045 - Forty-Five

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I wish I had a camera.

I am in Cawker City, Kansas, home of the world’s largest ball of twine.

[click, static]

Can you believe it? That someone bothered to do this? To wrap up a ball of twine so big it gets its own sign?

The world is a strange and mysterious place and human beings might be the most mysterious of all.

[click, static]

But I still wish I had a camera. I did go into the general store in town and found a postcard with the twine ball on it, so I’ve got a little souvenir, but I would’ve liked to put a camera on a self-timer and taken a photo of myself with the freakish thing. Proof that I saw it. Proof that I was here. Here in Cawker City, here in Kansas, here on planet Earth, all on my own.

[click, static]

I know I said I never had any power and I still don’t and…that’s true. For most of my life I’ve been an anonymous drifter with no family, no roots, no community. I couldn’t change the world, so I just tried to work around it.

But I left my mark on it still. And I’ve had a lot of empty years to think about what kind of mark that is. And I’m not sure I like the answer.

[click, static]

Maybe I’ll actually write out something on the postcard, leave my mark that way. I’d just…I’d like to leave something good behind. Not just the imprints of my nails in the skin of this world from where I tried to hold on so tightly to my own life.

[click, static]