If we had keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
I recently have been sick with the flu, and during the course of being sick, I had a ruptured eardrum. At first, I was completely deaf in that one ear, except that I could always hear my own heart beating. After a few days, I had some minor restoration of hearing, but what I could hear was incredibly intense: the sound of the mattress creaking with my every breath when I lay on it (a sound I never would normally hear); an intense rustling and scratching sound every time I moved my head on the pillowcase; the sound of a hugely magnified waterfall with all kinds of harmonics when I ran water in a sink; a loud roaring and rushing when the heater turned on. The intensity and magnitude of the sound was incredibly disturbing. Fortunately, my ear is healing more, and with the healing is a return to a more normal ability to hear. But I can so understand this statement of George Eliot's because of my recent experience!
I recently have been sick with the flu, and during the course of being sick, I had a ruptured eardrum. At first, I was completely deaf in that one ear, except that I could always hear my own heart beating. After a few days, I had some minor restoration of hearing, but what I could hear was incredibly intense: the sound of the mattress creaking with my every breath when I lay on it (a sound I never would normally hear); an intense rustling and scratching sound every time I moved my head on the pillowcase; the sound of a hugely magnified waterfall with all kinds of harmonics when I ran water in a sink; a loud roaring and rushing when the heater turned on. The intensity and magnitude of the sound was incredibly disturbing. Fortunately, my ear is healing more, and with the healing is a return to a more normal ability to hear. But I can so understand this statement of George Eliot's because of my recent experience!
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