Inventory #01
“This is my notebook,
This is my canvas”
G. Eich
Have you ever had fear of writing something down while at the same time feeling the urgent need to do so? I have had that for the last couple of days. Writing and making music is an essential way of dealing with things for me. Now I feel like if I write about my mother’s sudden death I manifest it. As if by writing it down I make it come true. Like cutting a rope that she might still cling to and if I wrote down what has happened it will be like letting her fall. I so want to hold her tight again when I think of her little body in that coffin in the cold earth. Writing it all down could be like lifting the needle from a record that got stuck and has played a loop saying “Can I please wake up now? Come on, it’s not funny anymore” again and again since it has happened.
* _ *
“It’s early still
The sun is cold
The world is over
The world is over
I hold you
I hold the sound
It’s early still
The moon is cold
We walk now
We walk alone
I hold you
I hold the sound”
The Thermals
Part of my hearing has been blocked since it happened, and it’s not really gotten better although tomorrow it will already be a week since I have found her. I’m not sure if it’s due to a cold as all the other symptoms are gone, and I’m a bit scared that it could be another ‘sudden deafness’ thing (I’ve already had one when I was a child and it already has got me damaged hearing) or some psychosomatic shit. These last days it has come with some sort of tinnitus I really can’t complain about: I get the whole scale from high frequency peeping to hissing noises and pressure changes. I feel as if my head was wrapped in cotton wool. It swallows almost all the street noises. It feels a bit like when you walk through the streets after it has snowed heavily for the first time of the year and you are surprised how quiet it gets when everything is covered in snow. A dreamy feeling. It also makes you feel like watching things from a distance. No, not really … not from a distance … rather: It makes you concentrate more on watching when normally you perceive more of the things around you by hearing. It’s a bit like going from 3D to 2D. The world gets smaller if you don’t hear what’s going on behind your back or to your far right and left. It’s as if you looked at the world from under a heavy hood or a blanket. The good thing is that it also feels like you are hidden, invisible.
What I hate about it: You somehow want to be part of everyday life again but you get a bit scared if you get in the focus of the action as you feel handicapped, no, as you are handicapped. You get just half of the information but want to act or react as quickly as someone who hears everything. You get good in filling in the blankets but still that double effort can be a bit stressful at times. I really hope it gets better over the weekend. If not, then on Monday I’ll be off to my first visit to a doctor in five or eight years.
Christ, listen to that. As if the hearing loss was the problem. The grief is killing me. That pain in my chest. The knot in my stomach, the moments in which I can hardly breathe. I still can’t imagine going back to normal again. I feel utterly incapable. You’ve stopped the world and I melt with you. It’s too soon for the world to start turning again. I can only take normality in little limited doses. I can still hear the sound of her breath, rattling and moaning while I held her tight and told her everything was gonna be alright again and it aches to my bones that I couldn’t help her after all that she has done for me.