Learned to Surf

These are secrets the world sung to me truer than the truth…
It was music that gave the shove
And resolved in music we shall breathe

I went to an awful lot of rock shows in college. I loved feeling the energy in the sweaty club and my ears filled with pummeling sound. Though it was exhilarating, I was never much for moving around, or "dancing" as it were.

Let's Explode

I don't wanna live forever
When the sky is full of little holes
Exploding as they take my picture
Let's explode

The day draws near now, so I've had a lot on my mind. I've reached an emotional place that I haven't been to since the time when I wrote this post. You may feel the death metaphor is recycled, but there really is no turning back this time.

Big Black Nemesis

So maybe you saw my tweet about it, but the other day I read a really gut wrenching post that reminded me of a lot of feelings I haven't confronted recently. The author also put hir finger on a particular confluence of negative emotions that I can really relate to but never thought about so explicitly.

Go read it.

I'll wait.

Speaking in Tongues

On the lighter side of things, I accidentally left my voice recognition software on while talking to a colleague. Here's what I found embedded in the manuscript I'm working on. I'm actually wondering if we should leave it in.

The Black Album

Not surprisingly, I am going to start with a musical analogy.

In 1987, following the critical and commercial success of Sign of the Times, Prince was on the verge of releasing a deeply funky but dark, misogynistic, and violent album to be entitled The Funk Bible. Then, a week before release, he pulled the album. Due to the fact that the handful of promo copies that went out were in an unmarked black sleeve, the record became known as The Black Album and was widely bootlegged. A few months later, he followed up with a poppy fruit loop of a record called Lovesexy which featured him naked on the cover in a picture that had to have been taken at a glamour shot at the local mall.

The Pink Life

Why do you seek, why do you seek the Pink Life?
How do you sleep, how do you ever lie down?
Why do you need, why do you need your Science?
Why am I your only outside line?

I know it's been a while since I blogged. The last time I did I was pretty happy with the way things were going, and I still am in a lot of ways. And I'm still having a tremendous amount of fun. I've also had some recent blows to the groin and I've been working like an animal, still feeling like I'm running in syrup or quicksand, overwhelmed by a mountain of work. It's been an exhilarating, exhausting month that left me pretty drained. It was in this mood that I had the following realization.

New Day Rising

I realize it's been a while since I wrote my last entry, but I'm happy to say I've been very busy doing things other than worrying about my P and whether it will sink my career. (Instead, I now expect that if that does happen it will be as a result of the current funding climate. That's psychological progress!) I guess it's no surprise that I was most motivated to blog when my grapple with whether to at least partially leave the closet was most intense. Things have been going really well and I have welcomed the chance to focus on other things for a change.

Don't Tell a Soul

For anyone who was wondering, I intend to keep this blog anonymous. I showed it to some people and told them it's me, and as a publicly P-having PI, if you care to know who I am you will eventually be able to do your research to ID me. Nonetheless, it will be a lot easier to write from behind a curtain, even if it's translucent. That said, since I'm growing less uptight about getting busted, I thought I'd share some stories I held back from writing about in the past because they are specific enough to give me away if the right people read them. These are instances when I really just wanted to drop the charade and scream out that I have P. I think they give a good sense about how occasionally surreal my life became.

Can't Hardly Wait pt. 2

Back to the mysterious post a few days ago. I didn't really want to write any details about what I was thinking and what I was planning to do until it was over with. But if you know what the song is about, I can understand being worried. One of my friends did know and sent me a concerned email: "You doing OK?". I explained the post to him, and I'm going to try to explain to you.

Bear with me. I promise this ends well.

Can't Hardly Wait

Climb on to the top 
of this scummy water tower, screamin'
I can't hardly wait

Source Tags and Codes

I'm going to break from the usual fare for two bits of metacommentary. Occasionally I get some feedback on the blog from people close to me (ok mostly my wife).

One thing she and other people have remarked on is the feeling that my blog is "dark" and "a downer", which is mostly of note because it really contrasts both with my personality and my actual prevailing attitude towards my P. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm on the edge or anything. But the blog is for expressing a side of me that doesn't often see the light of day. The full extent of my feelings is much more balanced and I truly have something of sense of humor about it, even though it may be a little gallows.

Veronica

I have made allusions several times on the blog about the strange subjective experience of slowly losing control of my arm, hand, and fingers. I am particularly fascinated by the 'freezing' I experience sometimes, in which I attempt to lift my hand from what it's doing and it just doesn't want to go along. I have to put effort, even focus or concentration into getting it to move. This to such a degree that I have to pause whatever else my brain is doing (including talking or thinking) to get things going. I must confess sometimes when no one else is around, I will just grab it with my other hand and actually move it.

Here's Where the Strings Come In

I'm standing on a stage
Of fear and self doubt
It's a hollow play
But they'll clap anyway

At a fundamental level, I started this blog for me to have an outlet for venting some complicated emotions I was dealing with. So, this all started with me basically talking to myself in an empty room some months ago. The only people listening were the handful (and I seriously mean a very small number) of people in my life who I have told about my P. But at another level, I did this because I believe my voice can add something to people's lives and maybe for a few make the world a little easier and friendlier. There aren't many people who can convey the objective scientific understanding and the subjective experience of P. This was something the other P (from post 1) understood right away, but it took some time for me to be ready to accept that load.

All the Young Dudes

My P emerged in my mid-30s, which is really young. One of the things I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about is having an "old man" disease. I'm not going to lie to you. It's a little annoying when I see things like the picture that accompanies the article 4 Smartphone Apps to Help You Manage Parkinson's on the MJ Fox Foundation website:

Nice New Outfit

"You like the cut
You like the fit
Wide in the shoulders
Trim at the hips"

I'm Shakin'

Welcome new readers!

My Drug Buddy

Whether or not you're a neuroscientist, or have P or don't, you have probably heard of the oldest and most well known drug for P: L-DOPA. As the great Big Black sang: "L-DOPA fixed me, alright".