*****
CLOGGED EAR
About once a year my left ear gets
infected, and this week has been its time. This has seriously reduced my
bird-spotting ability.
That's because most birders develop
an uncanny talent for precisely locating the positions of singing birds with
their ears before they begin looking with their eyes. I seldom notice this
ability until it's gone. This week, with one ear closed down, I have been at a
loss to say whether a bird was before me or behind me, to the right or left.
There's a benefit to this loss,
however, assuming that the hearing returns as it always has. That is, this
reminds me of what an amazing invention the human body is. I am reminded of all
the things that can go wrong with a body to affect not only its hearing, vision
and the other senses, but also the sense of balance, blood-sugar level, the
functioning of the heart and brain...
Sometimes I reflect on the fact
that back in 1947 the button on my body-machine was pushed, and I've been going
every since with very modest maintenance, just providing it with fuel. In
college I studied the chemical pathways involved in metabolism and respiration,
how blood pH is buffered... It is all so complex, so majestically ingenious. It
is amazing that we can ever feel good for a moment, yet I feel good nearly all
the time. Every moment of feeling good is a tremendous gift
*****
COLD CROW OVER WINDY GRASS
Sometimes it's as if everything in
a landscape chimes in with the same voice. In a concentrated, harmonizing
instant lasting less than a second the voice sums up everything around you. You
never know when such moments might crop up. At the end of life, maybe all
that'll stick with us will be the echoes of such vividly lived moments.
I experienced such a moment the
other day biking to the mailbox. We're on a ridge here so we're open to the
wind. A coldfront was blowing in and that day the wind made whole trees heave
and twist, showing the silvery bottoms of their leaves and sounding like
waterfalls. On our ridge the sky is wide open so clouds say a lot. That day
everything said was dark, ragged and cold. Most upland here is in hayfields and
pastures, so fast-moving, almost violent waves of grass rampaged across
too-green hayfields.