This is a story of an ear.
 
This winter, my right ear, as in a slow-motion film, closed. I remember exactly when it happened. My ear canal, once an open, receptive place, folded upon itself. Sounds around me magnified, but my own voice stayed trapped in a tunnel.
 
All things I love about words and the human voice--conversations, singing, writing--closed for me too. My jaw felt frozen, locked. It was as if my ear didn’t want to hear what was happening around me, so it stopped hearing. Stopped being open and vulnerable. Words no longer accessible.
 
I was forced to be quiet. To be still.
 
W.A. Mathieu, composer and teacher, writes in The Listening Book Discovering Your Inner Music: "the ear is a haven...how delicate is the egg of an ear."

The ear is a little capsule to protect and cherish.
 
Aa a writer and as a human being, I know the importance of listening. In her memoir about writing, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty’s first section is simply entitled: Listening. Welty writes of her “physical awareness of the word.” As a child being read to, she heard an inner voice, “the voice of the poem or story itself.” She writes, “The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice…The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth.”
 
It is important to take care with words. To listen to of an inner voice.
 
I have a vision inside my head of my ear, the small hairs almost in a super electrical current, trembling, waiting.
 
How can a writer be open and closed at the same time? How can I let what may be useful, but hurtful, in or go out in the world? At a recent workshop in journal keeping, we discussed the delicate balance of having true writing, but protecting ourselves and others. It is a delicate balance. But I have choices. When I write, I may consciously make them. I can discriminate, act, pay attention. I can have tenderness for myself. Protect myself.

​I can let my ear gradually open.
 

​Dick’s became a holy place for me and my younger sister, both allowed to roam at will amongst the stacks which towered above us. The light fell from the roof slats in a kind of swirling pattern, pulling the dust from the pages skyward, as if in a golden cloud or a heavenly prism. I grew sleepy, entranced, as I pulled out one book after another for examination.  Never minding the dust or clutter, we’d cull through the piles, find a beauty bound in green embossed leather, its pages brushed with gold leaf, or uncover another gem with watercolor illustrations done by some delicate hand. “Perhaps it’s valuable,” we’d whisper. Confused about the abandonment of such treasures, we made our selections, secretly pleased they fell to us. A handwritten inscription “To Edna With All My Love from Frank” sent us off to conjure real faces and possible scenarios of tragedy or love. Really, we wondered, how does a book, given with love, end up given away? There on the dusty barn’s floor, we vowed to never give away a book with a dedication or inscription.
 
At home, the books took places of honor with other treasures in a long built-in cabinet in our hallway decorated with brass sconces, red Chinese wallpaper, and a black and white diamond patterned floor. I spent many hours on the cool floor, pouring over fairy tales, poetry, art and history books, Shakespeare, and works by Russian or American writers. I can still see them, arranged alphabetically or in categories, spines facing out, little enchantresses.
 
Over the years, there were many trips to Dick’s Barn and many more beautiful books added to our collection. For the years of my own childhood and later for my children’s, these touchstones provided enrichment, solace, and inspiration. Just recently I came across my favorite copy of English Fairy Tales, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, its cover a rich heavy forest green.  Inside the front cover bordered with green butterflies lies a child’s inscription, “Summer’s Book,” written in permanent red ink.
 
Pilgrimages to used bookstores or famous ones such as City Light’s in San Francisco or Politics and Prose in Washington D.C. are still part of what I love.  I can still wander at will. In the pages of poetry or prose and from the imaginings of others, I find myself.