of communication; it has been used to honor, condemn, exalt, immortalize, and it has been used to change aspects of great minds.  It has been used to be all the things we mortals can never be: true, poetic, worthy, full.  It has been used to show us error and hatred; and it has been used to show us love beyond measure.

But the one thing it can not do?  It can never let us step back into the common world of reality. It can never destroy the perceptions, the truth that the artist tries to display. It can never alter our interpretation, or our truth.  For in art, you may not necessarily see the whole truth, but you are guaranteed to see your own.