'There is a great art in using hearing aids,' Barbara commented at the beginning of this session. It's true: the things are a miracle of electronic engineering, but they squall and squeak through many of our gatherings like disgruntled babies.
One of the sadnesses of growing old is the isolation that can result - and bad hearing exaggerates this, drops the sufferer into an aquarium of muffled noise and looming faces whose words are lost in swirling tinnitus - another of the sadnesses of growing old is that the voices of older people are often ignored - seen but not heard, and not hearing.
This Friday we felt that we owed it to to the group to do a lighter session - the holocaust-related material is heartbreaking and heavy to carry week on week - so in order to find a lighter subject, we talked about light itself - a cutup of the conversation is to be found on this blog, titled the bedeken.
The subject came from the kabbalic A poem for the Sefirot as a wheel of light by Naftali Bacharach, the result of dipping the magnificent Poems for the Millenium vol 1 edited by Rothenberg and Joris (met Jerry Rothenberg awhile ago at dinner with Tony and Sue Trehy, but of that another time) - was delighted to find a concrete-ish poem form that dates from ways back and another older tradition than that of Dada and Noigandres - and so we talked about light and we made sure that everyone was heard.
Although Pat did have a snooze.
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