The house is as quiet as my house can be, which means that in addition to the blood rushing through my ears I’m also listening to the twitter of parakeets and the steady tick-tock of the cuckoo clock.

The “cuckoo” part of the clock has been long since been disabled, but the ticking mechanism remains. The metronomic beat of this timepiece is the soundtrack of my life.

On the rare day when the clock’s not wound, the stillness is deafening. I can hardly hear myself think.

Which raises the question: What has all this ticking done to my brain? Has it weathered it with pockmarks? Or has it smoothed and polished it, eroding those pesky irregularities that often stand in for real thought?