Peter M. Hunt's Blog, page 11

Strength happens

Flying home after a visit with my son in South Carolina last week, I pondered how life had changed in just the past year. In addition to a longtime grounding from flying, there was now no more diving, severely limited driving, no more talks or presentations, and even negotiating the doldrums of air travel solo had become problematic. Parkinson’s previously gradual backsliding has noticeably accelerated, leading me to question the viability of an unvital life.

My primary reason for continuing ...

Barren wisdom

To gaze beyond the simplest expression of form, to de-identify from world’s mundane trappings of convenient lethargy, empowers through the erasure of being, cultivating impossibly reasonable utilization of reason, the barren wisdom of unknowing.

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A tired man’s dream

Courage without reward, no emerging rainbow sharpens life’s cloud, seeking peace while guts roil in the tempestuous agony of forgotten. Bereft banality of belief or transparency of purpose, the surrounding sin feeds greed’s eager deity by crying out for the impossibility of elusive satiation. The Stoic advances, tramping silently, shielded by veiled surrender, sculpting a vision of anima creo.

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On parenting: the rare mercy of vague memory

There are no perfect parents. Parenting is an impossible task lasting as long as you breathe life completed on someone else’s timeline; a thankless job with all the world acting as critics. How you were raised is your only practical guide, comparing decisions made thirty, forty, fifty years ago that were so different in context that any similarities undoubtedly reside as coincidences of a vivid imagination.

There are few consistencies, zero really, although the exhausted parent’s mind despera...

The alchemy of kindness

Recently, an event has tested my faith in compassion, empathy, and kindness as tools of reconciliation and healing. I will not go into details other than to say that it is perhaps the greatest challenge of my life, with impossibly high stakes.

Like most people, my initial reaction during particularly trying times runs to the “reaction” emotions of anger, fear, and despair as I struggle to control the hamster wheel looping of negative narrative possibilities that try to run 24/7 in my brai...

Fortuitous circumstance–a PD update

Before my deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery in 2014, despite significantly increased Parkinson’s symptoms, I was overall happy and at peace with life. I also had a deep-seated conviction that DBS would change everything, including my sense of spiritual well-being. Physical happiness trumped spiritual well-being, at least at this early stage, however. It was reassuring to know that DBS offered a relatively good chance of substantially improving my daily life, if only temporarily,

Now, s...

Ambushed

Ambushed

Four years ago, I was preparing to go to Guadalupe Island in Mexico to cage dive with the 400 plus Great White Sharks that congregate there from summer through mid-autumn. I did not realize it at the time, but it was my final organized diving adventure before hanging up my fins for good.

It was a 180-nautical mile boat ride from Ensenada, Mexico, to our anchorage at Guadalupe Island, where we would spend four days. It was a fantastic experience, more than living up to the hype it ...

Farewell, old friend…

Aging is a constant cycle of releasing: letting go of those things closest to you in the recognition that, ultimately, “things” are unimportant. Thus far, letting go of “things” as my Parkinson’s disease progresses has been easy for me. Flashy cars and ostentatious homes never held value in my heart, and we successfully avoided their trap into a superficial vision of the world.

There may be an exception, however: our boat, “Sea Hunt.” I staged almost all my boating adventures from the Dec...

Watching the garbage truck

Watching a garbage truck perform its job has, strangely, piqued my interest since I was a little boy—something about people partaking in mundane daily activity while the magic of Spiritis Mundi, ignored, patiently waits in the wings.

As a pre-school child, it was a rare glimpse of a member of society doing their job within sight of the living room window. That urge to watch the weekly trash pick-up is still with me, likely at least in part for the same reasons as a kid. I’ve always felt like ...

Liberation

One complicated concept for outsiders to grasp about Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is that of “on” and “off” times, the indications of whether medications are in balance with the disorder. If one has been dealing with PD for any significant amount of time, say seven or eight years, disease symptoms—both physical and psychological—abruptly reverse course several times throughout the day while cycling through medication balance.

Matching medication to symptoms becomes an increasingly impossible task...