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i remember getting up before dawn to put on my world war 2 vintage headphones, which were black and plastic or ceramic and cold, and listening to my shortwave radio. i remember the way the semi-circular dial lit up yellow-ish. i remember frequency drift and that i never really knew where i was tuning to. i remember the world seeming very big as i tried to hear an indonesian radio station that was supposed to be hiding somewhere in a shower of static.
i remember waiting for a bus to take me to summer camp i think and watching ants move into and out of a pyramid of dust.
i remember riding an enormous murray tricycle.
i remember sitting in the lobby of a hospital reading a rat patrol book while somewhere else my mother visited my grandfather.
i remember sitting on the end of the dock in front of my family's cabin in northern new hampshire fishing. i remember staring at the red and white bobber. i remember that the dock was held in place by a cradle full of stones and that my step father had put them all there.
i remember listening to pink floyd's album meddle over and over.
i remember driving to my first concert in a friend's father's dumptruck. it was enormous.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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