Foreign Body Ear

Collage by Ansellia Kulikku. Source image: "Local and regional anesthesia : with chapters on spinal, epidural, paravertebral, and parasacral analgesia, and on other applications of local and regional anesthesia to the surgery of the eye, ear, nose and throat, and to dental practices." Digitized by Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.

“VERY SLOWLY, we MOVE very close to the ear, gliding slowly around the crevices approaching the dark hole. A huge, low rushing of air SOUND, THEN DARKNESS.” —Blue Velvet, David Lynch

1.

There is a foreign body in my ear.

The doctor wrote it in his diagnosis, like this, in capital letters:

FOREIGN BODY EAR

He prescribed antibiotic cream and told me to lay on my side with hot compresses.

Soften it up. We will coax the foreign body out.

2.

The guide tells us that Jerusalem is a microcosm. That whatever happens in Jerusalem is a crystallization of whatever is happening in the whole country. In the whole world, in fact. Global shifts, Trump’s election. All immediately reflected here.

Eight of us, plus the guide, in a van heading down Derech Hebron Road. It’s a tour of Jerusalem called Meuchleket.

Uni-divided.

A play on words that contains within it the absurdity of life in this city, a badly stitched-up Frankenstein, bursting at the seams.

It feels strange to take a tour