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The Eloquence Within

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I might spend the rest of my life trying to articulate something. . . and this is what I suppose most writers do--something happens and we spend the rest of our lives trying to put words to it. Emerson, Eliot, Jung all had mystical experiences in early adulthood (James Joyce in adolescence) and spent the rest of their lives trying to put words to it, and in some cases waiting for it to happen again. I think about my mystical experiences and I am delightfully amazed, even though at the time I was rather frightened. But no mystical experience has been quite so transformative as losing my hearing. It is one thing to see "letters" in the clouds then find them in poem I wrote days before then learn they have a meaning in Hebrew and Arabic, and then there is getting a diagnosis of hearing loss and living it through to its conclusion in deafness. There is an immediacy to the mystical experience. The "refragrancing" as it is called in Buddhism takes moments or months, but t