creative ramblings & reverie

Friday, September 6, 2019

Hearing Loss



The gorgeous new issue of Catamaran has launched, and I am pleased to have a story in it—all about fear, the crippling fear of loss, and the power of music (and true love) to counter that.

In these excerpts, Marta despairs for her aging architect husband, and for herself, for what they have between them:

          "As Paul heard less and less, Marta was more and more consumed by dread, seeing no remedy at all.  Afraid of losing all the things they shared.  Afraid he couldn't love her anymore, with her essence taken away. Her words, her laugh, her always singing 'Day-O' in the shower.  The love of music that was in her bones like DNA." 
. . .

          "She grieved for him, knowing he would no longer hear songbirds, the oven timer, the thwok of tennis balls hitting the red clay court, the millions of butterfly wings like soft rain.  Couldn't hear her come home, or leave, or sit cross-legged on the big bed with its kantha quilt, playing the ukulele badly.  
            She felt that made her cease to be, like the famous old adage about a tree falling in a forest.  She'd vanished or soon would into the yawning chasm that had opened suddenly between them where there had been only pillowcase, sheet, talk of stone, water, ginkgo, old oak.  Inhabited spaces of words, of architects' materials."



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