It Steepens

They came from very off, through a fog of distance. I closed my eyes to better focus. My mind kept wandering, did not want to listen for the beeps coming through the ear phones of a hearing test. I caught only the dimmest of tones and voices. The sounds that did come were garbled. I couldn't sort them out. Was the prompt "peat bog" or "beef dog?" I couldn't tell. But I kept honing my attention. It just wouldn't settle on the listening. I wanted out, felt like I was going to panic. The rest of the world just kept on doing its business, calm and cool as the plastic wrapped cukes they carried in the Costco shopping carts. The shoppers outside the window looked so at home in the world, so comfortable in the knowledge that they had time, luxurious stretches of love and life and time. I, by contrast, feel an urgency, see each moment in this abundance as a diamond, am watching it all slip away. I no longer care if the book gets published, if I get in shape for El Tour, and am aware that I may never again have someone unbutton my shirt, playfully push me onto a bed. I am a dying man walking, but nobody knows. The audiologist looked surprised. "I didn't think you had it, but you do. You seem so... functional. It's not profound, but is getting there.... " She held back a bit and re-calibrated her delivery of the results. "Let's just look at this as a baseline. If you feel that you're missing too much in your teaching or other areas, you really should come back." She meant get a hearing aid. "Check with your primary doc first to rule out anything else that might be contributing to this." And that was that. I took the print-out of my results, another datum in the long line of evidence that things are progressing a bit quicker than I would like. The delights of this world are receding; the pitch steepens even as it fades.