Certain sensations are puzzling because they seem to be at the limits of what it is possible for one's brain to process. They actually feel 'maxed out.' For example, a runner at the end of a race feeling something like pain that nevertheless doesn't feel like pain (because of the euphoria induced by the momentum). If someone asks me what I'm feeling in a case like this, the answer will usually be "I don't know"; there's a general sense of positive valence, but little else can be said.

It's like the sound you get if you press too many notes, too hard, on a synthesizer. There's a weird reverberation that becomes its own entity; but there's also a clear limit to how loud the whole sound, and even the individual notes, can get; beyond that the keyboard cannot process. So is experience synthesized (sorry) in the brain.....

And perhaps certain cases are like that of pressing more than one note on a monophonic keyboard: press both at once, and they produce a weird blurp, then nothing. Some part of sensory experience demands the whole of one's brain, and the rest disappears, or is attenuated..

Starts with a slight fulness in my ears and over my eyes, which expands. My forehead starts to feel slightly numb. My eyelids droop. The forehead and nose may then tingle as if "asleep." (Sometimes there is associated soreness of the jaw that may enter at this point; I'm not sure if it's migrainous, or simply the result of my facial structure. Headache often occurs without jawache, but not usually the other way around. Perhaps the jaw pain is just a result of increased pressure all around.) This stage is where I usually stay on the weekends. I like to say it's like having a cat inside my forehead--fuzzy, taking up space, making me sleepy. Or perhaps like clouds; I do have the sense of waiting for clarity and crispness to return. The pain, should it come, is hard to localize (except the jaw pain); there are both sudden piercing jabs with precise locations (I haven't noted the locations--but there doesn't seem to be a pattern) and a bilateral ache. Times: weekends (beginning Friday afternoon), and ends of days--especially days involving fluorescent lights.