The Sound of Silence

It took losing my hearing to fall in love with Yo Yo Ma. It happened on a Wednesday in rush hour, riding in a the picturesque modern day cowboys truck actually named Truck Noriss, skirting downtown traffic, with a Texan who had beat thyroid cancer twice, who had years ago fallen in love with american sign language, and was taking me to a bar where we would huddle in the back with just enough light to almost make out our abc's. He wanted to introduce me to this album he had fallen in love with, I wasn't sure until he turned up the bass so loud the dash board shook and his coffee cup was practically leaping out of the holder. This is the only way to listen to Yo Yo Ma. I put my feet on his dashboard and fell, completely in love. I let the bass notes tumble up and down my spine, let silence rest on my sternum until bam -- my heart woke up. I now know that it wasn't exactly Yo Yo Ma that I fell for but the the curves of the cello. Some days I can hear the whisper of the notes but mostly I just feel them, it was the cello that taught me that there IS sound in silence, and that there will be another world, another way of being, new unexpected love randomly and mismatched just around the corner, the cello makes me less afraid of letting my hearing go, the cello has shown me that life is not what I have expected it to be, and deafness isn't either, two years ago with 60% of my hearing intact, I couldn't hear a thing.

*****
There is something about a sunny day, a Chevy pick up, and rock and roll. I was half way through listening to "Free Falling" when it hit me. I pulled over, along side lake Washington and a late spring breeze. I pushed up the volume as far as it would go. I tapped gently on the steering wheel, I let the bass vibrate all the way up my spine, I could feel the clash of the symbols on the left side of my ribs, just beneath my heart. And the words jumped off the windshield gently nibbling the back of my neck. My hearing aids were tucked safely into my front pocket, I wasn't hearing a thing. Not a goddamn thing. I have wondered what sound feels like in silence, it feels like the rush of Christmas morning as a child, the excitement of a first date, an earthquake, an orgasm, it feels that my body is a boat on an wild but tender river, it tastes sweet and metallic, it feels like success.

I have been mourning my loss more and more, trying to get my self to a place where I can treat my hearing as essentially a library book. It was good for the time I had it, I loved the story it told, a perspective of the word that I experienced but now it's time to give it back, of course it's a loss but there is a whole new world to experience, and this world is all new and totally mine. So here I am free falling into the sound of silence that is so loud and full of a million vibrations, it's deafening.