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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

Wake up, no Katz's


She wakes me up with three light knocks on the door, then runs back to bed pulling the covers up to her chin. I lay her clothes out on a chair and make coffee. In a choreographed silence she stands, waiting for me to button her shirt. I sip from my red cup, already cold, already spotted with milk like an alligator's skin.

Yes, everything is there in the bag. We go out, her hand tight in mine and then she begins to talk. She tells me the clouds are moving, just very slowly. She tells me that in Paris it rains a lot. She tells me that people who are evil have bad smells coming out of them.

Inside, her teacher studies us, the measured movements, the balancing on one foot as she pulls off boots and slips into Mary Janes. Me, fixing her hair after the red hat comes off, the kiss on the forehead, the nod of her tiny chin.

I am already exhausted, already missing the messy freedom of July.


Sometimes I just want to stick my head out a window and scream for a long time. Sometimes I want to call in sick, and be responsible for nothing.

I want to go home.

I want E to go to Katz's for hotdogs with mustard and kraut on Fridays after school. I want to take her on long walks in Central Park and see the parade of dogs and strollers, of leaves and bicycles and roller skates. I want to go to Coney Island and say goodbye to summer, like I did every September in New York.


She dances at a party, hands in fists, feet high in the air. E stomps and wiggles with a gleeful desperation, with defiance. I twirl her, spin her, throw her up in the air above my head.

Anyone that can dance like that will survive.




Comments

liv said…
That picture!!
There is a lifetime of expression in that tiny face. So much said with those swollen little eyes.

Don't hold that scream in, Marco. It won't do anything good for you, burning it's brand into your chest. People who scream like that - will survive.
Mely said…
Oh! Please do scream.

Maybe it helps a little.

Mely
Marco North said…
I do a bit of screaming sometimes under an AKA. Go here. http://martinruby.bandcamp.com/track/eadie
Screaming, crying, blogging: all great ways of expressing your pain. Be happy you two.

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