Radio Day

I shut the curtains, turn off the lights, close the door to the bedroom, and turn on the radio. I stay home from work on Radio Day. I unplug the phone. I turn off my cellphone. I take a sledgehammer to my pager. I wear a blindfold and pretend I cannot see.

This is a special day.

Once a month, I tune the radio to 94.6. WAKE. "Broadcasting from the back of beyond." Their transmission can only get through on rare occasions - sometimes it's at the beginning of the month, sometimes at the end - or on certain holidays [I've heard the broadcast on Morgan's Day two years in a row]. I never know the schedule, but I check in the morning, before I make coffee, or eat breakfast, or take my shower.

On Radio Day, all else is put aside.

I use an old Codaphone radio from the '30's, like you see in the background in Sam Spade's office. The kind families gathered around during the early years of World War II. Modern digital sets don't have the subtlety - locked into odd decimal points. Hooking the signal demands the control of a tuning knob, like cracking a safe. Listening to 94.6 is like listening to the dead. Or God. I listen across the veil - to a place much like our own, but off-axis. 45 degrees to the real.

I listen to Artie Shaw, live, playing "Dancing in the Ashes". DaVinci Trio's "Anselma Rushes". Three Blind Mice. Rabbithole. New Moon Rouge. Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Lunting. Dame Little. Dis. The Small.

All new. Alien. The sound hums through my body and I am a conduit, a cello string, a third rail.

Martin breaks for News at One. President Emerson declares an end to the fossil fuel boycott, and her voice reminds me of Audrey Hepburn. The Compass Line has opened its borders and is shipping goods to the rest of the Republic of the Americas. Seven children dead of poisoned lemonade in Domino Mile.

And beneath it all is a voice I hear in my head. Between all the words and music:

The door is always open. Cross the veil. Open your heart. Walk through the wardrobe and into the forest. Take that left turn and drive down the unmarked road. You are one of us. Come.

Sometime around four, I hear rain pound against the windows. Branches clatter on the roof. The power goes out - cutting off Shiva Shiva in mid-chorus ~not with a bang but with a whimper, not with a bang but wi-

Behind my blindfold, I imagine the backlit dial on the radio slowly fading. The other voice in my head whispers I love you and is gone. When the power comes back, 94.6 has disappeared.

I throw the blindfold in the trash and shuffle downstairs to make coffee and eat oatmeal.

I hum.