Peter M. Hunt's Blog, page 9
March 20, 2022
My nemesis, the woodpecker
Yesterday, my wife and I drove to Seattle for a scheduled neurology appointment. I find myself miss-identifying common sounds and unable to discern their origin. Other times, I’m surprised by an unfamiliar noise coming either from my imagination or beyond. I told my neurologist about these mild aural hallucinations and learned it was a common symptom of advancing Parkinson’s.
Not a big deal,” I said, looking at the neurologist. She nodded in agreement.
The appointment went quickly. I enjoy...
March 16, 2022
Life’s details
Sunday, while driving through town on my way to the grocery store, I encountered one of those indulgently sincere, shared moments created by connecting souls with candid meaning.
I stopped as a middle-aged lady with impaired mobility wheeled her chair slowly into the crosswalk. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I could see the cars quickly line up behind me.
The wheelchair edged out into the street, the woman doing her best to expedite her transit but having difficulty due to upper body strength iss...
March 13, 2022
And loving it…
For the last year or two, pacifying insecurity from attachment has become a futile nocturnal chore of necessity. Never able to wholly rid my body of instinct, night after night, even our dogs sense my alerted “fight or flight” state of nervousness, evoking a mirror-image mimic of restless hell.
More than a reaction to a mad world absent moral backbone, chronic anxiety and depression structure the disease’s sole promise:
“You will be ground down, worn out. You cannot win.”
The nights dra...
March 5, 2022
Reflections
I usually prefer to walk or hike alone to have an undistracted opportunity to think until thought is no longer helpful. These periods of meditative-silenced cognition bring my most peaceful moments, absent the standard lunatic ravings that bounce around my brain with no other purpose than to let me know that the ego is still firmly in charge.
Occasionally, I wonder if any thoughts are genuinely my own or whether they are reflections of those close to me, separated only by artificial habits th...
February 26, 2022
Tribe
Most of us spend our lives in a small circle of friends and family, echoing back familiar reactions to what we perceive to be objective reality. But the cruelty of a chaotic world occurs so quickly that even a formally cohesive tribe can be split into irreconcilable interpretations of sanity.
In today’s world, the pendulum of truth swings viciously through every conceivable color of veracity’s tableau. Perceptions of fundamental reality vary everywhere, corrupting effective communication and ...
February 22, 2022
Attachment
We leave this place of interactive existence more naked than upon our arrival—when born, we are graced with the body’s solid mystery, while our departure heralds not just the relinquishing of all material possessions but potentially all of material reality. Even our body forsakes us as we embark on the great mystery.
In November of a year ago, my son and I embarked on our last shared underwater adventure, after 44 years, my final scuba dive. I knew before suiting up that this would be it for ...
February 20, 2022
Stuck
Spending more time stuck physically and psychologically with each passing day is a defining attribute of Parkinson’s disease. The disease physically incapacitates, freezing the afflicted in place, unable to move or speak, making it feel impossible to breathe.
Parkinson’s has not impacted me yet to this point of complete immobility, but I get close enough to sense it coming. The psyche compliments the physical freeze with what feels like a heavy, wet blanket of temporary but debilitating apath...
February 17, 2022
Heartless distraction
On a recent morning walk, I wandered past a yard sign decorated in the liberating style of a child inscribed with the challenge to “Live Happy.” For decades, my automatic reply to the innocence of this unearned optimism would have included a crude reference that also appeared to be self-evident.
My goal with the childish statement was to focus attention, to force the listener through an exercise in reducing to the absurd to reflect deeper on an essential topic while still spicing up the conve...
Enduring depths
Reduce thought to perfection’s frictionless moment, gliding through blissful presence with the confidence of unknowing. Drift past life’s inevitable certainty, beyond sense or senses, exulting in wonder at the brilliant and enduring depths of the soul.
The post Enduring depths appeared first on Books by Peter M. Hunt.
Skirting finality
Recently, while hiking, I spied a stout seal languishing in a narrow stretch of water separating a small island from the trail where I stood. The seal lolled about leisurely in the shallows, gently rolling, pirouetting without concern for its audience. What was the seal doing, I wondered? What was its purpose?
Could the seal be pregnant and looking for a safe place to give birth? Was the seal dying? It wasn’t the right season for birthing, but you never knew, and dying, of course, publishes n...
