Talking Head

The radio was on. There was no escaping it. I couldn't find the switch.



The programming was banal, predictable. I'd heard it all before.

I am this. This is what. I want. I hate. Yes, no. Goddamn !



Between stations, white noise sizzled and hissed.



I'd come to the woods to escape the noise of humans and their machines. Smalltalk, ringtones, gossip; sales pitches, sermons, weed whackers; opinions, pontifications, demurrals; jet skis, TVs, ATVs, SUVs; litanies, laundry lists and internal combustion engines. I was fleeing pure cacophony. I ran, fingers in my ears, pursued by the rabid, yapping sounds of hell.



Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah !



Vroom !



Ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink !



Deep in the woods, I stopped, uncorked my ears, and listened.



The radio was on.



It drowned out the wind. It drowned out the birds. It drowned out the brook at my feet and the creaking trees overhead.



The noise streamed through me like an endless file of disconsolate wraiths.



I stood and listened. The radio was pulling in signals from the northernmost reaches of Canada, from sunspots and alpha centauri, from the earth's molten core. I would have pulled the plug, but there was no plug to pull.

I knew what I had to do.