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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 ...
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the magic trick


They are still working on our elevators. The new one is not ready, a sleeping giant. The old one next to it scrapes and moans, as if a whale is stuck in the hallways of this old building. The past being replaced by the future, or at least the present. At one point, it all has to go  - even it works most of the time.

Last week, over nine years of my posts were removed from the Impressions of an Expat facebook page. It happened without warning or explanation. Days later, I have devised a few clumsy work-arounds but the headline is clear. Something has to change. Better to chose it than to have it chose me, but here we are. Every Monday, I cram a message into a bottle and share an image - something dear, something that has been unspoken until I press "publish" and then I go back to my day. Hours, weeks, even years later I am still in shock as strangers and friends from every corner of the world read them. Someone in New Zealand, and someone in Bangladesh, New Jersey, Texas. It still gives me pause after watching this magic trick work one more time.

I was in the back seat of a big car a few months ago with an old friend I had not seen for a few years. We were both in New York at the same time, by some perfect accident. "You know, you told me something once." She said in a low voice. "When things go wrong, we just rebuild." She squeezed my arm, saying it again, as if I desperately needed to hear my own words. "We rebuild." I laughed, because I had no memory of saying this in the first place, but accepted that it did sound like me, two words, trying to be inclusive, naming the demon that needed to be wrestled with.

So, that is what will happen in the near future. The site will somehow move to a new platform, and the archives will remain intact. These crazy looking glasses at the past, a gift for my wife and daughters as much as me, a breathing family album of caught moments, butterflies under glass, heartache and joy, milestones and adventures, the ocean and a great bowl of pasta all one big messy string that extends into the darkness.

Thank you for joining us.
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