As I write, I note various tolerances to the noise of the railing world.

I can write urban survival and commentary and combat advice while in a Portland Bar with sodomites wailing to anti-heaven against the Orange Man.

But deeper work I cannot do.

For a decade now I have prided my self on not being so distractable. I wrote a bakers dozen novels and as many books on masculinity while seated on the floorboards above Sensie Steve's office. We joked of this and it was not a mere matter of tuning him out. I was accessed numerous times by him as the veritable historian of the Acts of Karate Mechanical. His HVAC business.

I arrogantly thought I carried some inner peace which I had developed.

I tested it, writing some good material while on my Mother's couch next to Aunt Madeline, as they sat hypnotized before blaring game shows, lying news and insipid dramas.

With indistinct background noise, music, movies, teens cussing at each other and laughing while playing video games, a conversation in the kitchen upstairs at Bob's, Izzy and Amos chasing the amazon delivery driver off the road and into the creek at Toby's request as the snow pattered down on the trailer, these things permitted me to wrote anything at any level, including the hard stuff like fiction and history.

But since the nerve in my head leading to the right eye has begun to hum and buzz and grow warm, preceding the attack, and the other lesser eye has become involved, I find that I have tricked myself. I thought I had full command of my mind and could shield it from the buffets of the noisy world.

Much of the audio spectrum is tolerable based on tonality and background sound manipulations. Of late I have become intolerant of TV and movies of all kinds, particularly the subtextual soundtracks that attempt to guide our viewing of the story like a nudging chorus of knowing nymphs. Listening to ancient books read by British actors has been a great boon, a slave against the shrill screams of Modernity hissing through her tawdry nylon veil.

Thus an experiment.

I have a choice of sleeping with the door open or closed in the lofty hardwood hallway above the dinning concourse. Various constant audio noise is always wafting upward, from news to commercials to soap operas and daytime talk. The soap operas are the least distracting. I think it is the tonal quality.

My current schedule is something like this: sleep 12 hours, write 2 hours, sleep 2 hours, write 2 hours, sleep 2 hours and visit with my host for 4 hours.

Yesterday, I overdid the writing, finishing one book and starting another.

The right side of the brain began to warm and I knew I must lie down to abate the oncomming burn.

The land lady was gone, so the audio fare that did blare from downstairs was of material that I have much enjoyed and imbibed in the past, criticism of the very state of the world that has hounded me into hobohood.

I could not stand it and put on Herodotus.

Then the plaintive, pleading, shrill, and bitter voices of the dissidents began to echo-like intrude upon the serene reading, so I must close the door. I learned there last night that my peace of mind is yet dependent upon my body.

I have some work to do.

Then, when I came to my writing station another one of these voices, blaring bitterness and criticism in the tonal quality of eunuchs bemoaning their castration, echoed through the house. I could not write anything but this—and only after fleeing the tiny noise to the quietest corner of the mansion.

Here now I sit, where the household teens normally drink their wine coolers and shade themselves from the world.

I had thought I was somewhat better than this.

An analysis of voice disturbance has revealed to me that this is largely tonal, that shrill, bitter, complaint irritates the most. Such as this comprise most of dissident media more in line with my way of thinking, so I think it is the whining tone, the sissydom and the womanly bemoaning among these low-T males that bother me the most.

Next to that is to be found most galling the loudness of virtue and strident declarations of righteousness such as found on loyal opposition news stations such as Fox, News Max and One America News, Christian TV and radio, people with whom I hold various points of agreement and disagreement but do not find to be plotting my erasure and do not resent, but rather pity.

Next most irritating are alternative “truth seekers” such as Rogan, Carlson, Hancock and the like—people often much in line with my way of thinking and no matter how addled their perspective, for the most part those seeking truth strands within the sticky web of the lie.

The fourth most distracting batch of naddering ninnies are those commercial spokespersons, CNN news mongers, homosexuals, drug addicts, degenerates and politicians who are either deluded crusaders seeking to demonize any person who shares my gender and ancestry, or simply the most unsavory social climbers. These are people whose views and activities I roundly detest, yet they are by multiples less—many time less—irritating to me than those who I might find some sympathy for.

This latter group holds the key to the question, as they are the dominant current.

Lastly, and least irritating is the general crowd, the the barking dog in the room above me, the cussing bitchs and rapping bucks I will be passing as I hike out of West Baltimore this very time next week—these last actually being my foes who have and will hunted me my life long.

So, I have discovered it that irritates: it is the tone of discord, the bleating of the peeple, the moaning of the conquered, the wailing of the dispossessed, the pleading of the suppliants at their master's door. One understands why the gods made Enkidu to challenge Gilgamesh, out of an intolerance for hearing the mortal complaints constantly wafting up upon the altar smoke. There is nothing more detestable, I now find, than the complaint of the conquered that the boot that is on his neck should be upon another neck, a complaint that is so very often made the more shrill by the suppliant crying for my specific attention that he does not deserve to have the conqueror's boot upon his neck for the very reason that he declined to contest his bondage.

Fate, weave your wicked wiles on the loom of Time the more furious, so that I might learn before I leave to listen to the wailing of the conquered with as much ease as I do the wind wafting through autumn leaves.

Addendumn 7/2/21 10:06 P.M.

Intructionals, debates, criticism, things of such tones intrude into what I thought was a fortress. I never knew I spent so much energy fighting the tinny tiny voices pleading for my attention. Now I know. Tonight I sit with three lap dogs in a good man's study as they shiver against the noise of local fireworks—I think that they know I understand.