tales for dreamers: talking heads

Everyone calls them the talking heads. 

But I’ve never heard them speak. 

Not once.

Not even when I stand under the window where they’re perched and call out to them. 

They make not the slightest movement. Not a muscle in their faces twitch. 

No one really knows when and how they came and why they’re there. They’ve always been here, is the standard response given to anyone who poses those questions.

It’s a school, this building, and if you ask the students who study there about the talking heads, they give you a strange look and a wide berth and spread the word to everyone else that you’re a nutter best left alone. 

Once I slipped into the school after it was closed for the day and figured out the room where the heads ought to have been — that sole room with the high windows. 

But the heads were not there!

I ran out. 

And there they were! 

In the same position I first found them. Their expressions solemn. Their eyes gazing into the distance. 

I ran back in. 

No heads on the window sill! 

No wonder the students I had approached to inquire about these heads had thought me insane.

I ran back out. 

And there they were again!

Stoic and undisturbed.

And then it struck me.

I ran back inside the school building, dragged a desk and propped it against the wall, scrambled up and rested my chin on the high window sill. 

And then the heads appeared.

Laughing and chattering and shouting and giggling. The sound was deafening.

Turned out they are the spirits of children who were prone to daydreaming in class.

Trapped in a room with windows too high to see anything but the sky and its myriad colour-changing moods, there was nothing to do but to let their minds wander and imagine what the world outside the window looked like.

Oh, many of these children are now respectable alums of the school.

But a part of them lingers here.

And like with everything else that children do, you’ve got to join them in their game and play by their rules in order to understand them better.

If you do, you will find the talking heads are quite a welcoming bunch indeed.

Last week's image info: The impressive structure in 'a lighthouse marooned' is located in Toronto Islands. I took the picture when we spent an entire day there on KrA's birthday last year! Happy memories!