Cochlear Implant Update #3 - July 29

I received the transmitter for my cochlear implant two weeks ago tomorrow (Friday, July 16) and I simply cannot believe how much noisier my world is--the clink of my spoon on my yogurt bowl resounds on my left side, even though the bowl itself is on my right. Previously, I’m not sure I would have registered this sound even in my “good” right ear. When I walk around my neighborhood, the sounds of cars, garbage trucks, birds, dogs barking (especially if I don’t see them first and Rosie tries to pull me over in order to get to them), all come at me at once. The sound of the T a mile away from across the valley, squawking and clanking, is now a constant rather than an occasional friend.

On Wednesday, I had the honor of presiding at Ceil Weinstein’s funeral in Brockton. In my rush to finish the eulogy (they always take longer than I imagine--if you’d like to read it, click here) and to prepare myself, I left my transmitter on my dining room table. Its absence registered when I realized that the radio was not as “full” (if that’s the word for it) as it has been with the transmitter. As it was too late to turn back, I decided that the day would be an experiment. 

How did it go? Well, at the funeral itself, I suppose it was helpful, since I immediately reverted to my deaf self’s habit of speaking a notch or two too loudly--that was perfect for a socially distanced outdoor funeral. But at the shiva afterwards, the lack of a left “ear” meant that I was again struggling to figure out where voices were coming from, which ones were directed at me, and how to angle my head to make sure I could hear people. I realized that the “no transmitter” experiment was not worth the trouble; I cut it short and picked up my transmitter (and the dogs) on my way back to Danesh. 

Finally, I’m happy to report that I’m slowly beginning to decipher more of the stream of seeming gibberish that flows from NPR into my implant. On Wednesday morning, I heard a story in which I was able to make out words and phrases such as malaria, Sub-Saharan Africa, mosquitoes, controversy, eradication, etc. I was excited that I could at least figure out what the story was about, even if the details were scant: some new effort to reduce malaria in Africa involving a controversial way of controlling mosquitoes. Helpfully, my phone subsequently sent me an alert to the story in question, which you can read by clicking here.

Poem for 7/29/21 - Everything is Going to be All Right - by Derek Mahon

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon

found in Poems of Healing, ed. Karl Kirchwey (New York: Knopf, 2021), 226.

Also click here to read more. 

Poem for 7/28/21 - ICU - by Spencer Reece

 ICU

BY SPENCER REECE

For A.J. Verdelle

Those mornings I traveled north on I91,

passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock

where the elms discussed their genealogies.

I was a chaplain at Hartford Hospital,

took the Myers-Briggs with Sister Margaret,

learned I was an I drawn to Es.

In small group I said, “I do not like it—

the way so many young black men die here

unrecognized, their gurneys stripped,

their belongings catalogued and unclaimed.”

On the neonatal ICU, newborns breathed,

blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes.

A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled,

their eyelids the film on old water in a well,

their faces resigned in their see-through attics,

their skin mottled mildewed wallpaper.

It is correct to love even at the wrong time.

On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one

like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying:

I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you.

Source: Poetry (February 2010)

Poem for July 27, 2021 - Count That Day Lost, by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

 Count That Day Lost

George Eliot 1819 (Nuneaton, Warwickshire) – 1880 (Chelsea, London)

(Mary Anne Evans)

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.

Poem for July 26 - "Give-Away Song" - by Gwen Westerman

Give-Away Song

Gwen Westerman

This is my give-away—             not because I don’t want                   it anymore,             not because it’s out of                   style or                 broken or                 useless since it lost                 its lid or one of its buttons,             not because I don’t understand                 the “value” of things. This is my give-away—             because I have enough                   to share with you             because I have been given                   so much                     health love happiness                     pain sorrow fear             to share from the heart             in a world where words can be             meaningless when they come             only from the head. This is my give-way—             to touch what is good in you             with words your heart can hear             like ripples from a pebble             dropped in water             moving outward growing             wider touching others.             You are strong.             You are kind.             You are beautiful. This is my give-away.      Wopida ye.              Wopida ye.                 Wopida ye.

Copyright © 2021 by Gwen Westerman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 26, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Cochlear Implant Update - #2

(I had a cochlear implant "installed" into my skull on June 17. Since then, I've been offering periodic updates on my progress.)

Since last Friday, when I received the transmitter for my cochlear implant, I have begun to hear the world in a whole new way. It’s still disorienting to hear so much: as I’m typing this, I am hyper aware of every keystroke clicking in my right ear and pinging in my left. My brain is still struggling to integrate the two streams of information, a process that will take up to six months. Every day or two, I increase the volume and make it possible to recognize more sounds on my left side. To improve my brain’s capacity to make sense of this rush of noise, I am “listening” to NPR through my phone directly into the transmitter. At this point, I pick up a word here or there: “pandemic,” “support for NPR,” “Boris Johnson” (three times in one morning), “professor” amid the general flow of gibberish. More satisfying is reading a book while listening to it (again through my phone) so my brain can use my eyes to help me “hear” the words properly. I am so grateful to be undergoing this process of rehabilitation--there are so many blessings in the technology itself, but also in the brain’s plasticity. 

Fun fact: In 1890, the great psychologist William James was the first to suggest the hypothesis of plasticity, namely that the brain (as well as other parts of the body) has the capacity to grow and change over the course of a person’s lifetime: “Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”

Horace - Odes I:5 - Quis Multa Gracilis (What Slender Youth)

Horace - Odes I:5 - Quis Multa Gracilis (What Slender Youth)

What lovely youth in what rose-scented lair

Now lays his handsome head upon your lap?

For whom now do you comb your yellow hair,

And set with coy simplicity the trap?

How often will he deplore his wretched fate

Like one who in fair weather sets to sea

And strikes the tempest when it is too late

To win again his lost tranquillity.

Now he believes you golden through and through,

Ever good-humoured, ever kind and sweet,

He cannot find a single fault in you

Nor tell true currency from counterfeit.

Unhappy he who has not known your love,

Unhappier he who has: – and as for me,

That votive slab, these dripping garments prove

I too have suffered shipwreck in that sea.

DUFF COOPER (1890-1954)

Cooper was a British politician and statesman. You can read about him here.

This translation is found in Horace, Poems, ed. Paul Quarrie, New York: Knopf, 2015, pp. 29-30.

Professional Spanish Knocks on the Door - by Elisabet Velasquez

 

Professional Spanish Knocks on the Door (click the title to learn more about this poem and the poet, and to hear her read it)

Elisabet Velasquez

At first we don’t answer.  Knocks that loud usually mean 5-0 is on the other end.                                  Señora ábrenos la puerta porfavor.                                  Estamos aquí para platicar con usted.                                  No queremos llamar la policía. The person on the other side of the door is speaking professional Spanish. Professional Spanish is fake friendly. Is a warning. Is a downpour when you Just spent your last twenty dollars on a wash and set. Is the kind of Spanish that comes to take things away from you. The kind of Spanish that looks at your Spanish like it needs help. Professional Spanish of course doesn’t offer help. It just wants you to know that it knows you need some. Professional Spanish is stuck up like most people from the hood who get good jobs. Professional Spanish is all like I did it you can do it too. Professional Spanish thinks it gets treated better than us because it knows how to follow the rules. Because it says Abrigo instead of Có. Because it knows which fork belongs to the salad and which spoon goes in the coffee. Because it gets to be the anchor on Telemundo and Univision and we get to be the news that plays behind its head in the background.

Copyright © 2021 by Elisabet Velasquez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 21, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

A Love Note - by Adeeba Shahid Talukder

 

A Love Note (Click the title to learn more about this poem and the poet)

Adeeba Shahid Talukder

for Willem My love, you are water upon water upon water until it turns azure, mountainous. The horizon fills like sand between glass marbles. So much has passed between us— last night you told me to press your hand harder and harder as I pained. The sunset was at its last embers. The dark was stealing the blue light from our room. I was falling into you. ~ ~ Compress water and it turns to ice— compress beauty and it loses breath. Gaze at it too long, and even the wide mirror of the ocean will shatter. ~ ~ My Willem, between us, God has descended in all His atoms. We have not yet learned to hold Him. Copyright © 2021 by Adeeba Shahid Talukder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 20, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Julia Alvarez - Are We All Ill With Acute Loniness

Poem of the Day

"ARE WE ALL ILL WITH ACUTE LONELINESS"

Are we all ill with acute loneliness,

chronic patients trying to recover

the will to love? Yet all we've suffered

from others and ourselves, all the losses

of faith in the human face - when we glimpsed

the animal in the mother's grimace

or in the lover's grin as he promised

the promise no one can keep - made us lapse

back into our separateness. We all feel

absence like a wound. Sometimes the love

of another wounded one acts like a salve

which soothes the dying self but cannot heal

our lives. And perhaps this is what it feels

like to be human, and we are all well?

Julia Alvarez (1950-)

The Prophet (Poem)

 The Prophet

by Jim Morgan 

When Jonah got the call, he freaked out,

refused to go, jumped a ship--

Tarshish--the other direction.

It was too much, the burden--

Prophecy. A prophecy that,

in the end, was only four words:

“Forty days; Nineveh overturned.”

What’s more-- everyone heard.

Nineveh changed. No fire. No brimstone.

And Greta? Her call came when she was eleven--

A lesson at school, a burden

her brain would not put down.

No boat for Greta--that would come later.

Her escape: stop eating, waste away.

Her body stopped growing as her mind

sharpened to a single point:

“We do not know how long;

the world will burn.”

Jonah tried, but couldn’t escape--

the storm, the fish, three days inside.

Greta’s prophecy burrowed into her,

eating at her for years. But
when it began to emerge, it built her up.

She started alone, a knapsack and a sign.

One person joined. Then two, then three--

The growth became boundless,

not just a city but the world.

“Jonah’s tidings reached the King.”

Not just Greta’s tidings but Greta herself

went to the top: schooling, at sixteen, 

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Popes.

Useless to mock her. No one can

demean her because it is not about her.

It is her burden, her frail frame 

simply the vessel.

Nineveh and Nineveh’s King:

they listened. 

How will we respond 

to Greta’s call?

Cochlear Implant Update #1

 

Today, Friday, exactly a month after the “installation” of my cochlear implant, my audiologist flipped on the transmitter and I’ll spend the next six months or so training my brain to integrate two distinct streams of auditory information. This evening at services will be the first time you’ll have an opportunity to see me in my new “cyborg” status.