The most striking thing to me about using hearing aids are the return of the high frequencies. This means I hear more clicks and softer sounds that have been getting by me for years. It’s not particularly pleasant. But I am expecting that I will begin to notice all the extra sounds less as I get used to it.

I did manage to get my hearing aids hooked up to my phone via Bluetooth. I listened to C.P.E. this morning and it sounded pretty good.

We decided not to go sit by the beach today. We drove down to take a look. Besides the rain (which I like) it was cold. Yesterday would have been perfect. We got started pretty late and have been running behind all day. It’s about 4:30 PM and we just had lunch. Martini time soon!

I stopped by and picked up some holds from the library on our way for our little drive. When I got home two more books were waiting for me.

I have been looking forward to My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe. This time even though it came from the bookstore that sent me the heavily marked up copy, the text was clean.

I was very interested in the book, Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews – by Danilo Kiš.

Even though Kiš died in 1989, he is fascinating. His is another title I picked up from Gerald Vizenor. Susan Sontag edited and wrote the introduction and preface. That’s worth the price of admission for me even though this is a library book.

Here are some cool ideas from it: “Nationalism is first and foremost paranoia, individual and collective paranoia. As collective paranoia it is the product of envy fear and primarily the result of a loss of individual consciousness … If an individual feels unable to ‘express himsel’ within th frame work of the social order either because it fails to encourage him as an individual—in other words, stands in the way of his self-fulfillment—and he feels obliged to seek fulfillment outside his identity or the prevailing social structures” then shit happens.

Oops that last part was me. More from Danilo Kiš:

“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus. Thus, nationalism is the path of least resistance, the easy way out.”

“Nationalism is the ideology of banality. It is a totalitarian ideology.”

You get the idea.

Sontag says this about Danilo Kiš in her introduction: Danilo Kiš was “one of those writrs who are first of all readers, who prefer dawdling and grazing and blissing out in the Great Library and surrender to their vocation only when the urge to write becomes too unbearable.”

I think might slightly apply to someone like myself who is grappling with a new vocation that omits church.