Radio Sky

Kept going by the secret, a common mystery, I was in tune and detached with the transmission

As I sat alone in this room surrounded on all sides by waves, I was safe like an island in a churning sea, wrapped like an onion in its skin, in the calm eye of the storm, thanks to the miles of insulated cable, shielded enclosures and grounded circuits intricately patterned and constructed around this ten foot cube. My furnishings were modest with a bed, 2 chairs, a table and a lamp. Outside the safety zone against the wall was the TV. The waves reached it but only the light reached me.

I often dreamt of other sanctuaries both while awake and asleep. I ventured out in the waves every day, searching for other islands of calm, other quiet fortresses, other secret gardens, other guarded nests without pulse, wave, echo, frequency shift, static, reverberation, amplitude. And though I didn't tire easily, I never arrived.

Instead, I found bodies moving around me in private rhythms, parting like tall grasses. It exhausted me. Exhausted and invigorated me. Depleted me and charged me up. My head was spinning as I fell into a waking dream.

The days and weeks and months and weeks and days went along like this, following each other heel to toe, heel to toe. And as I walked the footsteps kept time with the throbbing of my brain. I was aware of the different reverberations and reflections, the absorption patterns under the steel bridges, the electromagnetic winds and I negotiated its currents and eddies, dodging the careless debris.

But I was getting restless, itchy. I was stopping, then sitting, then standing, then sitting again. I reflected on the state of the waves and how they filled all the empty spaces, reacting to the reflection of the impossible criss-crossing of the transmission. Reeling before the emanations as they reflected off the nearby buildings, I went home. Once there I tried to find a comfortable position in bed or chair.

I scratched my leg, my hand. The house creaked as if someone was walking above. "The temperature change." I thought I felt a bug on my arm. No, it was a hair coming uncrossed. My ear twitched. Something was crawling on my neck. Was it some thing or just heat expansion or uncrossed hairs? I wanted to take a bath. Maybe it was ticks, lice, chiggers. I took a deep breath to calm myself. My elbow was rough and scaly. More hairs moved on my head or maybe a bug. I got up quickly and looked at my chair, something bit me.

Now I had to get out. I walked. What else could I do but walk? Walk or not walk, look or not look. I had to follow the clues. I searched for the concealed zone, looking for the guard at the gate. I approached one candidate, his eyes were fixed on a barren patch. Fixing his stare on what needed fixing. But really it was his glasses that were broken. They were perched on his nose and waiting. But his fixed stare said too much and I looked away, agitated.

Now turning away, distracted, I looked now left now right. Avoiding this then that. How strange to be avoiding something, nothing really. There were buildings, signs, bodies, clumps of grass, clusters of people. There were rainbows, shadows, eyes, portents, a howling dog. My eyes followed my ears to the dog. I looked at it. Howling without howling. Howling inside, I guessed. But I heard it or I heard something that seemed like howling. Perhaps the wind blowing. A howling wind. It centered on the dog. It was the epicenter of the emanations and transmissions. This idea took over, colonized me. The dog howled without howling yet was the center of it all. And with other emanations all around and transmissions of every kind my head was swimming in a whirlpool of waves and emanations criss-crossing one another and focusing in a dog's eyes.

I'd had enough, I wanted more. It all fit, everything came unglued. It held together as it was torn apart. They were right, it's all connected or its not. And so,,, And so...

And so, I walked on calm and empty under the radio sky.

— Daniel Voznick ©2002