What a lot of things your post addresses - right now the memory issue is the one that stands out for me. I don't know whether it is PD or meds that give me a kind of mental 'flatness' - I only know that I am not as finely active as I used to be, more reactive..... this includes memory, I rarely reminisce when on my own but do remember when prompted - well I remember more distant things, near events sometimes take a lot longer to surface, and under pressure! This I believe contributes to the flatness, in that synthesising memories assists the imagination - I miss the more imaginitive creative peron I was. As an antidote I am starting to get more involved in creative art once more.

Posts at the other place over several years certainly attested to a spiritual thread that was shared on the forums, in fact there was also a spiritual discourse that was visible over time, that was enriching and welcome. I know I am more drawn to the spiritual side of things than ever before.

Something that I have noticed is that it becomes more and more difficult to initiate speech - something that feels both physical and cognitive at the same time.

I would like to believe that we think with our whole person, rather than just our brain - that the brain is both the clearing house and repository of our entire experience, but the sum of it all is so much more.....

I worked once with an adolescent quadriplegic girl called Katie - she had never been able to speak, and had only developed very slowly as her disability was so great, she had virtually no movement and had been thus from birth. She was however able to communicate through her mother, who brought her onto the percussion project where I met her. I was amazed over the weeks that I worked with her to find that there was a special intelligence there. The group eventually gave an amazing performance alongside a group of profoundly deaf dancers and a group of normal teenagers. Katie was able with her mothers help to use a tibetan bell, and kept remarkable time. I videoed the rehearsals, and later edited it down and each of this group of very learning disabled people received a copy. I can only say that when they watched their own performance there was a deeply spiritual response - Katie's look of pure joy is something I will treasure for the rest of my life. It was as if they had all seen themselves for the first time, and they were more than they knew of before. None of this group of people had more than the most basic recall, days and dates were not relevant to them, not one of them was even able to remember their own address or a telephone number, none were able to function in the world unaided, let alone dress of feed themselves. But that they understood love, caring, trust, devotion, on a deep level - I have no doubt at all.

Lindy