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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

exodus


Everyone I know left years and years ago. There was a smell in the air, and they ran from it. Acquaintances, expats, foreigners and locals all bundled their best things and boarded planes never to return. They flew to Budapest and the English countryside. To Rome, or just back home to wherever they came from. Their absence is palpable. Who is left here? The patriots and the people with nowhere to go, no way to get out.

The sky is crammed with hard plumes of smoke. The snow has finally arrived, tucked around corners and it will remain there. Its teeth are in deep. The streets are slick and wet. The streetlights blink on, one by one.

There is an ugly silence.

Neighbors walk from the elevator as I enter and I say hello, but they ignore me as if a ghost has said something to them. Upstairs, unpacking the groceries I wonder if I am even here.



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