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concert. If you don’t believe me I can show you the calendar in which I wrote all my appointments that year. I still have it. I keep all my appointment calendars for future reference. Every year I get a new one. The year in which I noted in my little book the appointment for my ears to be checked was 1958.
    So you see.
    Incidentally, that’s the year I met Erica, and we discovered we both loved Mahler’s music.
    But to come back to my ears. That day at that concert, I heard the music more clearly, more precisely, more harmoniously with my left ear. And not as clearly, not as precisely, not as harmoniously with my right ear.
    I know, you’re going to say, it was simply that when I turned my head to the right, the orchestra played a louder part of the music, and a softer part when I turned my head back the other way, and that’s why I was under the impression that my left ear heard music better than my right ear.
    Well, I will tell you that I repeated the experiment several times during the Mahler symphony, and each time I could tell the difference, and it had nothing to do with the music getting louder or softer.
    I would try the experiment when the music was constant for a long moment, several bars. For instance during a long violin solo tremolo .
    And I will also tell you that since then I have experimented this way many times while listening to music, at other concerts, or on a disk at home on my pick-up, or in night-clubs. I am certain that my left ear is more sensitive to music than my right ear. More open to it.
    Now there is another consideration which has come into play. Erica tells me that I hear selectively. For instance, she claims, that when she calls me from the kitchen to come and take out the garbage, I don’t hear. Or seem not to have heard her call. And yet, when she calls me for dinner, I have no trouble at all hearing her, and respond instantly. So she claims.
    That’s really all I wanted to tell you about my ears.
    Of course, more could be said about this curious part of the human body, but one would soon tumble into the banality of the universality of ears among the various species on this planet, human as well as animal, and one could insist that an ear is just as good as another ear, as long as it performs what it is supposed to do, hear. One could lament that the one who created us could have adorned our face with something a bit more aesthetic than ears. Something less visible.
    Though knowing how malicious our creator can be, imagine if he had placed two noses on our face, one on each side.
    I think I’d better stop here.

 
MY EYES

    Today I would like to tell you about my eyes. To try and describe them, and how they see the world.
    The women who love me say that I have beautiful eyes. Deep sexy eyes.
    Perhaps you do not know this, but some eyes are flat, superficial, impenetrable, cold. And others are deep, soft, warm, affable, accueillants .
    I have often been told that I have soft, warm eyes. Women, especially, tell me that. Those who love me, and those who loved me in the past.
    I am not bragging. I am simply reporting how women see my eyes.
    Me, when I look at my eyes in the mirror, I see them differently. I see them small. Small and oval. I have small squinty eyes surrounded by crow’s feet wrinkles.
    I would have liked to have big eyes, but it was not for me to decide. It’s my mother who made them as they are.
    My mother had such beautiful big black eyes. Deeply set black eyes always full of sadness. Ah, how my mother’s eyes wept in her life.
    I do not see sadness in my small eyes when I look at them. Rather, I see mischievousness. A kind of joyful malice. Or if you prefer, I see laughter in my eyes. I think I have laughing eyes.
    My eyes may be small, but they look at the world intensely. When I look at something, let’s say a painting or a landscape, my eyes penetrate what I am looking at.
    And this is how I look at a beautiful woman.