Seeing vs. Hearing

Am I the only person that has asked himself, "if you had to choose between losing your sense of sight or losing your sense of hearing, which would you choose?"  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Have you?  Which would you choose, if forced to make that choice?

I have asked myself that theoretical question many times in my adult life.  Perhaps I have done it because of my extreme nearsightedness, and yearly needing to get my eyes checked, not to mention wearing glasses since age 5.  Perhaps I have done it because of my love for music and the fact that my ability to hear clearly has deteriorated as I have aged, and I must now wear hearing aids.  But do I value more of what I see than what I hear?

Because music has played such an important role in my life, I have often thought that I could do without seeing.  After all, I have thought, haven't I seen tens or hundreds of thousands of beautiful images and that perhaps I have seen enough?  If someone were to describe a scene to me, couldn't I imagine in my mind's eye what they were describing, and that would be sufficient?  Couldn't I compensate for the inability to see with a heightened sense of hearing?  Couldn't I touch something or someone and get a general idea of what it/they looked like?

But then, couldn't I likewise say that I have heard thousands or tens of thousands of voices, heard ten or hundreds of thousands of sounds and musical pieces?  Couldn't I say that I've heard enough?  Couldn't someone tell me that they were listening to a crow make a cawing sound, or listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or If I Fell by the Beatles, and recreate that sound/those sounds in my head?

Anyone who has followed Red In Transition for any period of time would realize that I am very involved with my senses.  I have posted numerous pictures, both what I have found online as well has from my own photography. I place a picture at the top of every posting, if not multiple pictures in the body. I have posted three different lists of Top 40 Songs, have posted a video about "Only the Black Keys" which is about music, and commented about wanting to become involved once again in the Southern California Mormon Choir after a few years' absence.  Toward the end of 2013, I almost combined both when I posted pictures of the lyrics of a children's song that deals with the wonder of our senses.

I must admit that at this point of my life, I would greatly mourn the loss of either of these senses.  It would be much easier to give up smelling, touching, or tasting, although I love those God-given gifts as well.

But if for any reason I had to make that terrible choice, as of April, 2014, I think I have transitioned and that I would surrender my hearing.  When I consider the years I have left in mortality, there is much more that I want to experience, and frankly, there is more I want to see than what I want to hear.

I am so very grateful that as of today I have both senses, imperfect as they now are.  Who knows what will happen tomorrow, or years from now?  Today, I will listen to speech, animal sounds, and music, and I will see the blue of the sky, the black of Suki's fur, and the face of the woman I love.

Sensing the Past

In my field of psychotherapy, I often work with clients to examine their past in order to give context to their present.  Clearly, many of our behaviors as adults have their genesis in our childhoods.  We seem to place great effort as adults on living in the past, dealing with the past, escaping the past, wanting the past, or attempting to recreate the past.  I do not wish to delve into the dysfunction of my past or any other’s past in this posting, but rather, to look at some of my behaviors in the context of recreating sensory experiences of my past.  By sensory I mean what I have experienced with senses--my taste, my ears, my smell, my eyes and my touch--and how those senses offer me comfort in the present. 

My wife can tell you about some of my “comfort” foods from my childhood: pot roast, meat loaf, coconut cream pie, Jello Fluff (a dessert made on graham cracker crust topped with whipped gelatin), deserts in general, and peas.  I will sometimes order something in a restaurant that sounds similar to what I ate in my childhood with the hope that it will indeed by similar.  It rarely compares.  But give me some homemade pot roast on a Sunday afternoon….  (A confession: my wife’s pot roast while similar is better than my mom’s!)  Yummm.

Musically, we baby boomers love to listen to music from earlier days. For me, my longing for earlier music goes not only to rock music, what I would listen to on the AM radio, but to the music played in my home either before or concurrent with the likes of the Beatles and the Beach Boys.  For example, I have purchased the music or possess recordings in some form of old singing groups like The Mills Brothers and The Ink Spots.  It is likewise comforting to listen Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and to the western sound of Jimmy Dean.  I would also put in this aural category the monologues of comedian Bill Cosby  that I listened to growing up and which have likewise become favorites of my children.  When I listen to him now, it feels like I’m getting reacquainted with an old friend.  And just this week I purchased a CD recording of an obscure flautist, Thijs Van Leer, whose music I had on cassette in the 80s but which had gotten lost.  Ahhhh yeah.

               

As Ann and I gradually make interior and exterior improvements in our Tujunga home, I have expressed a desire to place some jasmine bushes in the back yard underneath our bedroom windows so that the comforting, strong smell of that flower can help me relax at the end of the day.   Whenever I smell cedar these days, I go right back to my room in my childhood days when I was surrounded by a cedar chest, a cedar armoire, and a cedar drawer configuration that had a 50s era round mirror on top.  When Ann cooks that Sunday pot roast and that wonderful odor fills the house, I feel a pleasant contentment that in that moment, all is right with the world.  Sniffffff.

More than once I have tortured my kids by dragging them in my car to see the empty lot in Salt Lake City where the house was to which I came home from the hospital after my traumatic birth, the house that I grew up in and the alley behind that house where I used to play, the streets and homes of my old neighborhood, the church building where I attended Sunday services, and my alma mater, West High School.  (Both my elementary and junior high schools no longer exist)

More than once I have tortured my kids by dragging them in my car to see the empty lot in Salt Lake City where the house was to which I came home from the hospital after my traumatic birth, the house that I grew up in and the alley behind that house where I used to play, the streets and homes of my old neighborhood, the church building where I attended Sunday services, and my alma mater, West High School.  (Both my elementary and junior high schools no longer exist) I have taken them by the Salt Lake Tabernacle where my high school graduation took place, by Ensign Peak where I used to hike and have fun adventures, and to the family cabin in Emigration Canyon where I played and had adventures, and where the kids had the “privilege” of living for a few winter months while a home was being built.  Some of these sites have often been the visual location of dreams, perhaps a deep longing in my heart for gentler, simpler times.  Yesssss.

Not much exists in 2011 from my childhood that I can touch.  Mom has long since passed away.  Friends have scattered to the four winds. The furniture is gone as is the clothing.  Vehicles have probably been recycled or are in some landfill.  All that is left to touch from those simpler days—is me.  And while the body is bigger and getting a little wrinkled now, my Bobby spirit, my inner child, still inhabits it, and occasionally adult Bob likes to feel in his senses what young Bobby used to feel so many years ago.  A transition to the past?