carillon ovenbird Here is a thing that happens: When I force my body to endure the discomfort of weight bearing exercise, like push-ups or planks, where my neck and shoulders are under tension, sometimes my hearing fades away, like there’s a kink in the cable that connects my inner ear to my brain, and there is a hissing like the static that crackles when you’re approaching a radio station but haven’t quite dialed in the right frequency, and a loud ringing swells until it consumes all other sound, and the noise of the world disappears under a cottony carillon, and no amount of shaking my head will set things right. Doctors seem unconcerned but it terrifies me every time. The haze clears slowly, but eventually the auditory landscape resolves itself into something recognizable. I step outside so I can hear the wind turning leaves into softly brushed snares. There are a lot of ugly things I wish I had never heard, but I never want to stop hearing the world sing. We know that when a body dies hearing functions longer than all the other senses. Perhaps this is so the world can give us a parting gift; perhaps we are all sent off with a final lullaby, a melodic murmur that closes our eyes and sends us, drifting, into our final sleep, held in the arms of the breath that takes us home. 250917 what's it to you? who go blather from