to call home

 

The Moscow wind whips up, gnashing the trees, tossing limbs to the earth. It goes nowhere, like a toy train set turning long ovals around and around. It is just on. I try to walk, even in the pouring rain, to simpley go outside - but feel such a sense of relief in the elevator as I return. Inside, there are old guitars and a bag full of harmonicas. There are good things to eat, tucked into the fridge. The familiar spines of books stare back at me. 

Being an expat during a pandemic sharpens all of your feelings, the joy and the resentment. I could not feel farther away from a country that has a new habit of ending sentences with "getting back to normal" while the rest of the world burns. 

I remember that life on East 1st Street, and how I did not venture above 14th for a good six months because I lived in the center of the storm. Nothing happened outside of those blocks it seemed, nothing that mattered. People knew my face, nodding in the street while balancing coffees and a bacon, egg and cheese. I talked to the crackpots, conversations about who invented Disneyland. I felt safe, and understood. Of course, that was all a pipe dream, a generous fantasy to wrap myself in. I saw the towers come down from my living room windows. I saw rage in the streets, racism and bigotry, rich fools and star fuckers. The city I thought I would never leave became a hollow dream, a false prophecy, a broken promise. 

In the end, it was not difficult to leave.

But where to call home? Four walls and my family, that has been the only answer I can muster. Four walls with windows to stare at that relentless Moscow wind. Windows we crack open when it finally gets warm and cigarette smoke curls in from our neighbors. Windows that grow bright in the middle of the night, the sun backwards here while everyone is sleeping.