a snowy, tree-lined residential street, lit by a yellow streetlamp on the right and and the warm glow from the houses. the image is distorted by VCR static. white text reads:
[025] THE FRIEND. A CALLER REACHES OUT. THE HOST HEADS HOME.
listen here, or anywhere you find your podcasts. transcript under the cut:
[static, radio tuning]
[Traveling Sales Rep: Don’t touch that dial! We’ll be right back, after these short messages.] [static, radio tuning]
[click]
Hello and welcome to Thin Places Radio. I’m your host,
and it is the middle of the night. But don’t worry. You’re not alone.
[Thin Places theme]
[soft street noises] [crickets]
I’m coming to you one foot in front of the other from my studio, which is what I like to call the darkened street with the careful orange glow of street lights rising up above and around you as you walk home from your shift, wired headphones trailing down from your ears. Your hands are in your coat pockets. You didn’t turn any music on before you left, but you’re not gonna do it now, either. There’s something about the moment that it doesn’t seem like you can interrupt.
You’ve been at this job for a month, now, and you’re starting to feel like you’ll never get the hang of it. Every time you clock out, your head’s too full, and your neck is too sore. But you’re telling yourself a lie. Not that you mean to. It seems true right now, on this street corner, as you hurry across to the other side. But it isn’t.
[owl hooting]
Everybody feels like this at the start of something new, even if it’s exciting, and even if you’re good at it. [crow cawing] Your hands will become surer. Things will become second nature. You’ll be the person the next new person asks for help, and you’ll help them. I promise. It’s all already happened.
So… what is Thin Places Radio? Well, you can call in about anything strange that you’ve got going on in your life - feelings, omens, premonitions, hauntings.
Are you having relationship trouble?
Have you been feeling lost in a big city?
Have you felt the presence of your lost loved ones near you?
When the veil between worlds is thin, we get closer than ever to the strange and the unexplained - but also to each other. Call in, get it off your chest. Lines are open.
[click] [voicemail:]
Hey, long time listener, first time caller. I don't really have a story. I just wanted to maybe ask a question. I recently moved, and I'm from the deep South, a very very small City, and I moved to a much bigger city far away. More people than I've ever really been around in my whole life, if I’m being honest. And if I'm being honest, I don't really have many friends here, and I've never felt more alone. But your voice is very comforting, and you seem so nice, and I'm - I guess I was wondering if we could be friends? That's all. Thank you. My name’s Adrian, by the way, and I hope that we can call each other friends. Thank you.
[click]
Hi, caller, thank you for listening, and for picking up the phone to finally call in. I could use a friend, too, these days, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like I remember how to be one, with all these gaps in the person that I used to be. But there are ways to introduce yourself even when you don’t know your own name, or where you came from.
Hi, Adrian, I’m talking to you as all the people that I used to be, but forgot. I’m talking to you as myself. [searching music] I like Doritos, but I hate jerky. I love what I do, even when it’s hard, and I know that I’m heading somewhere, because I’m trying to do it. I love listening to these calls, and I love you, too.
Everybody feels like this at the start of something new, even when it’s exciting. Everybody feels like this, but nobody feels it exactly like you do, right now, what you brought with you on purpose from where you came from and what you left behind, and what you tried to leave behind but brought with you, by accident, because you didn’t know how not to.
You say you recently moved, and I want to tell you that time will help ease the loneliness, because I think that it will. But you’ll also have to do what you’ve done, right now, with me - reach out to somebody else. And you’ll have to do it over and over. But people will reach back. I promise. There will be a voice on the radio when you need it. And on your voicemail, and at work, and at the park, and in a hundred other places, too.
And you’ll still feel that loneliness press up against you like the crowds do. You’ll bring that with you, too. That’s okay. There’s something in that feeling that tells us how to be human, too. I think I know that best of all.
I’m so happy to call you my friend, Adrian - and I know so many other people will be, too. I know they already are.
[click]
There is a crane fly somewhere in the garage , buzzing its large, ungainly body against the floorboards, the lights, when someone happens to turn them on. The crane fly, unlike the human, is a child its entire life - months or years - and an adult for just a few weeks. It will live in this garage for six more days. It will die on a shelf beside a dusty hammer without passing along its line. It will not consider this a failure because it does not know how. To a human being, it is a week’s nuisance. To the crane fly, it is everything. There is something beautiful in its spindly awkwardness, if you look. Please, notice it while you can. It won’t hurt you. Watch it fly.
[crane fly buzzes]
[click] [footsteps crunching]
When you turn the corner onto your own street, tonight, the image strikes you like you’re seeing it for the first time, even though you’ve lived here for a while. You’ve seen this collection of buildings, the small tree fighting its way up, the signs in your neighbor’s window. But something about the way the moon shines over all of it, the wind stirring around your collar, makes you stop to look at it. [footsteps pause] To say, I'm going to take a picture here, in my mind, so I can remember it when I’ve left. The shadows across the street. The red brick. The cluster of irises growing… up -
The -
Oh. Iris. [breath in] Iris… I know that name. I remember it.
I don’t think it’s mine. But it’s somebody’s. Maybe a friend.
[footsteps start again] [click]
Thank you for listening, callers, and thank you for calling, listeners. I hope you feel a little bit lighter. I know I do. As always, our number is 717.382.8093. That’s 717.382.8093. Until next time. I’ll be here.
[static] [Traveling Sales Rep: visit us at the - diner just off -] [Various Garbled Voices: the - road - provides - the - road - provides -]
Thin Places Radio is a podcast written by Kristen O’Neal and produced by Kaitlin Bruder. The voice of Your Host is Kristen O’Neal.
Tonight’s voicemail was left for us by Adrian. Editing and sound design are by Kaitlin Bruder, and the music tracks you heard in tonight’s episode are: the Thin Places theme, by Miles Morkri, and Umeed by RANA. If you have a question to ask, a story to tell, or a suggestion for the host, give us a call at (717) 382-8093. The lines are always open.
[Thin Places Theme outro]
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