I bought four jin of plums this month, and not one had the soft, sour-sweet, juicy taste I remembered. They were all astringent. I worked my way through them with difficulty, and by the time they were gone, summer had started to cool. Time moves fast. Whether my life is actually changing in some qualitative way, I still can't say. What I know is that I'm still keeping a record, and I believe I'll repair myself bit by bit.
The implant switched on
September's big event was the switch-on after cochlear implant surgery. It was still brutally hot; by the time I got to the company office I was drenched, and I spent money on a sweat cover and sweat patches for the processor ðŸ˜. At headquarters, a lot of people were waiting for mappings. I waited a long time and could already see my future... At first all sounds were clanging and full of noise, like being rubbed hard against every kind of noise. The audiologist's voice sounded like a flat mechanical tone with no inflection, slightly delayed, with a continuous zizzing current underneath. It was far from what I had imagined. She said it was normal—the brain can't immediately accept external signal stimulation—and only then did it become real to me that I actually have two electrode arrays implanted in my head. The mapping was like hearing-aid fitting: she adjusted up or down according to my feedback. Because I felt very uncomfortable, she turned on a noise-reduction program and sent me home to adapt for a month. The body really can adapt to almost anything...
I chose the Cochlear Nucleus 7 split processor. The magnet is lighter than the one-piece model, and maintenance is more delicate, but it can take two battery options: a rechargeable compartment and a compartment for cochlear button batteries. Being able to switch between home and going out matters to me. Outside, the behind-the-ear unit still needs a clip to stay on, because the bone in the upper part of my ear is still soft and numb and has no supporting strength. When I put it on in the morning and tilt my head, the split processor falls off. Touching my ear feels like touching plasticine. Complaining!!! The cochlear implant covers with clips on the market are ridiculously expensive, so I plan to DIY one when I have time. I'll save the whole topic of derivative spending on cochlear implants for another post.
For the next few weeks I wore the implant and soaked myself in a sound-filled environment, listening to all kinds of sounds. If the brain fully understands what a sound is, then through the implant it stops being an unidentifiable electric noise and becomes a formed sound. Low-frequency sounds are easier than high-frequency ones: keyboard, mouse clicks, the shhh of writing, breathing, friction, chewing, and so on. But subway station announcements, street traffic, public loudspeakers, and very loud speech are hard to catch. Most people's imagination about cochlear implants is still limited and unrealistic. A lot of online claims—switch on and understand instantly, better than hearing aids—are extreme cases. Real switch-on rehab varies from person to person and needs a long adaptation period. Even though I am post-lingually deaf and grew up in an oral environment, I didn't understand instantly at switch-on. I am rebuilding my auditory system from zero. Listening training takes up too much time and energy; generally, listening to an audiobook for 4–6 hours a day is exhausting. Overall I feel drained. (I have so many things to complain about—oh god, I still haven't finished a single blog post specifically about the cochlear implant...) I thought I would spend the first adaptation period being tortured by auditory hallucinations, but in the second week I could already hear a lot of emotional ups and downs in speech. Sounds are slowly matching the sound memories in my head, and they aren't so delayed. As of today, one month in, sounds at home have much less noise. During the day, family speech still sounds like it's coming through several layers of gauze, but it's more bearable than before. At night listening works best; when I read aloud to myself I can feel the vibration of my vocal cords and the breath. With hearing aids I could hardly hear such details. Keep going...!
I also got the leave of absence approved. Otherwise I couldn't imagine going straight into the new semester and opening my thesis proposal in this state—it would have been more painful than last academic year. Just after the paperwork settled, I started looking at travel plans because I need an imported vaccine against meningitis. Complaint again...! In other countries, meningitis vaccination is mandatory for cochlear implant recipients. In China nobody cares whether you live or die; there is only a domestic vaccine that protects for five years. Before surgery, the salesperson didn't even mention the vaccine. The hospital only handles the implantation. I learned from a cochlear implant chat group after surgery that I needed it. I don't want to rely on luck, so I decided to get the lifetime imported vaccine in Macau or Hong Kong later. I quickly made a detailed Macau/Hong Kong travel plan! 😠But my period has been irregular and hasn't come for two months after surgery, so I still can't fix the vaccination date. It's stressing me out. I'll check again after National Day...
The whole of September—from switch-on to leave of absence to vaccine appointments—made me feel that half my anxiety is forced on me by the outside world. I wanted to selectively isolate some sources of anxiety, but there are always new chores. For example, the October cochlear implant mapping requires grabbing a number in advance on a WeChat official account. Every week I refresh, and the next week is full. I'm running out of ideas...
Going out into noise
On day 13 after switch-on, I thought I couldn't stay home forever, so I went out to an art exhibition. I took the subway and experienced a crowded public place. Outside, sound was still brutal. The initial noise-reduction program made it hard to hear the traffic on the road, but the subway noise and station announcements were completely mixed together. Voices outdoors are harder to distinguish. After listening for a long time, I came back with my head buzzing and humming.
The first exhibition was the annual Unfold Art Book Fair. Many booths were beautiful and full of interesting ideas; there were so many interesting independent creators, and I envied them. There were also many foreigners, but I didn't catch a single sentence. One guy was talking nonstop to my family about his travel experiences, and the whole time I was awkwardly smiling and pretending to understand... The saddest part was that the fair was in a nearly bankrupt, run-down mall with weak air conditioning. Inside, the lighting wasn't good either; when you walked close, your shadow fell on the tables and blocked the view. It really showed how a place regards creative communities. How should I put it—an exhibition carrying so many self-made publications, it's already good that nobody reported it... Still, while walking around I was moved by many people's ideas and efforts. They seemed like people who are truly living vividly. I want to stop working in the future and become an independent creator too; how many years are left to turn the images in my head into reality...
A week later I went to a sparsely attended art exhibition, The Unbound: Lausanne Art Brut Collection and Other Perspectives. The content was work by marginal artists, called Art Brut artists. The concept l'art brut was first proposed in 1945 by French artist Jean Dubuffet, meaning works made by people unaffected by artistic culture. These reclusive Art Brut artists are often psychiatric patients, disabled people, or people confined in mental hospitals, families, or prisons and unable to move freely. Their works often contain an anti-collective, original perspective. Walking through the gallery, what impressed me most was not the paintings but the filmed photographic works with a personal perspective, and the installation made of cloth and thread by deaf artist Judith Scott. But during the exhibition I began to wonder—especially after I later saw the report Art Brut: auction prices going crazy—where does the money from Art Brut auctions go? Do the creators themselves receive corresponding payment, and is it actually used to improve their situation, or the situation of people like them who are marginalized? Auction proceeds should ultimately go to museum collections, institutional construction, exhibition promotion, etc., but the paradox is precisely that Art Brut is defined as pure, non-utilitarian art, made not for fame or profit. That definition makes creators lack a voice in culture and the market; they have to rely on the market for legitimacy and status. In the end institutions and the market benefit, while the artists themselves have no stable income—sometimes the income is even in the hands of guardians. We say their creation makes them visible, but most people just compete to look at and own a relatively special work, feel moved about themselves, and don't care about the actual situation of the person behind the work. Isn't that another way of consuming marginalized people? I still haven't figured this out...
Before National Day I also checked in at the Ace Attorney themed restaurant. There were few people, so there was hardly a queue. It exceeded some of my stereotypes about collaboration restaurants. I thought the food would be expensive and bad, but actually the mushroom cream pasta and the Not Guilty special set (pad kra pao rice) were pre-made yet pretty good! Desserts were average. The Unnecessary Feelings dessert was all looks; when you cracked it open it was an ordinary chocolate ball, and I felt cheated...
Bookshelf update
I got a summer Shisa baby ornament and did a big bookshelf refresh. This month I read Delicious in Dungeon. The manga is so good I read it twice and bought a physical set. It unexpectedly matches the cat ornaments on the shelf. In the end I felt a row of manga is best. I'm used to e-readers and am considering selling off my other simplified-Chinese physical books...
Back to exercise and rehab
After surgery my period never came, which made me panic, so I started low-intensity exercise to gain a bit of muscle strength. Every day after meals I walk on the treadmill, occasionally do low-intensity workouts with dumbbells. In this situation the cochlear implant doesn't fall off, and I haven't had head buzzing. But every workout leaves me drenched, and the external unit needs to be dried promptly. The cochlear-implant-specific electronic dryer cost me six hundred yuan 😅—painful...
Reading, watching, playing
Most of my September reading was audiobooks; these I listened to from start to finish.
How to Suppress Women's Writing — A fast way to learn to spot the tricks men use to manipulate gender narratives. There are endless classic examples of gender discrimination being disguised, and it's worth reading. The author points out that a dominant group built around white male centrism speaks for the normal person and uses gender-granted privilege to maintain superiority. But the authority of the so-called normal person actually depends on society and cultural discourse constantly belittling and pushing out the other. The author responds one by one to the belittling of women's work in literary history and pulls away the fig leaf. At first glance it feels like men's brains automatically degenerate whenever they touch gender issues...
The Real Place: Conversations with Michelle Porte — I've always liked Annie Ernaux's honesty. She keeps looking back at reality and extracting material from it to expose details many people overlook. Two points stand out: Writing is to leave a way of looking, a way of looking at the world. And: When the unspeakable becomes words, it becomes political. I never think literary creation can be separated from politics. Politics is the sum of people's relationships with social life; individual breathing, speech, and memory cannot avoid it. Only in writing specific history and life memories can the deep influence of politics and the times be fully shown. What attracts me is not only the narrative perspective in these writers' work, but that they all try to intervene in the world through words. They don't think of themselves as unique special beings; they are beyond the individual, connective, dialogic, giving strength to people with similar experiences or situations.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — Olga Tokarczuk's writing is very poetic; later in the book you get a new experience. The anti-anthropocentric subject is combined with religious irony and a murder case, like watching a magical film on a border. The old woman's first-person perspective is really interesting, and the murder description points out an obvious fact: in our lives, using animals and abusing animals has long been taken for granted. But animals are not resources for humans to kill at will; they are important beings closely related to human survival and ways of life. The killed animals can also be a metaphor: they can be prey, or any humans no longer in the mainstream group. Humans will wear away their reverence for nature and life in a culture of killing and violence. On top of this normalized violent culture, where will humanity's overall fate go? As the book says to itself: The strange beings we make in complex ways are also easily shattered. I think everything is unusual, very bad, and threatening. I see only disaster. But if the beginning was already a fall, can one fall any deeper?
Animals Out-There W-i-l-d — Every poem in this collection is printed in two forms: English and a written form of American Sign Language (ASL). After reading it, I realized that without knowing ASL the reading experience suffers a lot. ASL's word order, grammar, and vocabulary come from a completely different way of thinking. The poems feel more suited to stage/video performance than to text. But the poet is truly a master of both languages. I feel that deaf communities abroad do very well in sign-language creative expression and influence, and they have a high level of political awareness and cultural self-awareness. In contrast, at home a bunch of people are still arguing about whether sign language is a backward language. There is still a long way to go...
The Fool's Night — I really like this apocalyptic subject that combines plants with horror aesthetics. Citizens even have to pay an oxygen tax to breathe—so hellish. The dialogue is also good. The tone and setting of the whole work are very desperate, and the desperation pays tribute to reality, enough to make you empathize until you suffocate. At present I can't see any way to break the situation. I pray it doesn't fall apart at the end!!
The cover design is beautiful! This alienated expression of plant head-swapping! These lines! What's amazing is that the male protagonist's early depiction of listening to plant sounds and auditory fatigue feels very much like my current state of listening fatigue...
Delicious in Dungeon — The anime really isn't as good as the manga. The manga's settings around the dungeon, races, demons and desire, eating and life are all excellent. It sticks to the theme from beginning to end, with humor and imagination together. The main party has no sexual or romantic relationships, which makes the whole reading experience very comfortable. Behind insatiable desire, people keep expanding the boundaries of existence through imagination; isn't Ryoko Kui's construction of the manga exactly like that... The later art style has a Western European printmaking flavor, and after reading it I felt an urge to cram on European myths and folklore... So good. I'd recommend everyone read Delicious in Dungeon. I feel Ryoko Kui is someone who really knows how to live and has interesting taste; she really loves her characters! The physical book The Adventurer's Bible has a clever design on the inside of the dust jacket!
Someone framed it and it looks really beautiful!
The Dictator's Handbook — It overturned a lot of my previous understanding of how democracy works. The book encourages readers to re-examine politics entirely from the leader's perspective, compares and analyzes political operating models in different systems, and explains why many people are assimilated by power as soon as they take office. Seen this way, as long as humans are still attached to the game of power rule, ordinary working animals won't be freed from paying taxes and living in fear...
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End — I only watched Frieren now, but I don't find it as stunning as the internet says. To me the anime feels like everyone in the story is a calm person who has been through big storms; they are intelligent and composed as usual, calmly standing and finishing their lines, calmly starting to fight, calmly accepting everything irreversible... The magic setting is okay, but the later mage exam feels like a return to the old shonen manga formula. I don't know how the author will create a non-mediocre story from these early foundations.
Mononoke the Movie: Chapter 2—The Fire Rat — If you watch without using your brain, you can enjoy Xiao Kun's beauty. I really like Lady Botan's section, but the visuals are too gorgeous, and the story is still an old, childish palace intrigue. The movie doesn't have the core of the TV series. Next episode finally won't keep Xiao Kun outside the Ooku—congratulations (Xiao Kun is a cat demon incarnation, so don't be too obsessed with gender...).
Tengoku Daimakyo / Heavenly Delusion — Also a post-apocalyptic road story where monsters run rampant and humans are defeated. The anime uses dual narrative (it has a bit of a The Promised Neverland feel). The main couple is quite pure love; I like watching them interact. But because the author is a straight man, his transgender setting doesn't hold up at all—it's pure shit. Whether it's the handling of the female lead's body or any gender-inversion scenes, it can't escape the male heterosexual framework. Maybe men can't write stories without their dicks. If this is called LGBT material, my reaction is: don't come near LGBT.
The Young Pope — If you're interested in Vatican sets, you can watch it; the cinematography is impeccable. The dialogue is quite good, but I didn't feel much about the religious part. I think what attracts people to conversion is never religion itself, but the words and narratives that package religious thought. While watching, I became interested in the life of Sister Juana from Latin America, but the Pope's story and the power struggle inside the Vatican are actually quite mediocre.
Servant of the People S1–S3 — I didn't expect before watching that Zelensky himself acted in it. What amazed me was that the screenwriter (reportedly his wife) really has a gift for jokes; the various jokes and political satire are excellent, and the sets are exquisite—you can see a lot of Ukrainian scenery, especially Kyiv's architecture and cityscape, plus all kinds of family dramas and laughable mishaps. The charm of comedy is that it makes you feel living people; this is a country not yet destroyed by war. Whenever I think of reality, the theme-song images feel a bit sad. Season 1 has no so-called lofty narrative and dissolves bureaucracy and formalism, but in seasons 2 and 3 the plot falls off a cliff. I can't know whether the show was really for Zelensky's election campaign; I heard it was invested in by an oligarch who also appeared in the show, which creates a strong irony with reality.
ghostpia — After switch-on I happily played a game a friend gave me. In the first endless noise, the first thing that rushed into my ears was this game's music. A very beautiful experience!!! A boutique visual novel game like a picture book, with short little animations in between; the art and writing are so delicate. Friendship between girls is really warm. The town setting is also interesting: from missiles engraved with names and patchwork armored vehicles to ghosts regenerating from a garbage dump, it's full of apocalyptic absurdity. Experiencing this story is like tasting hot cocoa with the protagonist in winter (mixed with many sudden violent scenes, but the ghost setting just happens to make them reasonable?). I like the cool little leaf killer. The story is to be continued, and I'm looking forward to season 2.
Summer is good—such a big sunfish was caught!
For next month...
- I want to produce some fanwork beautifully
- Successfully grab a number for the second mapping
- Go out more and get used to outdoor sounds, unlock more sounds
- Japanese rehab!
- Make a satisfactory sourdough loaf
- Finish the half-used roll of film in the camera (maybe)