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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 ...

the game (the vigilante)


There is a man, with long greasy hair and an old pair of glasses that walks the paths in the woods behind our building. He talks to himself in a low voice, and carries a long stick that he pokes into the grass and the trash that rests in the ditches. His walk is curious, maybe even a bit like Chaplin in his floppy old sneakers. He is always there, poking and walking and mumbling.

At one point I mentioned him to E, asking if she has ever seen him.
Her shoulders shrug.
"He's probably looking for drugs." She explains. "People do not hand them off here, they leave them in some weeds or something for the person to pick them up."

I begin to wonder if he is a good Samaritan, or even an undercover officer. The next time I see him, his mumbling is in rare form and I decide no police man can act that well. He is just a bit nutty. Maybe he wants to save someone, maybe he wants the drugs for himself. Maybe he just likes the game, the searching. I begin to call him The Vigilante, mostly out of irony but also because I hope he is there to do good.



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