Bloody Ears: Like Life

I'm in a reflective, existential mood, tonight. But what else is new?

In the shower, I debate whether to rinse out my ears with the plastic bulb. (See my last post.) When I do, some blood flakes out the next morning. If I don't, nothing. Is the rinsing causing the blood? Is not rinsing letting the problem accumulate there? This isn't about ears anymore, is it?

It's harder to view things like this in Las Vegas than in some other, more ruminating place, somewhere where the leaves change, somewhere like the middle of Nebraska.

I have a student who's obsessed with medicine; he wants to be a physician. Today, during recess, he asks me about old epidemics: "What's cholera? Smallpox? How did HIV begin?"

"I don't know," I say. "Someone was probably too curious about science. So curious, he found himself up to his elbows in monkey blood. Dead a few years later."