I don't listen to the radio or watch TV except for baseball and even then I turn the sound off because

the aging mind is so susceptible to irritability and who needs to go around in a state of

irk.

My favorite medium is the telephone and the comedy routine of talking with old friends.

As the body falls apart, people get funnier and funnier.

I also like the scraps of phone talk overheard on walks, the woman walking at the Walgreens who said

Jesus where are you and the woman who said I know know what you said, I'm not deaf. I cherish these things.

Jesus, where are you? Has become a part of my life, a prayer. But on New Year's Eve, I walked by a party

and I heard the Village People's YMCA, and days later I wrote in an Uber and heard Barry Manilos I write the songs and now they're up in my head and I can disperse them with a Chopin A-Tude or a Bach

chorale but they come back And for some reason so does I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener.

And this is very irritating when a man is trying to write a novel.

My friend Sally tells me that since her husband died,

she needs to keep a radio on all day and into the night to keep loneliness at bay.

Okay, it's fine.

I've gone into restaurants where recorded music was playing and I turned around and walked out.

I went to dinner at friends once and they played Judy Collins through the whole meal and at a boutrobed and it about drove me nuts.

Silence is a basic necessity.

I'm an early riser and as I make coffee and take my meds, my dreams evaporate and

my waking mind is open to inspiration and sometimes finds it. I suddenly know what is next

next in the novel I'm working on. I think of a letter I need to write to

someone and I don't want an Oscar Meyer Wiener to butt in, the thought of wanting to be one, of wanting to be

eaten a jingle about cannibalism. My God, I've been off Oscar Meyer for decades. I eat in Nathans now and then, but what I crave

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