TINNITUS

I have tinnitus, a ringing or hissing in the ear. I have the hissing version and the older I get the louder it gets. I used to be aware of it when my head hit the pillow. Now it's with me all the time and everywhere. It's left the confines of my ears and feels as if it filling my head. There's no cure so it ought to be blaring in my old age.
     Silence is a beautiful thing. The first time I went to the desert I was with a friend. We had left the main road and turned up a gravel path heading toward a ranch owned by a friend of my friend. For some reason, she stopped the car and we got out. When the engine died, I was stunned by the silence. It took a few seconds to permeate my body; I tuned into it in the way you have to look at clouds for a bit to see which way they're going. There was nothing else to do but stand still.
     My friend hated it - the silence, the rocks that bordered the road, the dry view we could see up past the road. I was right at home, more than home. I felt I had found the place I was meant to be. I felt comforted by the immutability of the naked hills. The were small enough I felt I could climb them.The breast of god, I thought. And no franticness of leaves. The rocks changed color all through the day as the sun moved across the sky. They were beautiful.
     I'll never hear that silence again. Tinnitus is with me in the middle of nowhere and or my walks, or working at home, anything at all. I ignore it as much as I can; it's better when I can fill my space with other sounds - music, conversation, a video on my Ipad, any way I can distract myself.
     Here's the thing: I'm amazed that I can ignore it as much as I do. Simply by turning my attention to other things, my awareness of the buzzing recedes. Not the buzzing but my awareness of it. I forget about it until I'm alone or thinking about it as I am as I write this.
     It's a metaphor, suffering receding when I put my attention on other things. And it's a good teacher - I've had to develop a certain discipline. Most of all, I have to surrender to it over and over again.