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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow

straight up


I really hurt myself a week ago, falling on some ice. During the January holidays, none of the doctors are working so unless you've got a gunshot wound you go to the pharmacy and hope someone there can give you something to tide you over. I ended up breaking glass ampules open, my fingertips bleeding, somehow filling needles and injecting myself in the ass as I tried to see what the hell I was doing in the bathroom mirror. It was a strange number of days, playing with E and laying on my stomach as we played go fish, dominoes, checkers and drew countless pictures of fairies and girls in pretty dresses.

What I learned is this - by walking between two and four miles a day I have overdeveloped muscles in my legs, leaving others weak. I lean forward when I walk - pushing towards the future. When I was five and we left Brooklyn to raise pigs in a little town with one traffic light, I walked the halls of that elementary school like my pants were on fire. I was a New Yorker, through and through - rushing towards the lunch line, the school bus, the bathroom.

So now, the New Year has already forced me to walk differently - straight up, as if I'm trying to push the sky a little higher.

It feels good.


Comments

The Expatresse said…
Poor you! Ouch. It has been dangerously slippery out. I brought back some YaxTrax in September, but have not yet tried them.

Now that The Spouse is on blood thinners, I am especially nervous that he might fall and bruise himself. Since he generally falls at least once every winter. We all do.
LOVE that, pushing towards the future. I walk the same way except for me, it feels more like clawing my way through heavy headwinds. Also love the end....walking straight. Happy happier New Year, M/ You've got it coming.

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