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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

being in nature


 V is always bringing back a piece of outside with her. A handful of wildflowers, a graceful stick, a smooth rock. There is a museum of pinecones by our entry door, all her making. I don’t know if they are trophies or specimens - a careful exploration or a random habit. When I was a boy we often pressed flowers between the pages of thick books and forgot them, only to take a quick breath when we found them months later as they slid all papery to the floor and fell to prices. 

People like to say “being in nature” but I wonder, is there really less nature inside or is it just a different one? There is still mold. There are still flies and dust, everything crumbling and returning to a mildewy powder at the slowest pace. Over time the cracks in the ceiling grow, the corners of doorways get rounded off. The floor scrapes in wild patches, just like paths in the forest. 

V and N have a habit of planting things in tiny pots. A sprig of rosemary, a promising avocado pit, a collection of lemon seeds. Invariably they grow, sucking up water, sprouting and crawling up the kitchen windows, every day a deeper green and a few millimeters taller. Earth and sun, water and attention. It seems so simple but I have never been capable of it. 

In the depths of winter, in the dimmest mid-day their leaves grow luminous and smell like Spring if you brush a finger against them. 

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