"The touch is sand…"

Lyric by Robert Pollard, musical genius, Guided by Voices

My mind reaches out to my body, across the void and through the fog, to express its foundational purpose; to play the strings of my body to generate the music of functionality and life itself. My mind touches the strings but the hand that reaches out collapses into a pile of sand. I try again but my mind’s influence disintegrates into tiny grains of sand. I look up and see a vast desert surrounding me…

“Pineapple china”

Lyric by Robert Pollard, musical genius, Guided by Voices

I sit down in the comfy armchair and sink into its embrace. “Would you like a cup of tea?” I reply, “Yes please, milk, no sugar, I’m sweet enough!” I look around me and notice the flower wallpaper, the TV in the corner, the coffee table in front of me. It looks like a typical living room. But something isn’t right here; the TV is playing a movie in fast forward and I notice with lurching surprise I’m starring in the movie; I then become aware of thousands of cups pinned to the walls, like animal heads mounted as trophies; the wallpaper is filled with lilies and carnations. The doctor arrives with the tea but strangely the cup is made of stacked pineapple rings and the tea is leaking everywhere. I try to see the name on the doctor’s name badge and then my heart breaks: it reads, “Parkinson’s…”

"Stay with the clouds as they scatter..."

Lyric by Robert Pollard, musical genius, Guided by Voices

The dark clouds of Parkinson's gather slowly but inevitably and for many years go unnoticed. Once they are seen the Parkinson's clouds reach down and lift you from familiar ground; in doing so you are stretched transparently thin across the sky and become attached to the underside of the dark clouds. Helpless, you hang there and watch from a distance as life continues on firm ground. When the sun comes out for those on the ground, you are scattered along with the clouds and miss the sunshine.

As Parkinson's develops the scattered parts of you are reformed into different cloud formations; this process of scattering and reforming is continuous.

“…Or trigger a synapse and free us from our traps…”

Lyric by Robert Pollard, musical genius, Guided by Voices

One of the most amazing abilities of the brain is its adaptability; when, as in Parkinson’s, one part of the brain is misfiring, another part can step into the breach and compensate for the loss. However, this ability has to be actively unlocked and the key is to be open to learning new ways, refining old ones and emotionally accepting something has changed.

For example, reduced dopamine levels in Parkinson’s causes problems initiating movement, resulting in rigidity. This can be actively challenged by exercise and learning new ways to connect to your body (e.g. through yoga). Another example is your thinking can be diverted by therapy from the well-worn path of depressive negativity (which is based on a particular network of nerve cells firing) onto new, more positive and clearer, nerve cell networks.

We can thus actively modify, if not free ourselves from, the traps we set or those set for us.