“James, could you go to a concert without it hurting your ears? I did not realize you had tinitus. Does it sound like it does when you fire a rifle and your ear rings? I’m glad I got mine evaluated. The noise was like to drive me crazy in the beginning, but I got used to it. The doctor has this hearing aid that is supposed to help for $7000! I told him he can keep it.”

-Bob, while driving from Heber to Kamas, Utah

…

I do not know what tinitus is, do not know if this is how you spell it.

I never recall having my ears examined as an adult.

First, the sound, or is it, in either or both ears or none, is... in my head, in all of it, or perhaps both ears like a layer of sounds.

There is the background, a hazy, fuzzy sound similar to what the interior of a sea shell used to sound like when I raised it to my ears as a boy. This background noise ebbs and flows but is always there. On some occasions it increases until it drowns out the foreground sound and becomes like a rushing waterfall in my head. This has happened mostly when I pass out and come to due to things I do not understand and have been diagnosed as seizures:

-passing out twice in church and once in school class as a boy

-passing out from running ten miles in work boots after working all day in 1981

-passing out after setting my broken finger while half asleep in April 2007

-waking from the episode when my nose was shattered into 7 pieces over 4 hours of “sleep seizures” on December 13 2011.

This background sound has been constant in my head since March 2019 when I had a bout of bad eye seizures and lung infections in Portland Oregon. This was a very poor health and very high writing productivity time, during which I met Jack Donovan and wrote: American Dream Boat, Under an Iron Crown, Book of Nightmares and Confessor.

On those few occasions when this sound disappears, it is always in the morning, when I wake, and I soon have bronchitis as the sound slowly builds again.

The foreground sound, I first heard in my left ear only, after I fired a college basketball player in late 2009, who then slapped me in the left ear as I turned to walk away. This sound is like the power outage alarm in commercial buildings.

Neither sound has ever bothered me, distracted me, or threatened my sanity. I do recognize that these sounds probably mean that something is wrong either with my ears or my brain. I do not seem to have a hearing problem. I do not recall ever firing a high powered rifle, just shotguns, hand guns and carbines. My left ear hurts on occasion where I was slapped and I do not seem to hear as well out of that ear. But this has never been tested.

The sounds do seem to occur when I have increased creative energy.

The sounds do not interfere with my hearing. In fact, the sounds recede into the background while I am listening to music and speech, and when speaking.

When I am alone and still, reading and writing, falling asleep, waking or simply lying and wondering, the sounds increase.

I wonder sometimes if the sound is a frequency from inside or from Beyond. It is not painful. Doctors are expensive and I rate their witchery, drug-pushing and brain-washing as a great threat to my autonomy, so am not inclined to spend my life’s savings on satisfying an idle curiosity as to the cause of this condition, which might just be the ringing of the spheres within. Doctor Dread is not an ENT specialist.

I have worried a few times when the ringing has coincided with vertigo, or a lack of balance and orientation, that I am describing as vertigo. But my balance quickly returns and I seem to be physically able enough to spar with effect and execute combative footwork.

I have sometimes noticed an increased ringing when weather is drastically changing, such as today as storms sweep up from Arizona into these high Utah mountains.

The ringing in my head does go entirely away while boxing and stick fighting, including being punched in the head. Sometimes, when eating a stiff punch that slams my neck bones together, I note a yawning silence within.

I am almost 60, less athletic and weaker than 60% of boys, youth and men in my age group.

-I have had at least 25 concussions

-I have fought over 20 boxing matches,

-over 670 stick fights and,

-over 220 blunt steel duels.

I hold all of the freight handling records for volume, speed and duration in grocery stocking:

-freighted 934 cases of dairy in one shift in 1994,

-sorted 2,000 cases of grocery on 22 pallets of from pallet to U-boat in 4 hours in 2002,

-freighted 600 pieces of frozen food before it thawed in 1995

-freighted 650 pieces of grocery in one shift in 2008 as blood ran out of my ass

-dragged, sorted and built 21 pallets of freight into displays in one shift in 2009.

In 2005, I once stayed awake for 5 days, working as a grocer and preparing for a fight sparring and making equipment, and fought 41 stick and machete fights on the fifth day.

I have not taken care of myself. I never thought I would get this old and am not surprised that physical life is imperfect. Trying to recapture the health of 40, to me, that would sound as the knell of insanity. I have gotten a lot more use out of this substandard body than I ever expected. I am grateful, and I am weary.

As I become increasingly fey and tend to superstition and look away from our science-haunted world, I wonder if this ringing in my ears might be a tone of sorts that bears on writing. I think, starting today, I should note in my writing journal, how loud the inner spheres ring on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being deafening, in that I could not hear outside sounds, only the inner one. That has not yet happened. A 9, will then, by definition, be the loudest I have experienced, as thus far, the inner ringing has not blocked outer sound, but has retreated before it.

Today is a 7.

The ringing in my head must remain a mystery.

I do thank you Bob, for your concern.