I received an instant message the other day from a college friend, John, living in Massachusetts and not spoken to in years. Sometimes such “out of the blue” communications are initiated for no articulable reason; other times, the break in…
Trauma
A friend recently gave me a book about living with trauma, hoping that a comprehensive self-examination of all yesterday’s life stresses might help me with Parkinson’s disease today. The book, The Transformation by James Gordon, introduces many practical tools, some…
Brain fog
The pressure draws near in a suffocating welcome of misty inaction, impossibly heavy yet real. The fog is back, the same oppressive blanket experienced before the brain surgery almost seven years ago. Only it is thicker now, more persistent in…
Change
Everything changes, and usually not in the manner that you or I envision. Last November, I had a neurology appointment to fine-tune the settings in my Deep Brain Stimulator (DBS) in an attempt to be more responsive to rapidly evolving…
Human Being
My conscious desire to learn more about the mystery of identity, ultimately who I am, goes back some 25 years but only became urgent due to Parkinson’s progression before my Deep Brain Stimulation surgery in 2014. About eight months earlier,…
Humbled (again)
As I enter the 17th year since my Parkinson’s diagnosis, anxiety surges forth from the deepest recesses of my being, a primal “fight or flight” response that meets my brain’s inability to process the simplest of tasks halfway, swirling together…
Climbing trees.
Regardless of where I lived at the time, be it Athens Greece, or Long Island, memories of youth are invariably pulled toward a common theme, climbing a favorite tree. What was the attraction? Why take a risk with no apparent…
Roots
A lone tree, roots locked to rocky isle as branches spread in defiant stillness, patiently awaits a mother’s call.
Peacock
A peacock ran directly in front of my forty-mph car today, forcing a thankfully successful brake-slam. I might have let it pass as coincidence had it been the first time, but something similar happened to me about six years ago,…
Sweet pride
Blind reliance on the portals of interpretation confuse nature’s rhythm, allowing no room for sensation under the sweet dead-weight of pride.