After spending a lot of time the last two weeks hooked up to the portable CD player by direct connect, experiencing all kinds of new discoveries in the songs I've heard for years through a hearing aid, I am experiencing some backwards progress. The quality of what I hear with has been gradually eroding. Hi Res is now no longer pleasing to hear through, it's harsh and hissy. MPS is holding up fine as back up..but I am having to turn the volume up more than I had to before. Instead of at 12 o clock, I have it at the 2 o clock position. The overall clarity doesn't seem to be there as I'm having greater trouble with speech discrimination. This is a reversal from actually understanding unfamiliar lyrics within music just by listening over a week ago.

I have heard of others complaining of such phases of not hearing as well and then snapping back. Apparently it's caused by stress, being tired, or even allergies. So what with North Korea throwing an attention getting tantrum, Israel raising Cain upon Lebanon, Iraq never-ending, a shake-up in home life with having someone I'm close to replaced with a roommate I put an ad out for, a heat wave setting off various allergy like symptoms and skin weirdness, and averaging 6 hours of sleep a night instead of 8...I'd say I have all 3 of those causes.

The thing is, we hear with our brain. It is doing more work than it did before by working in conjunction with the components of the ear that delivered the sound information to it before. It has to bridge all of those gaps that the inner ear would serve up to it already prepared for processing. So it's no surprise that quality of hearing goes in peaks and valleys.

Nevertheless, I'll monitor it and report it to my audiologist if it worsens past the point it is at now. It currently resembles the state of my hearing prior to being mapped with Mike Page from AB in attendance. So if it doesn't improve after a bit or worsens, I'll call for an appointment sooner than my next mapping which isn't until the end of August.

Despite that downer for the past few days....it's been a great two weeks, at least in Music listening. I haven't bought a book on CD yet because I realized they are quite expensive....75 dollars on average! I have other things 75 dollars needs to towards. I remembered someone mentioning Libraries carry them, too. So I checked the Long Beach Public Library website, which has their catalog online. Apparently they have the Harry Potter books..but they also have limited hours! They are all closed on Mondays as well as not opening before Noon most days. I'm betting this is a reflection of declining readership.

Now I haven't set foot in a Library in years. This is from someone who'd spent a good portion of his childhood at the Fort Dodge Public Library in Iowa, reading comic books and raiding the shelves for whatever information I could find about anything that came to mind..which I now do from where I sit typing this right now. The internet replaced the library. But for the first 12 years of my life, this place was one of my favorite places in the world.



My mom worked directly across the street from the library at Burch Manufacturing. The Day Care my brother and I would attend while my parents were at work would often have group walks to the Library. We would be walking down the street all holding our partners hand in double-file. My mom would sometimes be at the window waving at us.

The children's library had Ms. Seal, the Librarian. I don't believe that was her real name, just the personality she used. She made coming to the Library fun by reading from books as we sat in a room where they had steps like stadium seating that we sat on. They would also show films on the screen there. Anyway, I admire her job, pretty cool way to spend your days while getting paid for it. She certainly made an impact on me and made it a magical place.

The same years that found me spending time alone at the library with great frequency were accompanied by the onset of my first major drop in hearing. The surgeries I was having required I stay out of school for a time even after returning home from the hospital. Some of that time was spent at the library while my Mom either did her own browsing (my Mom gets just as much credit as Ms. Seal by showing her own interest in the Library) or ran errands in the immediate area. I remember embarrassing her a bit by speaking too loud for the library when she came to pick me up..given that I could not hear myself talk and my sense of volume gone.

The Library provided a sanctuary for me to escape to during those years of descent. At school during recess, I'd go to the school library instead of the playground. The unavoidable isolation I was experiencing was compensated for by immersing myself in a world that gave me reprieve from the strain of maintaining interaction with the rest of the world, a task that was just so much more difficult than it had been with my hearing.

Sadly, that library closed down and was relocated to a brand new facility. They modernized..I give them credit for doing it in style in a town that has been down on it's luck for two decades.



I could use a little magic in my life right now, so it seems fitting that I would have to return to the library to find it again. I'm long overdue in visiting my local library in a city that has been my home for over 3 and a half years now.

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
High Hopes - Pink Floyd