The Radio

I felt that sensation of “maybe I’ll turn everything around” when I bought the transistor radio, perhaps a year ago, in an electronics store, on a winding back street in Granada. It was of a certain weight and stability, “designed in Europe,” and not frighteningly cheap. It was a purchase I had to think about.

My dream for my revived life was to learn Spanish by having this radio playing as I worked in the kitchen. It would connect me to Spain… I would know what was going on. I was proud of my purchase.

When I got it home, I tried two sets of batteries, both from the drawer that I thought contained new batteries. Neither worked—no sound. I had definitely inserted them correctly. I was confused, a little distressed. Everything seems well made here, and surely nobody would sell a dud radio. Every time I attempted organization of objects, I tried to throw it out but couldn’t quite give up on it.

Months passed—months and months.

No radio during the blackout.

Over time, my isolation deepened; I glanced at the radio, it had come to represent some kind of hex. Something stopping things as soon as they start.

Go back to the store? No. Buy another one? No. Leave it on the shelf and feel sad every time I saw it? Yes.

Today I returned from a trip to the laundromat to launder a large duvet Lewis had urinated on, after breaking an 84 hour spiritual water fast, during which I prayed for two hours daily in the Eucharastic Adoration chapel in the Cathedral. I was carrying something heavy inside, despite breakthroughs in health. Massive unexpected bills were hitting me left and right, my laptop was broken, and in the shop, and the bill to retrieve it ($630) was almost insurmountable, with the other bills. My Spanish growing at a snail’s pace. And the relentless heat beating down, seeming to boil the brain some days.

I knew I had enough to go get the laptop tonight. Life was starting up again, but when I broke my fast this morning with scrambled eggs and kimchee, I felt acutely melancholic, and wanted to be fasting again, with some chance of spiritual breakthrough. My idea was to remove everything, face myself squarely, and repent—which I did. Day two was the hardest, day three I felt clear headed, day four, broke the fast, and felt tired right away. Results inconclusive—I was hoping God would talk to me, or change me, noticibly.

I’d fasted from online and computer life for something like 9 days, and abstained from all food and all addictions such as coffee, for 3.5, drinking only lemon water with some Himalayan salt. That and daily prayer.

I realized I’d been eating to cover up feelings of anxious isolation. I knew (of course) I was in Spain, but it was so quiet in the little attic apartment that unless I went out, I couldn’t ground myself in any kind of “there,” or “here.” If only I had that radio.

Today I took it off the shelf and got two new batteries from the same drawer—these would be the 5th and 6th.

It worked!

I listened to a story being narrated with classical music on the AM station, and suddenly I was crying. I suppose this is a C-PTSD type of story. The tears fell, and I wondered why. I think it was because of being unable to grieve the big things, so I grieved the loss of the imagined year of learning Spanish with my radio. Just because I thought it didn’t work, and thought I had tried enough batteries. It was because of how often this is the kind of thing that happens between me and objects. Me and everything. Missed opportunities. A feeling of tiny invisible entities harassing me.

Walking to the computer store I called my oldest friend, of 45 years, in Sweden—Peter Olsen. He and I, with our mortifying childhoods, see ourselves as siblings, with synchronized brains, and share many struggles, and feelings of outsider-dom. “May I tell you a story?” I said. “No, you can’t,” he joked. I told him about the radio, and the melancholia about all the lost Spanish learning, as well as how it would have kept me company. He understood exactly.

He heard me enter the computer store and ask for my laptop.”Your Spanish sounds great!” he said. “Yeah but I have to plan every sentence. I’d be fluent if I’d had my radio. But it’s not the radio, per se. It’s that slight confusion in everything, that falling behind the beat, finding things so hard, the simplest things.”

He said he has the same kind of problems every time he ventures out into the world. Nothing works and everything gets more and more complicated.

“It must be hard to live there, in a foreign country, and have to figure everything out, in a foreign language.”
”It is,” I said. “I’m always trying to pretend it isn’t. Like the time I had to buy a vaccum cleaner, had to find the store, figure out what time they were open, ask questions…It was 115 Farenheit most days last summer. And my AC didn’t work.”

“I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he said, his voice tinged with panic. “I’d sit down in the street and say, “Dammit, I’m just going to sit here until I die.”

I burst out laughing.

We talked about all the self help and trauma healing videos on YouTube.

“They don’t work for people like us,” he said adamantly. “I never go near them anymore. I need to think through my own survival strategies. We’re both highly intelligent.”

“But that’s not how I feel, with this syndrome. I feel highly incompetent. I fall for every last new thing. But nothing works, quite. Or else I don’t even try, I’m sick of trying everything. But the other day I listened to a therapist guy who himself has this, and he was saying we have to grieve the life we never got. And admit all the things that passed us by because…just because. He says we should stop buying into all the fantasies and admit the things we dreamed of won’t happen. I agree. We know the walrus will jump out. We’ll do something compulsive. Still, we have much to give thanks for.”

”I’d rather be me, for all my impossible, ugly, traits. I can perceive better and have empathy for people because I’ve been there myself,” Peter said.

”Yeah, there’s that,” I said.

“I’ve never met normal people in big beautiful houses, living perfect lives, that are happy,” he said.

“Maybe. But I’d love to drive around in one of their brains for just one day,” I said.

“They understand how everything works.”

I was thinking about the radio again, and about having been able to think clearly—that I should try yet another set of batteries. That I had put dead batteries in my drawer. So simple.

“The phone’s going to die soon,” I said.

“I don’t think you know how strong you are,” he said.

“Is it strong, to do this?” I asked. “I don’t think I’m succeeding. Something feels more difficult each day, but I refuse to give up. Like being in a foreign country, and it’s hot, and you don’t know anybody, and you’re far from home. In a strange way, you can’t succeed. You can’t be from here. You can just observe, and walk around, and take photos and mental notes, of a world that looks so wonderful. But it’s not your world, you’re just visiting. It’s not for you, but you can marvel at it, and try to describe this place, where people have got it right, in some simple yet mysterious way. And you walk home. And you try not to buy ice cream.”

I thought about the radio waiting for me at home. Maybe this time, it will be different,

I’ll turn it all around.