Peter M. Hunt's Blog, page 18
October 24, 2018
Desolate exploration
Many years ago, well before my Parkinson’s diagnosis, my mother gave me a small piece of wall art depicting a Greek fresco of Saint George slaying the dragon. She proclaimed it to portray “Saint Peter, slaying his next dragon.” She was referring to my next life adventure and asked that I place it near the bed where it might protect me while sleeping.
Neither my mother nor I have been particularly religious in the organizational sense, but I do believe that we have both attempted to be spiritu...
October 19, 2018
Unlearning kindness
When I was a child of about seven living on Long Island’s North Shore, I remember riding my bicycle to the end of a sanded street at the back of a local school. It was a crisp winter day, with a towering pile of dirty brown snow plowed weeks before serving as the rally point for a search. I was helping several adult neighbors look for a toddler who had gone missing, a frantic scramble that was quickly resolved–he had merely wandered off a block or two.
A surge of young pride filled my chest...
October 7, 2018
Folly and detour.
One of my most valued considerations of the past several years is an attempt to overcome unconscious prejudices, both the rigidly intellectual and gut-wrenching societal connections expressed through the judging of others. Not only am I not in a position to judge (nobody is), but I also believe that judging others severely limits potential insight into the great bottomless pit of human nature.
How do I know if I’m successful? The reality is that I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean that I can’...
September 30, 2018
Something for nothing.
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Yesterday, Rob Wilson—one of the lost Intruder technical divers—and I went Dragonfly-sonar searching for a vessel of some sort that we are not certain even exists. We found nothing on the sea bottom but had solidly real conversation from which I believe we both learned. It’s always a positive alchemy of the soul when one can make something out of nothing.
As I continue to attempt to weave 56 years of memory into a cogent pattern, something that makes sense, I realize that it is from the de...
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Ground Hog day all over again…
Parkinson’s disease is complex, difficult to explain, and often unpredictable. My deep brain stimulation surgery of four years ago has bought me time, but as my Parkinson’s symptoms grow in severity, again, it is not any easier dealing with the pervasive misunderstandings of the disease.
The result? Except for permanent bags under my eyes, I look surprisingly good well into my Parkinson’s adventure. But it also means that after morning exercise, the day usually turns into an exhausted strugg...
August 10, 2018
Looking within
About this time three years ago and after 18 months of scouring the bottom of Rosario Strait, I discovered the wreckage of Navy A-6 159572, the “Lost Intruder.” Two months later, in October 2015, technical divers positively identified the jet. I was in one of my periods of profound isolation back then, having recovered from Deep Brain Stimulation surgery but still experiencing a panoply of mostly moderated Parkinson’s symptoms, although certain psychological ones were still powerful. Periodic...
July 24, 2018
Losing my mind
As we grow older, it becomes apparent that losing one’s mind becomes both the greatest fear and the only goal worth pursuing. No associated numbers dwell in this no-man’s land of life’s journey: no specific age, degree of education, no amount of effort or time. The realization comes differently to all of us, and for some—I imagine—it comes not at all.
Consciousness, the human concept of the mind, of thinking in some fashion, metastasizes with life experience into a misshapen lump of contradic...
July 12, 2018
Boldly going nowhere
Although there is a litany of possible Parkinson’s disease symptoms, ranging from dystonia to insomnia to depression and muscular rigidity, in my experience there is one insidiously consistent effect of the malady: a lingering apathetic malaise. This ennui, characterized by a near universal lack of motivation to do anything, has stuck with me on good days and bad, both before and after DBS surgery, and in times of general happiness and those of deep depression.
Parkinson’s makes virtually eve...
July 9, 2018
“Motion’s coming on”
Professional aviation uses high-tech flight simulators to train pilots. From the outside, these boxy contraptions hardly look flight-worthy, mounted on multiple steel hydraulic powered pedestals that move the simulator to mimic flight conditions down to the smallest sensation. Inside, the boxy look is soon forgotten as the flight crew straps in to the perfect replica of an aircraft, including a near 360-degree visual screen.
Signaling the imminent start of a training session, the words, “Moti...
June 4, 2018
The most unlikely of places.
Personal identity is commonly viewed as an externally driven phenomenon that offers no individual recourse, a conglomeration of inputs from the superficial to the soulful that describe a person’s essence. Occupation-based assessments are a good example. The first topic of most conversations between the newly acquainted is what one does for a living. The answer, tellingly, is usually framed as, “I am a blank.” Can these four words come anywhere close to defining any human being?
Of course not,...
