Hiss

 Loud and insistent, there is the sound of a cat calling coming in through the opened window, an insistent repetitive call, a well defined typical cat's call.

Look out of the window down into the alley, there is the cat. Call her name, she looks up, and now she calls more loudly, more insistent, desperately. She must have been locked out all night, a terrifying experience for a house cat. Hurry downstairs, the cat now almost howling in panic, unable to see the familiar head any more. She is probably frightened now, that she will yet again be left alone in the strange outside world. Open the door, and she rushes in, the striped orange tail vertical and bushy in a display of fear and aggression. She rushes the whole length of the corridor, maybe frightened, scared by the thought of  being caught and thrown out again, who knows? What thoughts would a cat have at being denied its loved creature comforts for a whole night?

Call her by name, the tail furls, and she comes to have her head patted, everything is fine again.

Yesterday there was the chance meeting with a collector of African art. A knock on the door to ask permission for the taking of photographs of details of a building opened a door to a collection of African ceremonial masks, not old, just masterful. They are all owned by a retiring man, shy and alone. He lives in his house, in a situation of comparative squalor, with hundreds of masks and sculptures.

Yesterday was a day of curious happenings. Walking down the hill from an antique shop in Landau there is a silence. The hiss in the ears has gone. As it did a week ago, in the same place, a place before a museum and an evening beer garden. Walk away from the place and the tinnitus returns, quietly hissing. Try entering a nearby church, there is hissing. Walk around the church, back to the square, and silence returns. Walk away in another direction, the hissing in the ear is louder again. The effect is too local to be an atmospheric or a pressure change, magnetic or electrical forces simply do not make sense. Two weeks ago, the same thing happened in the same place, a special brand of bio-rated beer in the beer garden was seen as the cause. Last Sunday, a different beer garden and the same bio-rated brand of beer caused mild inebriation, but no change to the hiss in the ear.

This is ridiculous, this is madness and delusion. Magical places that alleviate tinnitus do not exist. Next week, there will be another test, a return to the place in Landau, using the car to go up the hill. Just to make sure that it was not the exertion of climbing the hill that caused the desirable effect.  It is curious, it would be easy to believe had something been taken to cause the effect, something inhaled, something heard. But it is impossible to believe that being in a particular place will stop that hissing sound which is otherwise a constant companion.