Auscultation, the meaning of the title only approximates the meaning of this editorial’s content.  Listening to the sounds of the body – serves as a definition for the title word, but listening FOR the sounds of life better serve this fine piece and might serve as a subtitle.  The editorial is divided into four sections, each numbered as Chamber #, which brings to mind the components of the heart, the ultimate indicator of body life via body sound.  Though the protagonist here is the ear, the heroine is the heart and the vignettes to be described can be ranged from heart-wrenching to endearing.

Chamber 1:  Six miners are buried alive far below.  Without sight or direct communication, electronic ears are erected and seismic sounds are listened for – in vain.  The search for life is ceremonially begun with three small explosions at the surface which serve to communicate to the miners to make noise which will indicate their health to those above.  All listeners heard no sound and the rescue was abandoned with little ceremony except the sealing of the tomb of the silent six.

Chamber 2: You are brought back in time to your first doctor’s exam using a stethoscope.  The feelings of the device on your body.  The gentle instructions issued by the doctor and followed by you.  The silence, except for breath, as your body sang its tune of condition into the black flexible tubes, giving clues to the ear, and a diagnosis to only a skilled doctor.  What your body told the listener and what the listener told you would be the legacy of your visit and the path of your health.

Chamber 3: The stethoscope is a product of centuries of medicine’s quest to extract sounds from deep within the body where prying eyes cannot see.  From rudimentary to refined, the listening device has progressed from a monaural horn, to a bin aural listening device, to an electronic noise translator.  Still less than perfect, doctors train their ears on classical music – learning to discern the individual instruments.  Further, a doctor’s emblem is his stethoscope, and the sight of it serves as his good word.

The author tells of doctor and parents gathered around a fetal heart monitor awaiting the news of life.  The doctor acknowledging the noise as normal.  The author accepting that “It begins” with those first sounds.  He did not feel like a father until the heart noises registered in his ear.  That tap-tap-tap signal of life we cannot see and can in no other way sense.

Chamber 4: Nine miners are buried alive far below.  Without sight or direct communication, the trapped men listen for sounds from the surface – the ceremonial three small explosions at the surface – but don’t hear anything.  The trapped men continue to pound on the roof bolts but they get no response.  At the surface the drill operator finally punches through into the cavity and then quiets the gathered crowd.  He feels or hears the rhythmic sound of the trapped men hammering at the steel.  Life is detected and lives are saved from a place not seen but heard.

Disaster knocks softly on one’s door before breaking it down.  This is how Mischa Berlinski introduces us to the horrific earthquake in Haiti, 2010.  Frightening sounds without source.  The foundations of the elite and the impoverished at once blended in a swirl of nature’s chaos.  Secret gardens exposed to everyone still standing…but only for the moment.  The author spinning, dizzied, seeing horror in rapid flashes as if seated in a slideshow.  Rushing in controlled panic (the author coining the term “reptilian optimism”) to his family at home, the young husband and father found his wife in mixed but joyful tears and his baby well and collected, calm.  As if in Jericho, a modern day Joshua blew his trumpet, and the high walls of P-a-P came tumbling down – all of them.  Though the situation was dire, as survivors gathered near the residence of the prime minister, the closeness emitted the contrary sounds of fragile gaiety in the moody air.  Stoic men vanished from the scene as the colorful emotions of the women dominated the sights and sounds and scenes of loss.

Communication ranged from none to spotty.  A cell phone might be found that connected but it might not have any prepaid minutes remaining.  Between the mundane programming, foreign radio stations reported, over seemingly long intervals, the quake in Haiti, first the occurrence, upgrading the adjective later to massive, and finally, hopefully, to the penultimate adjective: catastrophic.  This assessment being trumped by the declaration of a local priest – “fin des temps“.  Waiting for international response, the masses swayed on this island earth between the jolts of aftershocks.  Sounds lacking for this monumental tragedy included the absence of sirens coming to aid, the hissing of helicopters wishing to rescue.  Sounds tracking the night were those of prayer.  The darkness seemed to covet the mourning until dawn when the sun alerted those still murmuring on their knees that their struggle was to begin again and that each was exhausted.

Ruination dominated the hysterical hearsay, facts probably embedded.  What was left standing?  Curiosity out paced good sense to the hopeful skeptic.  The author ventured out to gather his own evidence at his own peril.  Sensed along his path to knowing, Mischa noticed that the odor of mass decomposition could not compete with that of massive human waste.   Sight awed at the collapse of all man’s structures thus burying the individual demise of many men,women, and children.  However, unavoidably, a mangled corpse struggled and emerged to be viewed.  Eyes wide.  Guts displayed.  Face powdered with the offal of the aforementioned collapses.  The green lawns of luxury hotels held the wounded in lawn chairs.  Foreigners, who had made contact with their country of origin and whose country cared about that individual, might be rescued by helicopter.  Elites reestablishing themselves atop the ruin as soon as conditions permitted.

With Mother Nature chortling in the background at the commencing nonsense, the blame game began to play out.  Aristide, his enemies, the elites…  The much maligned UN was there from the prior man-made disaster with its guns to contain perpetual chaos.  Nature was there to impose her enduring order.   Mr. Berlinski found his way to an impasse, within the impasse sat collapse, under the impasse lay Haiti’s destiny.  Dying but not dead.  Choking but still breathing.  Hopeless but still praying.