SILENT BOOMER BEATS HIS WAY THROUGH A NERVE JUNGLE

dendrites

I have tinnitus. Recently Conductor Spritz von Tinnitus added a second movement to the symphony in my right ear, a crescendo. The first night it happened was months ago, and I couldn't sleep that night. I imagined the rest of my life, sleepless, but, already, I've become conditioned to ignore it. Thankfully (or not), the human brain can be conditioned to accept anything.

"Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) is on TCM right at this minute. Back in 1992, I had reached a stage in my psychological development during which time I decided that women who liked that cream puff movie represented everything that was wrong with American women. They were featherweights who would never be satisfied with a real man who had warts on his brain. Then I met my wife who likes the movie, and I found out, yet once again, how wrong headed I can be. She enjoys the warts on my brain. She expresses this love when she asks me, "How did you ever get to be so weird" and laughs delightedly and delightfully. A long time ago another wife asked me, "How did you learn all these positions?" Also laughing. As I climbed down from the monkey bars I told her, "In kindergarten."

What does this have to do with writing you ask? Nothing. I'm marking time, waiting for the next plot development in my Manning novel to appear out of the sleepless deeps of my brain and slip between my brain warts into my fingertips.