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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

miracle mile


Three times a week, one mile and then climbing eight flights of stairs. No time limit. It is all I can muster, and was designed to be something I cannot detour. It is possible. In the pouring rain, in -20C, it is possible. No excuses. I do not enjoy it. There are no surges of serotonin, no soundtrack to Chariots of Fire ringing in my ears. It is something I need to do. Sometimes my mind wanders as my feet shuffle across the old road that snakes along the stream where I run. I solve script problems in these moments, or commit to a decision. My heart pounds. My breath hangs in the cold air. Old people with dogs stare. Once a child ran along with me, a naive tribute to those running scenes in the first Rocky, but it only lasted for a few seconds. There is no eye of the tiger on this run. It is a miracle though, each time I somehow pull on layers of clothes and leave the house, fancy sneakers glowing in the dim light, a hat pulled down over my ears.

People do not run outside here. That is something you do in the gym. I catch odd glances, as if my eyebrows are on fire. They stare at me, or ignore me, nothing in-between. No polite little smiles, no miniature head nods.

Today I stabbed at the panel by the outside door, my fingers lost in the wrong code. A man stood behind me, waiting until I got it right. I paused in the doorway catching my breath. I still had to climb the stairs. He mumbles. I turn to him. He is shaking his head, as if he feels sorry for me, then asks something I cannot decipher, except for the word twenty. Does he mean twenty kilometers, or twenty minutes?

Less. I mumble. Less.

He shakes his head again, as I pull on the banister and make my way upstairs.

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