What Did You Say Again?

Some people would like to live near the sea and hear the sounds of the breakers and the wind howling.

I don't live near the sea but I hear these sounds.

When I was a boy in Australia, during certain times of summer, the cicadas ( that we called locusts) would dig their way out of the earth where they had lived as grubs for years, would emerge, climb into trees, dry their new wings, then join thousands of others pulsating with shrill whines.  It was deafening."Age ten I said to my little brah, age 5, as we were collecting "locusts" in a bucket to give to the chooks "I wouldn't like to hear that noise all me life, would ya?"
"Nah" said Pat "Look, I got a Greengrocer one and there's a Flowery Baker!" All the same, they went into the bucket, crawling around, trying to get out, but we had twisted their wings so they couldn't get away. Chook food.

I am thousands of miles from Australia ( though often I wish I were still there) and it is now Winter, a rainy bleak, cold, Vancouver Winter. No sign of snow.

I have these sounds. Always with me.

There are voices in my consciousness sometimes faraway, sometimes close, always indistinct. Of course no one is there.

I hear the  sounds of birds chirping away throughout the night, though  real birds are sleeping, feathers puffed and heads tucked in. Sometimes I have heard a sea-gull and looked outside but no gull is wheeling around in the sky..

This cacophony of constant sounds is called Tinnitus and I have it.

It can send people crazy.

I am not yet completely crazy and  manage the condition by having the radio on all night and most of the day if I am at home. This helps block out the sounds in my head. Driving helps also. The sound of the motor's hum.

Being in busses and trains tends to block it out a bit.

One problem occurs when I have to pay attention to what someone is saying to me. Mostly I can make out what they are saying among the other noises, unless it  is a child's or a high- pitched woman's voice.

People are forever saying "Why don't you get a hearing- aid?"

A hearing-aid just increases the volume. Believe me, I have a volume of sound already.

"Tinnitus" The doctor said. "There is no cure."
Some years ago I was friends with a musician, who unfortunately used to hear voices telling him to do bizarre things, like running out in the mall with nothing on, or slapping a young woman on the buttocks. Even worse.
Dangerous thoughts.
"They are like telling me to do these things and I don't want to like because I know I would be sent to jail or the loony-bin."
"You just have to tough it out, pal" was my inane advice.
Some years later I saw in the Province Newspaper that my friend had killed himself by jumping from the fourth floor of a skid-road hotel.

At least I am still living and it could be worse. I could be blind.  Ric.

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IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLIND THE MAN WITH ONE EYE IS  KING.