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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
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two worlds



The circus has come to town, but the town has run away. Contradictions are piling up like clowns in one of those tiny cars and the bleachers are empty. Going outside to get a few necessities is so very lonely, even surrounded by people. The streets are crammed with young and old, but from another universe, another time. Who are they? Faces grim, or just bored they stare off down the street or at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green. Do they sleep in a different world at night? No masks, no stress, no worries. I begin to feel like a leper, my hands sweating inside the gloves I pull on before going to the ATM for cash. I step away, I detour, I keep my distance. Inside, I glare when a woman gets too close, her long nails rolling along the machine filling the silence with a little drum solo. I suddenly itch, imagining a family of bedbugs crawling around my ankles. The mask flaps against my face, as I try to slow my breathing. The bank is full of hot, stale air. 

Money is shoved into a pocket as I punch the numbers, counting out everything that gets paid in cash. And then shoving the door open with my foot to avoid the handle. The sun is slapping around the sidewalk. No one even sees me as I cross in the middle of the street, weaving through the cars that are waiting for the light to turn. 

Back in the car. N is playing the soundtrack to Saturday Fever and loud. I yank the gloves off and throw them into a garbage can, near some women sitting in the shade licking ice cream cones. My hands twist with sanitiser, smelling of rubbing alcohol as I slide into the seat. 

We drive home, but just as easily could be travelling in a space ship back from Mars. Inside, and outside are two different worlds. The familiar and the foreign, the believers and the unbelievers, the sick and the dead, the children on bikes, the empty faces, and mine in the side view mirror with a red line where the elastic bites into my cheek. I do not recognise this world anymore, the one outside of our apartment, the one outside of our windows even though the breeze is the same there.
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