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This entry is a follow-up to “Listening with the Third Ear.” The aquifer has filled and I have more to say. Threads and associations have come to mind about what to write. Family disturbances, a trip to Chicago and back, feeling ennui of not an inconsiderable weight; feeling no need to write although feeling I should write my weekly self-disclosing essay has come together to impede my creativity.  I am teaching a course in written expression which has occupied my mind as I plan each weekly class. As I write now I am feeling sluggish in a writing sense. All…

Psychoanalyst Theodore Reik, a disciple of Freud, titled his book in this way. What he was teaching the reader or student was that listening, Freud called it, “hovering attention,” was critical in any relationship with a client; if dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, dramatic listening to the highest degree gave access  to both conscious and unconscious dynamics. No one listens in the way therapists are trained to listen in their offices. Listening is different, and much interrupted, in daily life. However, the person who can listen with the third ear can deepen his relationships with those around…

No, not the “faithful valet” of the Green Hornet, a radio series in the mid-thirties, before my time. The humorous  reminiscence of this is that after December 7, 1941, Kato, who was previously of Japanese lineage now became the Hornet’s “faithful valet,” and later on morphed into being Korean. Kato is a Japanese model train set, in this case n scale, a size smaller than HO. Lionel and the German Marklin are standard bearers of model trains. I have had a romance with trains since I was a young child. I “owned,” or thought I owned my Lionel train set in…

I don’t have much to work with. There is a torn photograph and a business card, both over a hundred years old. The card has faded and is foxed much like an old book or print. In the photograph my great grandfather is wearing his cantorial hat and has strong eyes, quite possibly hazel. He was a hazan, Hebrew for cantor. The card is written in Hungarian such as Boldog Ujevet Kivan (in boldface), fokantor beneath his name, Hebrew letters at the bottom left and what I believe is the town of Monor, which is in Hungary, at bottom right. (Anyone…