Kikok — 5/8 : Radio #259

You're riding an old bicycle along a dirt road through a dacha cooperative. Every time you hit a bump, the rusty bell and the slightly wobbly rear rack give a little jingle. In the distance, you can see a wall of towering pine crowns. The sky is clouding over, promising rain soon. You pedal past wooden houses with peeling paint on their walls, overgrown garden plots, lopsided fences tightly woven with ivy, concrete posts plastered with sun-yellowed ads for crushed stone, and apple trees bending low toward the ground. For some reason, you feel like you need to keep going — down to the creek, deep into the forest. But you stop. Somewhere far away, through the singing of unknown birds, the whine of a chainsaw, and the bark of a lonely dog, the melodies of the kikok mix for 5/8: radio reach your ears — and suddenly, you feel a sense of peace you haven't felt in a long, long time.