THE BABY AND THE GLITCH

 

There is no place else to go, even in -20C. Yes, once more to the river and back. There are tiny icicles on my eyelashes that I swat away. A woman is jogging in ski goggles - making tiny deliberate steps in the snow as she slogs past me. A man drags a shopping cart into the tiny park and sure enough, someone appears from inside that glassed in boat. A door swings open, a package is received. I stare down at the water, clogging with ice again. This is the Russian winter, an exhausting repetition. 

And then as I begin to leave, the woman in the ski goggles churns past, coming from the same direction as last time. It is like she has a perfect twin, or a clone that followed her. I have noticed a loop in the matrix it seems, a glitch. I caught them, those tricky bastards with their film that plays whenever I go outside. This is the new Truman Show.

All the same, my feet are bringing me back to the road, to the slow rise of a hill and home. The jogging woman passes me once more, practically brushing my shoulder as she passes in the wide open street where no cars can go. It is as if she needs to prove that she is real, that my lockdown paranoia is getting the best of me. A car pulls up to the entrance, blinkers on. A woman gets out with a white paper box wrapped in red string which must have a cake inside it. She heads for the boat. Maybe it is someone's birthday. That feels more real than anything else here - the cake I imagine is shifting around in there, frosting knocking against the walls. 

And then home, and even though there is a pile of work to do I pull out microphones from their treasured boxes. I run cables, set up stands. A half-finished song is on the way and just like in a sitcom, this baby will be born soon - contractions leading directly to howling in the living room, banging on the piano.

The wind blows hard out there, where nothing feels real. A phantom draft kicks around the room. 

This is the only place that makes sense to me.