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Radio Inactivity
Heliocentric XIV
The tree covered mountains on either side of the road flickered the sun and shadows across the hood of the car, and they kept losing the radio broadcast as they wound through the deep valleys.
The kids were cranky in the back seat. Their mother was just as glad not to hear the rotation of the same songs because of course there was only one good station which played the good songs.
We’ll be glad to be back in the city, the back seat passengers proclaimed. It had been a long trip and mom wasn’t in the mood so she fired back: listening to the radio is like shopping from one of those fliers the grocery store chain leaves in our lobby. It’s the stuff they want to sell you, surplus to unload; quality irrelevant, it’s the stuff with the highest profit margin.
Their turn: Well If we had a CD player in the car.
She caught herself, before returning another verbal salvo, in a memory of her childhood, in the back seat of a car trying to listen to her favorite songs over the chatter of her cigarette chain-smoking parents.
The lyrics from the radio at that moment brought her back from her reverie: “No hesitation at the traffic lights / beneath the black in my windscreen.”
