TELEPATHIC TALES

Reposting this piece from Feb 8, 2024

Detail of Welcome to the Retro Future / 2015 / RCS

Telepathic tales told in rooms where dim yellow lightbulbs were perpetually left on. Listening to each other breathing in the darkness. Too hot to be half-covered by thin cotton sheets, even with three fans pointed at the bed. We rolled over and knocked out the window screen, laughing as it tumbled down into nighttime bushes. Time slowed and next thing we knew we flew upwards, above treetops, backstreets, rooftops, junkyards, and orange groves. Seeing the world through the eyes of low-flying birds. Flying onward until daybreak, feeling warmed by the murky river below reflected on your face. The wide-angle view, projected by a memory-recovery app not yet designed, presented crisp summertime scenes of us pushing through the humidity along a country dirt road, step by step in dusty Converse sneakers. Remembering last summer (which seemed like 10,000 years past), jump-hopping across the same road wearing flip-flops in insane summertime heat. Rocks and dirt steamed by the roadside. Earthbound, and melting into a low hedge with sweat streaming down our foreheads, into our eyes. Wanting the clouds above to form into one vast cloud-blanket, casting a shadow big enough to block out the rest of the blue-sky afternoon. We made our way through a densely wooded pathway to the river’s edge. Holding sharpened sticks to jab into, or swat away water moccasins if one of us slipped on the muddy bank, and awakened one of the lurking snakes. In the shadows of the woods, away from the summer sun, we were living a day we’d live over again the very next day. If we could.