730 Days in the Life: Holding Back the Change in Seasons from All Directions

When I think of the change of seasons from summer to fall, there are a lot of positive things that come to mind. I think about beautiful autumn colors, like the ones that were on display in October 2008 when my wife and I got engaged in the Poconos. The oranges and reds that year really stood out in a way that I haven’t seen much since then, though a few years ago we did get to wander around French Creek State Park to see some amazing fiery colors.

Pennsylvania / Pennsyltucky can be beautiful this time of year (as it’s getting now with its oranges and reds poking out). It's all about finding the time and energy to see it.

Here, Autumn also makes me think of colder mornings and shorter days. This October, it seemed like summer was hanging on well into October with a nearly 80° day before 2 days in the high fifties. We literally went from air conditioning to accommodate Parkinson’s sweat in a house that had maintained 78° of heat from the summer (with no heating kicked in) into the middle days of October. Talk about system shock!

Now, if you mix in darkness and rain, which for Pennsylvania looks to be more than 50% above average in my sleepy corner of the state, you have a perfect recipe for the seasonal blahs. Also known as seasonal affective disorder, this is a diagnosed condition as opposed to just something we call it, though a fair bit of people exhibit these signs and symptoms and have a pretty good idea what they are. The Mayo Clinic has a lot of good recommendations for dealing with this. I recommend it to anyone who might be feeling "seasonally blah."

That said, depression and blahs do get worse during the colder, darker months. For me, the first of November is always Melville’s “November of the soul.” I wish I could say I see it as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, which it is), but alas…. I’m not quite there, though my feelings on the Mexican customs of remembering the dead most definitely are.

Unfortunately, I associate this time of year with the long descent into winter. Other than turning back the clock for an extra hour of sleep, I don’t ever feel happy about losing an hour of daylight after work or waking up to colder temperatures. 

With my Parkinson’s engine running hot, the sweater that feels nice outside often feels way too warm inside, so I’m in that perpetual off state of discomfort. Fortunately, most days are still about right in temperature, so I can plan accordingly. Also, it’s kind of nice that the trees are still holding most of their leaves (though the wind is blowing a few in front of the window as I sit here typing) so that skeletal branches won’t be the aesthetic du jour along the highways and bi-ways any longer than they are going to be.

Perhaps more than anything, November 1^st has come to be the day I began taking rasagiline (Azilect) in 2016. At my initial 90% sure it’s Parkinson’s appointment on September 27, 2016, I elected not to go with medications until it was a certainty that I had Parkinson’s. Two years ago, the doctor’s prediction came true.

That day was a very windy, overcast, and ugly day. My wife and I were supposed to be going to go for a walk on the Appalachian Trail after the "confirmation" doctor visit, but it was just too ugly and we were just too drained, so we went out to eat instead at a diner and picked up my medication. When we came home, I began the process that I’ve done well over 700 times since: I took my "take out the faulty particles" medicine to give my brain's natural dopamine a fighting chance. Two years and several other Parkinson's medicine days later, I’m working through a medical routine and more complicated symptoms to try to be me as long as I can keep the Invasion of the Body Snatchers at Bay. The fact that the outdoor environment doesn’t help with this makes things more challenging.

I also started this blog on what would be my first official Parkinson's day (though in reality I had Parkinson's symptoms since 2011)... 157,550 visits and 182 posts ago.

With many of us who have Parkinson’s, our “happy brain chemicals” (AKA dopamine and serotonin, as well as others) are already out of balance. With fluctuating levels of dopamine to begin with, we can find ourselves in quite a dilemma as we find it harder to want to get motivated for anything, much less to go outside and get some between the trees therapy (or even fresh air). Cabin fever gets more common as the year drags on into cold days. I’ve already written about winter precautions, but I write this “State of the Union Address” with regard to autumn changes (particularly this autumn). 

For this, we need to make ourselves stay active and remember to do the things that we enjoy. We need to find things to want to do and to look forward to. We need our team to be there for us to motivate us to stay loose and positive. In this, the cold wind can freeze us out quickly if we don’t monitor our situation.

Here, I realized that I hadn’t been myself in a long time. I was starting to lose sense of me. Little things like organizing playlists for my mp3 player were getting forgotten about. The worry of the future was coming down hard on me. I could really feel it like I hadn’t since all of this Parkinson’s talk began 2 autumns ago. I had survived diagnosis, Lyme disease, 2 hospital stints, a car accident, worsening symptoms, sleep apnea issues, and the decision to not teach, and all of a sudden, I was waylaid by a seemingly impossible and un-nerving Neurological Baseline Exam and all of life’s events that happened at the same time. Compounded by Parkinson’s emotional "joys," I just stopped being me.

Then something happened out of nowhere, which is a new job in an advising position that I start November 1^st. Some of you may not believe in divine intervention, but I do. It literally felt like being pardoned from death row. I was Dostoevsky after having his sentence overturned. Because of this, I felt alive again, but numb. It’s been hard to write during this time, hence my general absence from blogging, but now, I feel like I’m going to be getting back to being me and the excitement of making educational knowledge possible to incoming and active community college students.

I also decided to get back to me and to create a 500-song playlist that my wife and I could listen to in our journeys. In keeping it with what my wife generally listens to on the radio, I set the bar between late 1970s and now, roughly 40 years, where the main requirement is adult radio friendly, though I did make a few exceptions based on our age and having moved through the period that is 1989-1994. If you’re interested, it’s very 80s and 90s heavy, though it does feature all years.

Songs 1-200 of the Rawkin’Rock / Pop Compilation

Songs 201-350 of the Rawkin’ Rock / Pop Compilation (to be linked)

Songs 351-500 of the Rawkin’ Rock / Pop Compilation (to be linked)

For the reason of enjoying a celebration of sorts and to see my 2^nd family of sorts, it was definitely time to have a do something fun getaway.

And so last weekend, my wife and I went to New York City to see friends that I’ve known from Air Force days (about 25 years). Friday after work, we drove into northern New Jersey braving the Nor’easter that was coming to get close enough to the city that we wouldn’t have to wake up at 6AM to do the drive to Jersey City to take the PATH trains (under the Hudson to the World Trade Center subway station) so that we could get uptown to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

My wife is a big art person, and I appreciate art when it looks like something. A lot of modern art doesn’t really look like something or it just feels like someone is trying to get one over on someone. I know we’re all entitled to our own opinion. Thus, my opinion of art is that “if I can do it, it’s not art.” If it’s a huge canvas with a few horizontal or vertical lines of a different color on a monotone shading, it’s not art. If it looks like someone dumped multiple tubes of paint on a canvas and smeared them around, it’s not art. Call me traditional, but I’d rather look at the 10 millionth piece of art featuring royalty or religion, if the artist put some effort forth, than look at stuff by Andy Warhol. But that’s just me.

Getting to 53^rd Street to see the museum involves hustling across the train / subway station. For those people with Parkinson’s, it’s an obstacle course of people stopping, hustling, and bustling all around them. I could see how the noise, lights, and commotion of people could be a major impediment for many people, as I was really feeling it. As we walked to the newly-rebuilt passageway, things escalated “just” a bit as sirens went off and a voice on the overhead demanded everyone's attention and told about how police were investigating a threat and to stay tuned for additional updates.

Let’s just say that didn’t do wonders for my equilibrium. With the state of all things in the world right now and for the past 2 decades, being in a New York subway, especially under the World Trade Center, and hearing warnings is a catalyst for an overwhelming sense of fear and panic. Looking all around the facility, which is huge, thinking something or someone nefarious could be anywhere, left me feeling emotionally drained. 

In many ways in our society, people become numb to the news. When a series of pipe bombs in the mail gets passed off quickly in conspiracy theories as a “distraction” or a “false flag” and people stop thinking about the real human cost, it feels like we’ve lost something of our humanity, especially when they brush off the apology when they were wrong.

When I was younger (19), I can remember traveling to London a lot for concerts and music purchasing (before Amazon). I didn’t think anything about going alone. I can remember one time when there was an IRA bomb warning in the London tubes. The person on the radio just said, “We won’t be stopping at X,Y, and Z” like it was nothing. I remember that it happened, but I don’t remember being scared by it, just "affected." Now, it feels like we need to be scared, especially since 11 Jewish synagogue visitors were killed later last Saturday afternoon in an anti-Semitic rage. 

Thinking about how I found out, my cousin posting on social media that she was “safe” since she and some of my family live in Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh suburb where it happened), it seems odd to think that this is how we have to hear and learn about people’s predicaments and whether they’re OK. Yet for many of us, this is how we get our news. When the U.S. Navy Seals got Bin Laden, this is how we heard about it. Baby pictures, engagements, marriages, moves, and all sorts of happy news is out there, too. It's how we communicate.

And so are the crazies, it seems, hiding under the banner of free speech as they incite their hate for anyone who isn’t like them in their depraved chat rooms. And sadly, the effects of this hurt everyone, not just their intended victims. These people come in all colors, shapes, sizes, and political leanings. With an election and so many issues on the line for so many people, the stakes are raised. Civility is out the window. The knee jerk reaction of the aftermath always comes back to “what will I personally lose because this person went off the rails?” This has nothing to do with the loss of a human being or shreds of humanity, but who is coming after mine. It’s really exhausting to feel like every day is the lead-up to a WWE wrestling match with someone coming in the ring and calling someone out for something in the most hate-filled and divisive ways possible. For instance, when Gab, the platform for many of these hate-filled attacks (and the one for the Pittsburgh shooter), starts crying about its loss of freedom of speech when Internet Service Providers jettison them from their service providers, it’s just really pathetic.

I mean, can’t we all just get along or live and let live?

In New Jersey, it’s really bad now on television with the attack ads on Bob Menendez, who has been accused of paying for child prostitutes in the Dominican Republic on top of corruption charges he was legally hammered with (a really solid reason to not let him run again, though he did anyway). 

For the extreme of that election ad, it should be said that watching any of these commercials and thinking that they steer people in a direction is something I’ve escaped by not having cable. All I wanted was to watch the World Series in a northern New Jersey motel (so I can see Boston win it all), and instead, I get to hear constant attacks on this or that in between innings.

Where are the good feelings, people? How do we stay active, informed citizens, when the landscape is so dismal with all its tellings of what is going on?

That said, how can this whole time of endless political opposition cycles that we live in not depress people, with or without Parkinson's? With two sides and no middle, where is the common ground and discussion for the rest of us who are content to live and let live, to be a part of our communities, and to want to make a difference for the world? Who is left to unite us when all we’re looking for is protection from and defense of as opposed to a solid message? That's not a uniter; it's a temporary reprieve.

But enough of that because there is art, which can be a powerful expression of sharing and creating emotion. While not all art is positive, that which is can be very influential to people in finding meaning and overcoming adversity. Even seeing sadness described, we can relate to people whose shared experience creates empathy for our plights.

For my money, New York is definitely a place to inspire this creativity, though given the choice, I prefer State to City (i.e. Ithaca, Letchworth, and Watkins Glen).

Nevertheless, at its most basic, New York City, the City that Never Sleeps, was built by creative and driven minds. Erecting buildings into the sky and digging tunnels underground to interconnect these worlds, millions of bodies and minds came together to build, work, live, sweat, and die together. I can’t help but thinking of what Manhattan once was (as wilderness) to the point that the industrialization began to the place that it is now (a concrete jungle).

I’ve felt this sensation of awe ever since my days going to London (1991-1996). As the skyscrapers tower over everything, it’s just so easy to get lost in the hustle, yet every person that is stopped, pushing, sitting, or yelling something is doing so from the perspective of a life lived. They built this or work within these buildings in an effort to produce something else. Their business desires made it possible and necessary. Each person who came to be born here was raised, educated, influenced, affected, and brought to be one with this place where endless traffic lines journey uptown, downtown, crosstown, or under the Hudson in an attempt to get in or out. People from other countries heard the call and chose to travel there as well, for the desire to support themselves and their families, as well as to be a part of this giant energy. Every single one of these buildings that seem to touch the clouds is made up of lives and stories.  In their own way, they were all someone’s something. They’re not just some exhausted body on the train or random European tourist, let alone a faceless blur. By being here, they become the voice of America, even if they hyphenate their original country with this one.

As people with Parkinson’s, our lives often feel like we’re on a journey to somewhere, just pushing through, too. Other times, they feel like we were on a journey, but somehow, we got derailed. If we’re not careful, we can start to feel lost in the journey with nobody around us who sees us as something more than another passenger headed for somewhere. We stop off to have our ticket taken. We order food and are served. We line up to go place to place. All the while, we start to feel disconnected in a world of people who are making connections but not really connected. How do we slow it down to see us and them as all being grand actors on the same stage?

In looking at it like this, we’re all journeying together to be here at the same moment in a life that was meant to intersect in Central Park, at the American Museum of Natural History, or within the packed galleries of the Museum of Modern Art. When we depart, most of us will most likely never see or know of one another’s existences again, but somewhere, in some corner of the globe, perhaps through photographic evidence, there will be traces of those moments where we played a bit part in the movie of someone else’s life. Maybe something we said will stick with someone. If this is the Butterfly Effect and one tiny action here creates an earthquake somewhere else, how can we stand out in the crowd to create something memorable and beautiful that will live on after we’re gone? What statue cast in bronze will be here for us? What street will be named after us? This isn’t about Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. This is about avoiding the third Mexican death and living on in the hearts and minds of others

What added value and creations will we leave behind for others to wonder who some “Daniel Webster guy” is almost 170 years after his death? Obviously, if this statue is here, he was someone, but just because someone set it there, is it actually someone important now or is it just a chance to reinvent history in romanticized notions of what never came to be?

With our lives, no matter whether they be Parkinson’s or Parkinson’s free, we are all on a finite timeline with an opportunity to bring value to the life that is sitting around the table waiting to be served, helped, entertained, or fixed. What have we used our brains and minds to do today? How will we be remembered? If this is our Day of the Dead, what words will people speak about us so we don’t reach that third death?

On our trip, we went to MOMA and the American Museum of Natural History, which are the kind of things that educate and inspire us (or they should). There’s something about being able to go into a huge hall with other like-minded people and reflect on Van Gogh’s Starry Night or works by Picasso, Monet, and Matisse. Of course, there’s paint scribble works by people like Jackson Pollack, though other people might find them to be meaningful. For me, as I said, I generally like my art to look like something, though I do like surrealism. Because of that, I was upset that Dali’s Persistence of Memory wasn’t on-hand (it was leant out). Let’s just say I didn’t feel the same about Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can painting since he’s pretty much a hack (though I do like some of the Velvet Underground’s music). All the same, we took it all in, and I didn’t touch anything or give too many failing grades / comments out (at least out loud). Other people taking selfies and touching the frame of a Monet… not so much.

Don’t worry; it’s only priceless.

In the end, we enjoyed our time with friends and wandered the upper part of Manhattan and the beginning of Central Park (in fall). It’s really beautiful, even if it’s way too crowded. But then again, it’s the city. Of course, bodies are going to be pressed too close in the dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural History (minus it’s Tyrannosaurus, since the room is being remodeled). Fortunately, the oceanic life room is still available, as was the North American mammals room, the meteorite room, and the origins of life room. This, unfortunately, was all we had time for. Let it be known that I could spend 3 days in there, easily, if all the rooms were a go (gems and minerals were also down for remodeling). There's just so much there.

Because it’s all about expanding the mind.

As our Parkinson’s increases / we just get older, our minds often lose speed and storage space. I can’t say this doesn’t scare me, but while I can, when I can, I want to be living, learning, loving, and enjoying life. Parkinson’s has taken a lot from me, but sitting here, I don’t want it to make me a middle-aged man with his memories just yet. I want to find excitement and conversation and purpose. I’m glad I had this weekend (and Monday night when I went back to see my friends again in northern New Jersey) to do that.

No matter what the next years of Parkinson’s brings, I want to hold tight to the positive and push away the cold winds of winter as long as I can. Better to go gray / white with class (like George Clooney) than to end up feeling and looking old before my time.

The Big 100... 10 Under-appreciated and Simple Pleasures of Life

Thank you for reading the last 99 posts on my blog. In honor of 100, I thought I would list 10 of my favorite simple pleasures of life. These may include aspects of my favorite things, but they won't include the normal things that we would go to.

For instance, of course, our spouses and significant others are usually our favorite things (as are vacations and the like). That's obvious. Family is in there, too. For me, I am a music aficionado, writer, reader / knowledge accumulator, photographer, traveler, hiker, baseball fan, and supernatural enthusiast, so listing things like my favorite historical baseball players as a Top-10 is off the list (though I will give a shout out to Nick Hornby's High Fidelity for its love of Top-10 lists - and yes, I prefer the book to the movie).

1. After a long travel day / hiking day, getting a shower is a marvelous thing.

2. Getting a haircut after my hair has grown so long (!) that I feel like a hippie. When I was young and in the Air Force, I wanted longer hair. Now, I want my wife to let up on her no "Bruce Willis" edict.

3. Holding a book that I wrote in my hands for the first time. Other people have held my new book!! (this is my cousin David), but I haven't. T-minus about 1-2 weeks!

4. The planning stages of creativity are amazing. All of the free writes and rough drafts are great, but typing that first word to putting creativity in motion.... priceless. For that, I'm over 40 pages into the new book already.

5. Learning something new every day / Helping others learn something new every day!

6. Making mix CDs. It was more fun to make mix tapes because it was an all-day act of love, but arranging music to enjoy later... awesome!

7. Looking at old pictures / assembling photos into collages and thinking about the memories of those moments! This picture was after my first plane ride to NYC. My aunt Toot worked there, and her company hooked us up with a limo!

8. Looking at pictures that other people took and thinking about how, someday, I'll go there (why my wife and I get along so well!)!!

9. Living vicariously through the happiness of others! Be it Dylan and his snakes, Amanda getting birthday presents, or the images of Lydia in photos we see of her, how can I not be happy seeing how happy others are?

10. Not letting my Parkinson's get the best of me! We all have down days. We notice our abilities slipping. We fear the future. However, when we don't let that get to us and we do what we can anyway... ROCK ON!! Choose to live life tougher than our antagonist.

Thanks for 100 acts of support through 100 posts! Here's to 100 more! Keep being great!

New York City Blackout 1977 - UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2018

Originally posted a year ago... minor updates.

            Over Labor Day weekend, my wife and I decided that we would travel from our sleepy little burg in Amish Paradise to head 8 hours north to New Hampshire. Of course, traveling on a Friday means that just under 8 GPS predictable hours is more like over 10 hours in real time. If you don’t live in this part of the country, then you should know that the difference is because of New York City traffic. To describe said congestion and the mass swarms of maniacal drivers in as few words as possible, I would express the term sensory over-stimulation.

            That said, in these states, it’s easy to get symptoms of general anxiety disorder. For me, these moments are uncommon, but they do happen. I tend to avoid situations that they are involved in, New York City traffic and putting up with the failures of self-checkout lines come to mind (I don’t work for the grocery store or Wal-Mart, and they don’t give me a discount to do it myself). I know it sounds like I’m joking regarding self-checkout lines, but last night, my wife chose to do them, so I went to the Red Box (DVD rental system, for my non American friends) while she did since I had no desire to hear the computer voice telling her to re-scan or bag her stuff in a certain way. When the process was over, it wouldn’t accept her credit card. Then it wouldn’t accept mine. Then the manager came, and we still couldn’t make it accept her card, so we had to go to a different register to import the ring-up. Finally, after 10 minutes, it worked, but I was in that, “I’m done with people tonight (except for the wife). I’m going home to unwind.” This is what we did so I could zone out.

            There are a host of symptoms that go with being knocked out of order, so to speak. In a world that feels out of control, According to Parkinson’s Dot Org, “these feelings include butterflies in the stomach and nausea, trouble breathing or swallowing, racing of the heart, sweating and increased tremors.”  Fortunately, I didn't need a barf bag, but I did feel like running out of there pronto.

Whether this feeling is caused by insane NYC traffic or computer voices, this is not something that is fun for me at all. In times like this, I just wanted to be out of the moment, which in the case of driving to New Hampshire seemed to last forever with backed up traffic congestion, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it could be in that I made it through and remained sane because my wife is a good driver.

With all of the sounds of that type of traffic, I think of the word cacophony, which is defined as a mix of sounds going off together and overloading a person’s sense of being. For visuals, I think of a mix of different colors of light blended in with movement on different levels and directions so that it became tough to focus on just one. This includes cars coming and going in all directions on multiple highways above and below where we are driving and other traffic moving around us while passing or slowing down. Mix this with the feeling of the need to provide complete attention to the situation at hand, so I was incredibly happy that I wasn’t driving (smart planning on my behalf, if I don’t say so myself).

Mind you, this wasn’t even driving in central New York (something I will NEVER EVER do again – something that has nothing to do with my PD; instead, it reflects my healthy love of life and sanity). It was just driving into the opposite side of New York City from New Jersey to head up through to Connecticut, Taxachuesetts (as Homer Simpson once referred to it), and then New Hampshire for a White Mountains fun time.

It should be noted that there is a plus to this drive, which is seeing the skyline and the Statue of Liberty lit up beautifully, well as picturesquely neat as a man-made skyline can possibly look (guess that I should reserve the truly expressive adjective for natural wonders, which we can gawk at as long as certain people don’t find their way to downsize or remove protected designation from our public natural places).

It’s also important as well to know that we were heading up at 9PM, so the need to be a part of the “city that never sleeps” means that other people were out and about in large force to take part in the city’s nightlife. In this endless concrete jungle filled with construction and constriction, time doesn’t diminish the traffic, and my wife drove bravely (i.e. only commenting on aggressive butthole drivers to me rather than flipping them off and risking being shot, though it wasn’t easy to do it in that manner). Personally, I wanted to lean out the window and bark like a dog at some of those drivers – something my one uncle was alleged to have done, but frankly, I didn’t want to get shot. Life is a good thing. After all, this is Friday night insanity traffic outside of a big American city and its New Jersey and Connecticut over-spill.

            Yes, I didn’t have to drive that horror road since we were in my wife’s car and she was at the wheel, and I didn’t want the responsibility. However, that didn’t change the fact that while my wife was driving her prized red convertible Mini Cooper (Bradley), I was trying to stabilize my mind by closing my eyes and leaning back to mellow out from the overload I was feeling.

            There are things in my Parkinson’s life that overwhelm me. For instance, I have recently been “word fishing” while dealing with the effects of Artane, which is a medicine that I have been on for tremors. In addition to having to wrack my brain to make it express specific 9^th grade vocabulary words (that I knew the 4^th grade or lower put together expression / definition for), I would also look for Point C in my arc of discussing concepts A-F. I could clearly tell that I had lost or was losing C, and with it, this cognitive shut down scared the poop out of me (family friendly sentiment). Fortunately, in my few weeks on the medicine, I didn’t have any major brain farts. I’m currently off the drug and its whole family since it’s been known to have this effect, so with Amantadine causing livedo reticularis, I am without an anti-tremor med (relying solely on Azilect to make my dopamine production A-OK and Escitalopram to level out my moods – they seem to both work well).

AUTHOR'S NOTE - Back on Amantadine after 2 other medication failures. It's this or the levodopa / carbidopa path

In the end, this cognitive nightmare felt like New York City’s blackout in 1977 complete with the Son of Sam and Reggie Jackson + Billy Martin fighting as fires raged and looting broke out across the city. With the fear of actions with and from North Korea, the partisan divide where people can't see what's right in front of their face, continued legislation issues in my big 3 (the environment, education, and healthcare), and those mega hurricanes that just keep coming and coming, it’s as if there is no stop to the ugliness that could be, and now I am here with my brain going bonkers on its own share of stuff! And let’s not forget another predication of the end of the world and end times hovering over the whole to affect the Hale Bopp types and the Revelations crew who change the details to reflect current events as it goes.

Wondering what the hell was and is going on, I did what most anyone with Parkinson’s would do – look at medicine effects. Many effects were there including cognitive issues, anxiety, and hallucinations. Yep, I think we got our culprit, so I went off the meds thinking about what had happened over the past few weeks.

Yeah, I guess this would explain the “earthquake” I thought we were having one night at 2AM when I woke up to my bed shaking and continued shaking as I went to the bathroom.

   Fortunately, it was all the medicine, and now I’m back to normal. Like a student in Jane Elliott’s classroom in Iowa back in 1968, I had a full-blown experiment with being in another person’s shoes and the shoes that I would someday be shown into. Call it being made a bleeding-heart or just being shown the truth of the world, I was being welcomed to the show in a big and bad way, that as I said before, “scared the shit out of me.”

Of course, there will still be people who talk smack on waking others up to the feelings of what if by putting them in the bodies of those who experience things daily. How dare we let our little conservative snowflakes see anything other than the endlessly beautiful possibility of the world (while leveling endless nonsense at liberal snowflakes)? It's like they're saying that teaching people to empathize with others or preparing for what might be is "liberal claptrap" nonsense (instead of creating an understanding so we can better understand others). And not feeling for others allows them to destroy the healthcare system’s provisions (thank you, John McCain, for stopping this crap) to help those who suffer and will suffer from being given a condition (which as all of us know could happen at any time), and minimize the money insurance companies have to pay for lifelong issues. Better to bankrupt the victim, the spouses, and the extended families than taking care of the village, right?

And then there was the most immediate non-Dan situation in all of this things ending stuff: the death of my Yaris, which was coming quickly as parts slowly gave way. Should I buy a new car? If so, how long should I plan on it lasting? Do I buy a 5 figure used car with 40-60,000 miles or a new car for almost $20,000? Can I get by with 80-100,000 miles on it already for $8000ish? Do I buy another “Macho Dude” (it’s the translation of Yaris) or should I get a Juke for when my wife takes over driving it somewhere down the line? Do I go balls to the wall and get a Jeep? The answer isn’t easy, so I keep driving the car until the day I need to trade it in.

In the meantime, I keep getting used to being a passenger.

            Over the course of my adult life, I have found that I have not done as well at being a passenger, as I should. I get motion sickness to varying degrees (without the barf bag, fortunately). The front is bad, but backseats tend to be a little worse, so generally I would find that when I had a choice, I would go with driving myself.  Nevertheless, I am currently immersing myself to be ready for the time that I won’t be driving at all.

            This is something that I find myself thinking about a lot lately. As I said, my beloved Macho Dude (my blue Yaris) is closing in on 250,000 miles, and it’s slowly dying. Over the summer, I put a lot of stuff into my car, which could have been put into a new car. Had I not been so attached to my car (I’ve had it since 2007 when I bought it new), I might have bought a new one, but as I said, #1) I don’t want to pay for a new one for years and years. #2) I’m hoping to be able to be working for years and years so I can pay it off.

            It’s true that the imminent death of my Yaris has me upset. It’s a part of me like no other car that I drove. I love its gas mileage, its style, its personality, and the fact its distinctly me. Frankly, I don’t want to say goodbye to it, but goodbye is coming. When this compounds with the feeling that a fuse was blown in my head or the power went out, my life just felt like calling out a “timeout.” Unfortunately, Parkinson’s doesn’t allow for that, so yeah.

            Fortunately, I was able to figure out a cause and remedy it. It was mostly easy to get back to my brain being my brain, but now that I am sans tremor meds, I see the shaking again. I see where it's gotten since when I began to hide it in the spring. Thus, I’m adjusting in the moment with a lot of foot shaking in my life. I guess if I play more hip hop, then I can just pass it off as being in the music.

            So now, September and autumn are here, and I’m thinking of how other things diminish through the autumn months and into the frozen world of winter (the leafless cold and darkness of January and February). The leaves on the trees changing colors and falling quickly here in southeastern Pennsylvania say that winter is coming sooner than before. The cold is getting ready to set in (though the days are still relatively warm). Pumpkin everything is appearing in the stores, and I am facing more and more Parkinson’s symptoms, which are also coming faster than I expected. Granted, I dig the muffins and pie, and it’s neat to think about inviting my nieces and nephews around to carve a big ass pumpkin, but really, I’d like to have some time to slide into things and the understanding of where I’m at to discuss it knowledgeably on November 15^th (my next neurological appointment).

            I’ve been doing doctors lately. For instance, I went to an audiologist, who told me my hearing on soft sounds is terrible. I knew this, but yeah. Whether it came from listening to Slayer too much as a kid or the “Brady Bunch” (all the things that we get when we find bradykinesia raging through our lives), I don’t think it matters. Sometimes, people will lose sound, swallowing, smell, taste, and blinking their eyes (to name but a few problems along the way), but no combination is guaranteed. Instead, we deal with what we have and go to the doctors (and dentists) who can help the problem.

In this case, the doc immediately went to BMW level hearing aids (about $4000 after insurance). Uh, no! Not right now? So with that, I think instead about standing close to people or asking them to speak up before I buy a pair that allows me to be able to blue tooth MP3s directly into my head.

            But sound, sound… what do we do about where I’m going (as I listen to Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Psychedelic Pill – damn, those senior citizens jam so much it’s like they know they’re putting the young whippersnappers to shame as they crash through 20 minute jams and guitar fury)?

            For one, I have noticed lately, that sounds affect me differently. For example, if I am talking one on one to student A (in a sitdown session to edit a paper), I can hear all of the conversations of Students D+E, M+N, S+T, and X+Y+Z on separate tracks at the same time. This tends to be something I’m not exactly happy with since it puts me on a smaller overload, so I find it easier to compensate by going outside the room and giving people in-class work to complete rather than enforce the impossible code of silence while I am speaking. Why create fights we can’t win or upsetting people when the solution can be solved by the self? Frankly, it’s better to find ways to work around it and sit like a cat on a chair, purring at all that is instead of seeing everything as a nail that needs to face the hammer.

The most important thing to know about sound is that unlike certain songs from the late 1960s with their experimental mixing (The Velvet Underground’s “The Gift” comes to mind), I can’t turn these sounds off and only hear the speaking instead of the distorted and fuzzed out instrumentals. I have also found that being in such a high impact environment with all of the qualities described before, plus billboards of static images and electronic changing images, I can easily find myself in a way that says, “Get between some trees” (and yes, we were soon able to do that for 2 full days all through the Presidential Range). This is another reason NYC traffic makes me spazzy.

Trees are generally a safe place, but I’ve had a fair bit going, so it feels like I’m in the need to do more and more of these (though New Hampshire was a welcome respite as is Iceland, which is where my wife and I are going in 2 weeks).

As for narrow escapes and future fears, the key is just to choose to live life and never stop believing that the best times are still to come as we plan out our futures to what we want to do before the lights go out for real.