June 18, 2010
I'm wrapping up week one of a mysterious ear infection--in my good ear of course--that has rendered me nearly deaf. (As well as being damned painful and messing up my balance.) The doctors are baffled--I seem to do that to doctors--and the prognosis is uncertain. Meet the new drugs, same as the old drugs.
I have a little bit of hearing left, but not much. I can hear a car radio if it's turned way up, and sharp, unpleasant sounds cut through the fog. Voices sound like they're being spoken into a pillow several rooms away. Playing music? No way. A blessing to my neighbors perhaps, but rather a shock to my routine.
So there ought to be more time for writing, yes? Without pesky tunes to divert me? It is absolutely a coincidence, by the way, that this infection developed during the night after I acquired my first button accordion. The body's defenses are not that cruel. Are they?
It is odd, moving around in an essentially soundless world. I feel like the experience ought to offer me some sort of epiphany. Nothing yet, though.
My dog asks, politely enough, if we might perhaps walk down to the lake before the inevitable rains begin. He doesn't need sound to make his request; it's a certain tilt of the head, a raising of dog-brows. I don't say "no" to anyone, or anything, very easily (a problem in so many ways); certainly not to dogs seeking walks.
My advice: go listen to something you love to hear. A bird, a banjo, a lover, a child, a song, the tide. Whatever. Because you never, you know, know.
