Ghosts In The Old Man's Bed

Unless you have it, you might not know what tinnitus is. It's pronounced either "TIN-it-tus" or "tin-EYE-tus," but the second pronunciation would lead you to believe that it's an infection or inflammation such as appendicitis or arthritis, and it is neither. The word comes from Latin, meaning "ringing," although people who have this condition often report rustling, buzzing, hissing, clicking, and other kinds of sounds. Almost like ghosts. Tinnitus can be caused by several different things so there isn't a single clear-cut cure. 


Just as there is no known cure for history. It is an underlying condition that accompanies us wherever we go. It clings to us in the silence of moments when we allow ourselves to listen. 


Go outside and sit down and shut up. Listen beyond the obvious sounds. You hear the echoes of history. Who occupied the very spot where you now sit? What happened there? And a hundred years before that? And a thousand years before that? And do the animals' lives and the plants' lives count for anything? All the stories, all the drama, lost to time ... is there no micro-echo that we can detect?


Where I'm sitting at this moment as I write, a tiny add-on porch-room lined with windows and fitted with a washer/dryer hookup, this room was an old man's bedroom. I don't know why he didn't live in the main part of the house, but he didn't. He had a cot in here. He got up early every day, dressing up in his shabby suit, and went for coffee at a little restaurant that no longer exists, torn down to be replaced by a chain drug store. Do I feel him here? I honestly must say no, but I like this room. I decorated it in green, yellow, and white; it is home to a couple of hermit crabs in a glass tank, a small fish aquarium, and lots of houseplants. I like to write in here while the laundry chugs and pulses and sloshes away. I don't feel any presence of the old man, but I feel comfort. I see the same morning sun rays and evening moon glow he must have looked upon. 


Seventy-five years before, this old bungalow was on a different lot, I'm told. The lot owner actually had the whole house moved forward! While digging a small garden in the back a few years ago, I kept finding chunks of hard black stuff honeycombed with tiny holes, like volcanic scoria. My neighbor told me that it was left over from the days when coal was the way people heated their homes, including my little house. 


In the early 1800s, not far from here, an African-American settlement came together when a local landowner died and his slaves were set free. Parts of their cemetery still remain. 


A few hundred years earlier, this was a green woodland, watered by the nearby river, an old gathering place for Shawnee Indians. The rich soil and plentiful rainfall supported a bounty of animal and plant life. 


Nowadays, though, the Shawnee people are mostly gone. The animals -- raccoons, possums, deer, crows, and coyotes, to name a few -- and the plants -- purslane, wild strawberries, pokeweed, wild onion, and osage orange, to name a few -- are regarded as pests. 


But as you sit quietly, can you not hear the rustling sounds of the past on the breeze, the tinnitus of history?