Written during the 10 week Duadopa experiment

The following piece of writing, was written under the influence of the Duadopa Pump. I was obsessing over how to end things in the tidiest way. I don’t feel that way now. A lot of the actions are determined by bio-chemsitry. The first drug that was prescribed for me was Amantadine. I would be walking out to Sandymount when the thought would occur - why shouldn’t I just walk into traffic. it would be a neutral thought, not fear or depressed, simply why shouldn’t I? like an abstract consideration. The Emesis crisis was still fresh in my mind. And the sudden acceleration from being a person with Parkinson’s with reasonable independence to being a vulnerable human being that would need constant care, felt like an imminent threat.

I don’t stand over it as something that might have any artistic value. Instead, it serves as a way of getting a read on how I was during that strange time. It demonstrates the difficulty of making art with this particular dynamic.

Confession

Why did I expect an untimely but respectable death?

Why did I assume that after the initial disarray

Things would slowly resolve themselves and

Ultimately people would say kind things

And leave not relieved but glad that they came

My body is intact in these imagined scenarios

The mindless optimism that there’d be a them

To attend at all!

Maybe there’s blunt force trauma and a coma

Just enough time for 85%  of friends and family

To express contradictory emotions but by the end

Things swing slightly in my favour

I danced to Bill Callahan’s ‘dress sexy at my funeral’

I mocked death and mocked the people who didn’t

Mock death

I complained that the Late Late show was just

Too late – when it came to celebrating disability

I failed to commiserate with the victims of

Drink driving ads

That’s why there are no sitcoms about stroke victims

And/ or kids with long term illnesses

Now I pray to god, don’t leave me in a home

To be ignored and victim to casual everyday cruelty

Locked into a body without any control

My neo-nazi neighbours work as nurses

‘Martin the things they do, you don’t want to know’

And I don’t. Dear God, please save me

From a desperate dwindling death

After all didn’t you assist your own son

In dying?