Since You Didn’t Ask

You can’t hear very well?

I have had Tinnitus — unceasing noise in the head — for maybe 15 years. And while it is problematic and occasionally debilitating, vanity forbids me from doing anything about it. It’s a slippery slope: hearing aids lead to supportive shoes, which lead to plaid shirts buttoned to the top, which lead to waiting in the car in the No Parking Fire Zone while your wife is in that damn store of hers buying whatever the hell it is she’s looking for today, she calls it her hobby, what the hell can I do. (“No I am not parking. I paid for this goddam fire zone sixteen times over with my taxes. Just go.”) Although I don’t have a wife, so I’d have to wait for someone else’s.

But it’s not all bad. It even, every now and then, allows for a unique moment, if not an incandescent one. Like this one: I was recently invited to a cottage for the weekend, and after dinner we ended up as you hope to do, around the fire. And I happened to be sitting beside a multi-millionaire– that’s how he was whisperedly described prior to his arrival– so of course I was on my sharpest behaviour… but, why? Was he something special? Was he better than me? (At making money and not squandering his life, absolutely. Oh, and wearing shirts with the collar up, he was great at that, too. Whenever I do it, I always look like I’m trying to hide from someone or make my head look smaller.) Did I actually think he was going to hand me some money, just for being smart or entertaining? I sure did. Why do I do this to myself?

Sorry. Anyway, there were at least eight of us around the fire, which was big and crackling loud, thanks in part to the gusto I brought to my deep forest twig-gathering, which was both observed by and flatteringly remarked upon by the possibly generous multi-milliona—stop it. And there were at least three conversations going at once, so it was noisy. There was wine, too, much too much wine for me, because few pleasures I know match the simple act of boozily rising from a fireside chair and staggering mere yards to a waiting country bed. So it was a perfect storm of compromised hearing. And as I strained to catch snippets of conversation, I landed a whopper, straight from the mouth of the millionaire: “an assault on certainties.”

Fuck, I thought. That’s brilliant. A grand slam. He collapsed the entire zeitgeist to three words. Billions of editorials, trillions of hours of hand-wringing about the moment, the chaotic Trumpian age, the existential pulling out of the rug, disrupting all we thought we knew and could count on… and he masterfully distills it as an assault on certainties. Capturing the violence, the history, the gravity. Chomsky would have raised an eyebrow, if not a glass.

Stunned, humbled, I forced myself through the Shiraz haze to keep listening. What followed from those same lips was even more surprising, as it was not more genius about our struggle to land a foothold at the end of a new Roman Empire, pillars of truth and certitude collapsing like straws… but about food. “French fries… a steak.. even popcorn sometimes. That’s about it.” And just as quickly as my mind, just moments ago, soared like a hawk contemplating the grandeur of his characterization — an assault on certainties — I realized that what he actually said was, “salt on certain things.” As in, well, he only liked salt on certain things.

As I think about it more, I’m less embarrassed for me (I’m hearing disabled, remember?) than disappointed for him, if not in him. Because I’m sure that what he said was exactly what he meant. No hidden meanings, no Being There-ish profundities cached in simplicity. No interpreting that “salt on certain things” means… live deliberately… enjoy things as they are… they don’t need more… living itself is the seasoning. Just a guy who puts his $400 shirt on like the rest of us, one raised collar at a time, talking about salt. Of that, I’m absolutely certain. Pretty much.

What are “non-existent library book suggestions?”

Technically, the suggestions, themselves, existed. We all need hobbies and this was the perfect one: fun, free, and, despite what that letter from the library board said, I do believe it gave those sourpuss librarians a chuckle. It was all quite innocent: They would keep a little suggestion box in the library for books you’d like them to carry, and I wanted them to feel like people appreciated the gesture. It was fun to see them opening and reading the slips, and suddenly stop at, “Home Surgery Made Easy” or “I’ll Eat When I’m Dead: The Controversial Foodless Diet of the Ancient Starvalonians.” Or, who can forget the entire “Slug Shifters” series by Franklin P. Hoogbellow, including the epic “Book 6: Slime of Fury.” I actually asked for that particular one in a number of libraries, as for some reason it’s very rare.