On Ear Wax
Posted on September 16, 2006
Filed Under Aphorisms |
It is burnt amber in color, with the consistency of moist hashish. There are occasional yellow streaks, the color of mucous or a snail’s viscera spread out on the street. I saw mine because days and days of swimming over the summer loosened it up enough to slide down my ear canal and trap water inside. I tried hopping up and down on one foot, with my head tilted first this way and then that, in an effort to dislodge it. But it didn’t work.
Then I had the bright idea of scooping it out with a Q-Tip. It’s true what your mother used to say, you know: Never stick pointy objects in your ears. Instead of excavating my ear wax, I simply jammed it further down the canal. The result: I could hear practically nothing in both ears. Sounds seemed as if they were wrapped in a dozen old sweaters and stuffed somewhere in a dusty closet. I heard everything as if it was coming from the bottom of a well. It was very strange, and very soon started to drive me crazy.
The strangest thing of all was how my diminished hearing affected my behaviour. I stopped talking because it was so aggravating not to be able to clearly hear what other people were saying. And after I stopped talking, I stopped looking at people’s faces. Try it sometime. Go about your normal business but say nothing. You’ll be amazed at how infrequently you look at other people’s faces. Normally, we only look at someone during conversation. To gaze at someone in silence is considered intrusive, odd or unnerving. So much of our visual contact with other people happens only when we’re talking. Silence may be golden at times, but it is also often blind.
Conversely, I heard the sounds inside my own body with amazing acuity. My breathing, for example; it sounded like I was auditioning for the part of Darth Vader. When I cracked my knuckles, it was if someone snapped a twig inside my ribcage. And eating muesli—what a revelation! Chewing that stuff sounded just like a troop of big-booted soldiers tramping through a crust of brittle snow. And the white noise of consciousness—that faint humming or buzzing our minds make, like the sound of some electrical appliance that you only hear when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep—I heard that very clearly, amplified, all the time.
I was easily startled; I couldn’t hear someone coming up behind me. I attended a piano concert by a child prodigy from Georgia; it sounded like she was playing a tinny circus piano, albeit impeccably. My posture was completely altered. I leaned forward all the time, inclined my head to the source of any sound, straining to hear what was going on. It was driving me nuts.
I lived like this for 24 hours, until I could get to the local pharmacy and buy one of those rubber devices that squirts a jet of water when you squeeze it. This I filled with lukewarm water and inserted into my ear—I had seen my doctor do it years before. I squeezed as hard as I could, and all my ear wax streamed out into the sink. It was burnt amber in color, with occasional yellow streaks. The first moment of restored hearing was like coming up for air after being a long time underwater. Noises rushed in chaotically. It sounded like going down the big curve on a roller coaster. Everything was lumped into an indistinct roar, until I was slowly able to sift out individual sounds and voices again. What a joy. What a relief. I started looking at people’s faces.
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If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity