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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 ...

THE BOAT


To the river and back, as often as I can. The sidewalks are wide, easy enough to avoid people. Easy enough to step aside then keep going up that slow hill then tilting down towards the river hoping I am alone, sometimes yes. A glassed in boat rests there, bobbing in the fake tide. It is empty, and I have never seen a guard or fresh footprints on the snow that decorates its deck. It is clean. The chairs inside are lined up in neat rows. A Russian flag hangs limp from the bow. It is a museum, a reminder of that old life. That carefree coming and going, that squandering of air, the bumping of shoulders.

I stand at the railing above it for a few minutes, a new habit. The river may be clogged with ice, or just murky. There may be fog, or hot sun. Smoke may be clawing in lazy curlicues from the smokestacks in the distance. The boat is a sort of constant, a touch stone, a destination.

"Where are you going on your walk?"

"To the boat and back."

All the same, a part of me expects to trot down that curve and see it is gone, without warning. 

Just the smell of diesel, and a clean shadow on the dock. 


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