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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 father



There are men in the water. Grizzled faces, the odd bits of sagging skin, the touches of gray. I know that look, the one of peace, the one that measures the hours and counts the bills that will arrive in the mail during the week. These are the arms that lift children high in the air, perching them on shoulders as tiny hands grab at low hanging leaves when they pass beneath them.

The stubble on their cheeks, the squint of their eyes, that long slow breath that stays inside and eventually slips out. The diving under the water, the old watch at his wrist. Nothing else. Just the sight of his family at the edge of the water, just the smell of good fortune, and hard-fought peace. The last whiff of their cologne washes off into the ocean, replaced by salt and sweat, the muck of seaweed, and the realization that they forgot to put on suntan lotion.

The sunburn will appear later. Right now, the father stands pale and white as he wades through the water towards the shore.

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