Dark Rider - A History of a Moment

While traveling at the speed of dark,

I came upon a listener.

I spoke to her of life and things,

But just above a whisper,

For fear she would break my heart,

If all my words should miss her.

My tragic thoughts rode with me 

serene but not forgotten

she reminded me of memories

Sweet love of our begotten

then only did I realize

This rendezvous was wonton

You see you start with nothing

And the years just rumble past

You win a few & lose a few

you try all things to last

 But I was farthings short and anyway

This die was all but cast

she turned to me and bid me go

I hadn't meant to see her

I'd wandered around aimlessly 

My mein did not deliver

our history gave to her the right 

to deny my right to be there

"What more could you require?" she said

"That life did not provide you?"

A removal of the pablum whey  

Where God had tried to hide you

I very nearly choked on it

While trying to lie beside you

"That was then and then is now

Your life has seen the glory 

The sputnik of the everlast

The selling of our story

You shouldn't even stoop to ask

But I must say I'm sorry. 

I have to ask you please retire

And leave me slowly molding

My world consists of broken dreams

And I exist here boldly

I think I've gone quite mad, you  see

I ask your understanding"

But I didn't want to come here

I came here by mistake

I know my future is my past

It's not too hard to take

I will even drop a lusty smile

A smile's not hard to fake 

And anyway my tragedy

Is still keeping me awake

Adieu farewell adieu old friend

My wish  will ever be

glad tidings flow to you and yours

I hope you will agree

you've lived too  long within yourself

please set your spirit free

For life is not a season

or so the shamen say

Deliverance is optional

Pray find another way

to end your isolation

and re-live another day

But frankly I no longer care

For I'm not here to stay

As I rode into the darkness

I hapt to turn around

I saw her there half-naked

 kneeling on the ground

arms raised in supplication

her lips moved but made no sound

I stopped for I was curious

of what she had to say

Listening through waxed paper

her words just minced away 

I heard her voice calling but

I had no need to stay

my wisdom was extraneous

no reason I should stay

That sweet submissive siren

Had brightened up my day

 

BLITZKREIG!!!

My enemy, namely PD, launched a full-frontal attack last weekend.  It is out to get me and, you know what?  Eventually, it may get me.  It will win the war unless I summon my defences and hold fast until some very bright scientist prepares a superweapon and stops its relentless advance.

Although the stories I am about to tell you seem to predict a lonely, harsh future, almost despicable in its serenity, I still cling to hope.  No, hope is not quite the word I am looking for.  Hope implies uncertainty and my future is certain.  I will beat this thing or die in the battle. In the words of Shel Silverstein:

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” 

The odds may be against a glorious victory,  but I will never stop fighting.  I shall never surrender.  Ours can be a convincing victory.  There will be bumps in the road, but so what!  They're just bumps, if you are aware of your journey and manage to keep your countenance in the midst of humiliation, which you will soon encounter,...with practice you can resist its power punch.

BUMP #1

This bump occurred on this beach:

My son had a floating, rubber platform which I managed to squirm onto.  For a half-hour, I enjoyed the kids boarding and jumping off but, alas,  we had to beach the craft.  I couldn't sit up.  my body defied my brain.  With my son pulling my arms and my 10 year 0ld granddaughter pushing from behind, I managed to stand but not before providing entertainment for the audience on the sand.

Bump #2

The second bump occurred af this beach, a half-hour's drive from Bump #1.  Our cottage has no AC, so I decided to take

the two little ones (5 & 10) to the Beach Mart, a convenience store about one-half mile away.  We were walking so I decided to take a ski pole for balance.  All was well until we stopped to cross a road about 50 feet from the store.  While we waited for a passing car, I dropped my pole and when I went to retrieve it, I started a stutter-step festination, landing on my side and narrowly missing the cement sidewalk, with my head.  With the help of my companions, I managed to stand.  I lost my balance, resulting in a stutter-step forward into the deep ditch that ran beside the road.  There was no getting out and up this time.  My two little companions tried to help but they were no match against gravity.   I struggled and struggled with no luck.  Cars drove by, but nobody stopped until a rather large man got out of his half-ton and stood me upright.  I was grateful but somewhat embarrassed.

These are the things that our enemy enjoys putting us through.  We are weak now but in the future.... we will reign victorious, happy and glorious, long to rei......well, you know the rest.  Stay safe and don' t let the virus get you down

BTW 116,247 PAGE VIEWS TO DATE

I DON'T WANT TO BE A PALLBEARER. I WANT MORE!

The rate of progression for PWP varies from person to person.  Unfortunately, it gets worse over time or maybe it doesn't.  Nobody knows.  It is not predictable.

But face it. Your symptoms - tremor, rigidity, glacial pace walking, and loss of balance are probably going to determine your future.  You can go from mild to debilitating.  If you are lucky, you will be able to manage 20 - 30 years following diagnosis.  If you are really lucky - well, you know.

My reading suggests;

     1.  Parkinson's might be stable for 10 years or so (5 - 10% of cases); or,
     2.  it might lead to severe disability within a few years; or, it might
     3.  go very slowly.  One reader has spent about 17 years in Stage 1.

There is some evidence that the progress of PD will be slow(er) if the first symptom is a tremor.  My first symptom appeared about 20 years ago - the loss of the sense of smell.  I was diagnosed when I developed a tremor in my right hand.  That was 10 years ago.  Now I qualify for all the symptoms listed above.  Fortunately,  my meds keep my problems locked inside my body and people are surprised when they learn I have PD (levodopa-carbidopa, mirapex, amantadine, and a very low dose of quetiapine fumarate),  The latter drug is to control hallucinations.

The best medicine for me is the half-hour I spend exercising each morning.  In fact, I have always believed exercise somehow slows the rate of progression and lately, studies have shown just that, exercise is the best medicine.  So get up off the couch and lift some weights, run, walk, bike, garden, etc.

When I coached athletics,  I told my athletes to imagine themselves winning their event.  Think positively, as I do in my morning workout.   I imagine the time spent exercising as a funeral for PD.  I can see it being lowered into the grave, deflated and defeated and I am positively euphoric.

I ain't afraid of no PD!

To date - 115, 511 page views.  Happy trails to you.

A short babble

What you should do if you are diagnosed with P D

1. Accept it!  It is not cancer nor heart disease or lung disease.  You are not going to die just yet
2.  Read everything you can find about  PD.  It will ease your mind.
3.  Stay away from "vitamins etc"   Sofar only prescribed drugs are effective at controlling the symptoms.  When I say "vitamins". I don't include "real vitamins, eg vitamin B , D, etc.  Those vitamins may or may not help, just stay away from snake oil cures.
4.  Don't believe statements such as----he died from parkinson's----.  You will die with PD, but it won't kill you.  You will probably live a normal life time, albeit a little shakey lifetime
5. get exercising and when you finish, exercise some more, 3 hours per weekExercisecan help slow down the progress of PD
6.  read this blog

CQ10

Wow! It has been over a month since last  I wrote.  I have a couple of things to pontificate on:

1.     I found the following in PD site....Dear friend, CoQ10 is beneficial to Parkinson's patients. I'm taking 100mg as supplements daily. I found myself walking better and talking with confidence. 

     In my >10 years of fighting PD,  I have tried many "cures". including CQ10 and have concluded there are no magic pills.  CQ10 won't hurt you but it will have no effect on PD.  I also found it to be too expensive.  If taking CQ10 is beneficial to you, then you are suffering from some other problem.

2.   There are 11 confirmed virus carriers in my province.  Nobody in the hospital, 300 in total since onset, 7 dead.  I consider these stats to be alarming so please stay away from crowds, wash thoroughly, sanitize, and wear a  mask.  God forbid we see stats like the fools in the south.

3.  Keep the border closed.

The professor has left the desktop.

Stay safe.  

wallflower

First draft of a poem I call "wallflower"

The queen of the shades
lurks in the shadows
lost in her mind and her moods
her yearning torments her
The music is soaring
She stands in her corner and broods

her thoughts are a maze
of one-way turns
She wallows in one and she sighs
she can't understand
the call of the wild
A howling that creeps from her thighs

She enters the circle
and sways to the center
but nobody knows she is there
she picks at her nails
she carefully painted
And runs her hand through her hair

then as if by some magic
her hand is rerouted
he takes her hand by surprise
they move to the music
delaying the darkness
that covers her heart and her eyes

just for a moment
she's caressed by enjoyment
her happiness comes and it fades
she won't let them see
the queen with a smile
she rules the land of the shades

Whatcha you gonna do when they come for you

Have you ever stared into the abyss and all you saw was the abyss staring back at you? You know now it was probably unreal but then you knelt before the god of light riding at the speed of dark, shedding pearls of uncertainty to form a garland of doubt around your neck.

It's a whole other world in here.

PART ONE ....On an all-time high?

This event I am about to relate is mind-bending. It rocked my world. When I took a walk on a yellow-brick road, I came to a fork. I couldn't decide which way to go until I heard the ghost of Yogi Berra, "WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE it! So I did. I took the fork in the road.

Does anyone here remember the sixties? If you can remember them, the man says you probably weren't there. Do you remember the first time you got high? l mean really high. Not the marijuana type high. That's for sissies. I mean the kind of high in which you really don't know what's going on. what is real or unreal. You know, just an ordinary, superstar scary type of high!

Let me tell you about the first and last time I dated LSD. Some friends and I decided we would try some acid. We met with two dealers known as the Deputy and the Beast. The Deputy was the dealer and The Beast was the enforcer. We purchased some LSD from The deputy, placated the Beast and relocated ourselves to a party in a local frat house. It took a while for the LSD to kick in. but when it did, it scared the hell out of me. I was lying on a couch, watching revelers fill the room with sexual energy, when I reached under the couch and pulled out a long knife covered with blood. I didn't show it around for fear of the consequences. To be safe, I threw the knife deep under the couch.

I was mystified when I later discovered that my bloody knife was, in fact, a rat-tailed comb It was all so real. I believed e knife was real.

The knife was a real part of my unreal reality.

Our world was fraught with things that weren't there and when we got home, the three of us sat around supposedly "enjoying" the LSD; but, I was scared because I was a teacher and I could see, etched on walls of my mind, a headline Teacher takes LSD and fries brain. I was getting upset and I grew very nervous until someone said: "Relax, the drug has got a hold of your brain and it will go away". That made sense. I relaxed and enjoyed the trip. I took the scenic route. The one peppered with snippets of real unreality. I can laugh at it now, or maybe cry, but I never took a trip again and that should say something.

Part Two: Reality is an illusion

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space.

Psychosis can be a frightening word that many people simply don’t understand. But what does it really mean? In Parkinson’s disease (PD), what your doctor calls psychosis usually starts with mild symptoms, but these can have a big impact on quality of life. Healthcare providers usually refer to these symptoms as "Parkinson's disease associated psychosis." Psychosis can vary from severe confusion (disordered thinking) to seeing things that aren’t there (hallucinations) to believing things that are not true (delusions),

Back to the future. I am alone in the house and asleep when a noise in the living room wakes me up. I go and find two people sitting in my chairs. One is a man in Goth makeup. The other is a woman who resembles my daughter. They both are staring at me. I try to talk to them but they continue to stare. I demand that they leave the house but they continue to stare so I go and get a ski pole from the bedroom. Their stare is relentless, so I hit the woman with the ski pole. She doesn't budge, so I threaten to call the police. This gets the man's attention but the woman just sits and stares. She refuses to leave. Gothman says, "I'm going" and he goes into the back yard. I say to the woman, "You better get out of here. The police are coming". I call 911 and the operator sends the police. I go out to the backyard to tell goth man and he says "let's go back in". We return and there are other people there. The woman keeps staring but now she has two friends with her: a man and a woman. They are friends of mine. They are staring. The man is my oldest grandson. I say "where is Sara?" (his mom). He says "I don't know" and then clams up. I tell them all to "get out!".

At that point the police arrive. I tell them I have Parkinson's Disease. They begin to question me. The female police person gets on her radio and heads outside. The male officer is obviously experienced. He asks me my birthdate and other personal questions. The female officer returns, speaks quietly to her partner but I hear her say "He's clean, just one speeding ticket". That was my record.

Somehow the people who were staring at me had gotten into the back yard. I say, "let's go look in the back yard". The police hesitate and I go out alone and I see the "starers" and I tell them "the police are here". At that moment I see a police cadet band. They climb over the fence and start to play. They move toward us and I think they must be background noise for a police arrest. They disappear when the male police officer comes out. He tells the "starers" to leave. They all do except the women. The boyfriend is on one side of the fence and she is on the other. When the police return, the woman is suddenly not there anymore. I look over the fence and the woman has joined her boyfriend on the other side of the fence and they are talking to the police.

I can see the neighbours watching.

I go into the house to watch through the window. I turn around and the police are inside. They ask me some other questions and then they go.

I curse the system that allows people to break into one's house without consequence. I hear the police officer make a telephone call to my eldest son and then I zone out. When I come out of it, my daughter-in-law is speaking on the phone. The police say to her "we are leaving. He will be OK. He is just a little confused". I am somewhat angry that they should write me off as a little confused. I say to them "I thought I made myself perfectly clear". They laugh and say, "You were anything but". My daughter-in-law helps to calm me down and the next thing I know I am lying on the couch talking to her. It suddenly becomes clear to me that I am stoned from the Parkinson's Disease and maybe the drugs I take. I say to my daughter-in-law, " I think that was a hallucination" but only half believing. In minutes all of my children come and I fall asleep.

The two stories are true. I know because I was the main character in both. I would prefer to never encounter another because I'm not absolutely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."

.
(H.L. Menkin)