Creative Match 2025 — Collaborative Letters Across Time
This work is part of the Creative Match 2025, an initiative by Manic World Magazine pairing writers in collaborative exchange.
What follows is part of an ongoing epistolary project between myself and Canadian writer, Jess Logan — letters written across time, distance, and shared ground.
Chapter I
July 19th 1970. The sign says “The Future is Here’ and is already peeling off the hoarding. A strange sign to have by a roadside with nothing but a wooden bench and a wire bin. Not even a bus stop, or a lay-by to take a car from the tarmac and park in any safety. This future will have to be walked. The surroundings offer no brighter clue, a sullen clump of trees huddle in a field of sad grass and the blue sky and warm sun seem wasted on this empty scene. Except for a figure, walking across the grass and off the footpath, coming from what appears to be the coarse grasslands that lie behind the bench. They are heading toward the bench. They stop by the sign, the huge hoarding with the weathered paper of the crazy promise and just as we might think they’ll read the sign, come round the front, take a seat on the bench, ponder the future and what it might mean, the figure stops. It disappears for a few seconds, then it seems to be digging in amongst the weeds around the wooden frame that holds up the hoarding. It has something, a box, small, shining a metallic glint, it might be metal.