The Inner Ear

Sometimes I live my life holding on to the thread of the silver lining, the dark clouds rolling above and beneath me. I don't think I'm a depressed person by nature, but certain experiences have tested my disposition again and again. And if I seem particularly existential at times, it's because I've chosen to live in a world not fully my own-- a deaf man in a hearing world.

My father is having brain surgery today. The procedure is supposed to be relatively simple, at least compared to the 12-hour surgery he had four years ago to remove the malignant ependynoma that was swallowing up the language center of his brain. I often wonder about this bloom of words struggling to get in and out of both of us. And I wonder too how much longer he'll be with us. But this is something I can't write about right now, when he may well be in the operating room at this moment.

About two years ago I began to storyboard a novel called The Inner Ear. That title didn't actually come to me until after I'd finished a rough draft of the book. At that time it was still untitled, and while hosting a writing circle at my house in Portland, heady on wine and critiquing someone's short story, I suddenly saw the words illuminated in my mind, so absurdly simple and right that I could not believe I hadn't thought of it before. It felt like grace, that silver thread.

I try to compose my life of moments of grace and profound meaning. And this is where the existentialism comes in again-- the philosophy is simply about our attempt to find meaning in our own lives, which often seem inchoate, chaotic, beyond our control. And if you are one of those few who feel you have everything under control, give it time. Everything we know and love in this life will disappear, for some of us sooner, and for others, later.

The Inner Ear has in many ways been a process of self-discovery, of putting into words what I've always known about my own experience but haven't admitted, even to myself. And just as the novel was and is about a deaf man coming to terms with himself even as the aural world blurs and dims around him, it has also been the story of me coming to terms with myself and my father's illness.

When I went to SE Asia this past summer, knowing that my life would change completely when I returned-- leaving a city I loved, ending a 2-year relationship, and leaving my community behind, this novel was in a shambles. I returned from SE Asia with little clarity on who I was, with a sense that I once again had to pick up the pieces of myself. I still wear a red bracelet with five beads which a Burmese monk tied around my wrist in Kyaingtong. The world is suffering and impermanence, he told us. One strives for egolessness. And if I had been born in Burma, I too would have strived for the silver lining of the great beyond, an immoveable force on which the Tatdamaw (the Burmese army) has no control.

But I was lucky enough to be born an American, one of the few countries where a deaf person stands a chance. I came back to America, and within a month of moving to Baltimore and starting at Hopkins I lost more of my hearing. For all my despair, the silver lining was a renewed sense of purpose about my novel and my own spiritual self. My spirituality has always been tied to my deafness and my inner songs, the ethereal ringing that has accompanied me every day and every moment of my entire life. To me, tinnitus is my way of looking at the Buddhist concept of the unstruck sound, without beginning or ending, cause or effect. There are moments when I am almost breathless with a strange and beautiful melody I have never heard before.

Last week I workshopped the latest draft of my first chapter. I received a lot of good feedback, and I also had the amazing privilege of talking with Alice McDermott one on one for an hour afterwards. The first thing she said to me is "this is very good, I want you to move forward." We discussed the structure of the novel and she was incredibly helpful. After an hour, I left with my head swimming and a whole new range of structural and plotting issues to sort out, but I also felt a renewed sense of purpose. The hours, days, months I've struggled with this novel, at times wondering if I should give it up or whether it was any good.... the perseverance pays off at moments like this.

John Barth told us to invent new genres, and simply through my experience I hope to have that opportunity. The Deaf genre has yet to be explored, and I feel a strong sense of purpose in this, not just because it is my own experience, but because it is a perspective that has been silenced for so long in the hearing world. Will this work eventually get published? From a statistical standpoint, the odds are against me. I certainly hope it will. But for now, my own belief and sense of purpose is more than enough. There is nothing else that quite gives me that unique sense of ecstasy as being lost in my writing. A few hours of good writing becomes a high that lasts all day.

Good luck, Dad. This is nothing compared to what you've been through.

Readings

I've fallen behind a bit on this blog, mainly because when I've been focusing most of my writing energy on my novel (which happens to have the same title as the blog). The last few weeks have been incredibly uplifting for me. My hearing is stable and I've been cleared for exercise again. I've been biking and now I'm interested in getting into tennis. One of my fiction classmates has done tennis instruction in the past.

Anyway, on the subject of readings. There have been several wonderful readings over the past three weeks-- Philip Levine, John Barth, and then our Graduate Writing Sems readings. I gave a reading for the first time in my life, for an audience of about 50 people. My mom was in town, which was nice, and we spent that weekend in Shenandoah National Park.

An interesting anecdote about the John Barth reading: Barth is basically the granddaddy of the Writing Sems. He taught at Hopkins for a long time, and he's about as post-modern and experimental as they come. Anyway, after all of the fiction writers got out of class that Thursday, we went down to the Hopkins Club, hoping to crash his reception. We weren't sure if we'd be able to get in-- we taught, but were we faculty? And after all, we hadn't exactly been invited. But as we were standing there uncertainly a car pulls up and John Barth steps out, waves us all in. He gave us a little talk in the Hopkins Club about inventing new genres, as we quaffed as much free wine and beer as we could in the hour before the reading. At the reading, he spun out a post-modern fantasy that included all manners of lechery-- imagine a 75 year old man throwing out everything from half-limp erections to yeast infections. Most of my students attended the reading, and they were shocked.

Philip Levine was absolutely wonderful as well. What a funny old guy. He spent the breaks between poems telling us jokes and trying to convince us that he was not a tormented, depressed poet, and then he read the most heart-breaking poems to us-- poems about war, his twin brother, a lonely waitress.

Beauty is Not Only Scan-Deep

So I'm a month into the Writing Sems program at Hopkins, and at this point I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. Alice McDermott is the best writing teacher I've ever had. I was workshopped for the first time last week and I got ripped, just like everyone else has been. It's a good thing; I feel honored that my work is taken so seriously, and I don't take constructive criticism that personally. It's just part of getting to the next level.
Alice told us that we'll all be writing short novels with her next semester, and our workshop will be with Stephen Dixon, so I'm already looking forward to that. Next week I'll be giving my first ever reading as part of the Graduate Reading Series here. We had about fifty people for this week's reading. And get this-- we have our own librarian. We can go to her for any research questions, so if I need to know more about the Cambodian woman's perspective on prostitution in SE Asia, or need the answers to any of my more obscure questions about Mesopotamia, she'll do the research.

This week I'm teaching scansion and honestly, some of my students probably know more about it than I do. I'm not a poet, and I won't pretend to be. Which syllable is stressed, which one isn't? All I know is that I'm stressed. I could bang my head on a Mending Wall right now, which is what I'll be teaching tomorrow.

I've had conferences with my students the last few weeks, and I also graded my first major assignment-- memoirs. My favorite was about a Thai girl making spring rolls with her grandma in Bangkok. Teaching has been my biggest challenge so far, and I've really been enjoying it. I like my students, my students like me. And I kinda like how the Writing Sems people are considered pretty hip TAs.

A Fetish of the Machine

I'm sitting in the basement of the biomedical engineering building, following the movement of a red dot with my eyes. Leaned forward, my teeth clamped down a bite block, I have two wires attached to my eyes by way of two specially modified contacts. Each one of these contacts was made by hand, by one person, who retired last year. The wires are finer than thread, and break just as easily. Each one of these wires cost $300 to replace. My eyes have been numbed, and after the experiment, a dye is applied to make my cornea fluorescent under black lights. Satisfied that the wires haven't scratched my eyes, the doctor, a pregnant Thai lady, takes away my bite block and the contacts.

This isn't fiction. I just had a "scleral search coil" test, which measures measures the anterior, posterior and horizontal canals of my vestibular system. Earlier in the afternoon, my ears were filled with hot and then cold water, causing the room to spin, as if I'd achieved drunken samadhi. I'm participating in one of those before and after studies, in this case, on the effect of cochlear implants on the vestibular system. I haven't decided for sure whether I'm getting an implant yet; at the very least, the tests will determine any balance problems I might have as a result of losing some hearing a month ago. So far so good-- my balance function appears to be pretty normal.