Friday, November 20, 2020

Telephone

 


Emptiness of emptiness, Qoheleth says. Emptiness of emptiness! All is emptiness. All return to their long home, and the mourners will have their parade in the street. The silver cord snaps, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to earth as it was, and the breath returns to the Creator. Emptiness of emptiness, says Qoheleth, all is emptiness.


The god you imagined you need to please is no more than a particle of dander adrift in unlimited space. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness, blessed is the name of the Lord. 


I try to talk to my soul doctor about my soul sickness, but can’t quite describe the troubled state of my mind. Later, after our WhatsApp therapy session I remember it is time for my annual MRI to check in on the tumor that lives in my inner ear, ringing in my ear, like the telephone of Doom. I don’t want to answer it. I mean I don’t want to worry about it. I don’t want it to be a problem. I want it to disappear on its own, like magic. But I have to make the phone call and make the appointment.


The thing is a tumor that has occupied the inner canal of my left ear, near the auditory nerve. It is not cancer, but if it grows it can cause hearing loss, ringing in the ear, loss of balance, dizziness, facial numbness or paralysis, and if it grows big enough to press against the brainstem it can prevent the cerebrospinal fluid from flowing between brain and spinal cord, the golden bowl and the silver cord. The fluid could build up in my head (hydrocephalus)  increase pressure in my skull, and threaten my life.


Why worry? It’s all in my head! If they need to they can cut into my skull and remove it. No, it’s not like getting a tooth pulled, it is brain surgery, but a hospital website assures me that “improvements in imaging technologies and skull-base surgical techniques have made surgery for acoustic neuromas safer and more effective than ever before.” So, every year, near Thanksgiving, I get an MRI to see if the thing is growing. Between scans I have a whole year to put the thing in my head out of my mind. But now it rings, the telephone of Doom. Pick it up.


I try to imagine soul lightning shooting up the stairs of my backbone, out the crown of my head, showering me with light, and radiating a rainbow nimbus in the emptiness, a blessing. 

Pick up the phone.


Hello?

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