Inside Out

This morning sees the First Snow. A few, tiny, lethargic flakes flit about in opposite directions as if they have forgotten what to do since the last time. Should they descend, should they float back up? I am being guided through the lanes and alleys behind the roaring Moscow streets. After this visit to the surgeon my vision is so smeared that the sounds of the city have thickened and seem to press against my skin. We sweep past layers of voices: chattering, urgent, idle, laughing. These Russian tones are familiar to me now, although I can still filter them out if I want to, (something I can never do with the voices of my native tongue).

Behind the hospital the lanes wind and twist past crumbling balconies that reach outwards from old houses, groups of builders silently smoking, a cafe and a row of bikes. After two injections in each eye, several drops to anaesthetise and still others to dilate, the world is far too bright for me right now. I am seeing double, but it’s double nothing. All the details blur into a violet halo; an aura which surrounds each shimmering line, each shadowed face. The tiny snow flecks are pointed out to me. It’s hard to seize them into sight in the garish blur of this doubled version of the world but as a perfect, miniature snowflake finally lands upon my sleeve and winks at me I cannot help a sudden smile. I make a wish.

We walk past two men standing very close together: a uniformed policeman and a dark-haired man in very old boots. It is a silent transaction, there is nothing to hear. The details of their faces I cannot make out, but the thoroughness of the fingers searching into every corner of all the pockets of the bag being held out – this is something I can somehow sense, even in the brief flash of time it takes to walk past them. Now it is really starting to get cold.

Later in the metro I remember the tiny snowflakes so clearly that it feels as though they are flying about inside the carriage of the train. I close my eyes, because they are still playing tricks. It turns out that closing them doesn’t help. Pictures begin to sketch themselves into the reddish black darkness of the underside of my eyelids, which seem now to have become screens. Or mirrors? Faces build and fade there from time to time: some abstract, some recognisable, some hovering in between. Now I suddenly find myself staring into the image of my own eyes, as they were before, and noting how they clearly and defiantly gaze back. I am so shocked that my eyelids snap open and I am relieved simply to see lots of sleepy people sitting in a very ordinary train (inside which it is not snowing).

Looking outwards I cannot see what is there to be seen, but have still somehow perceived many tiny, invisible things. Looking inwards I find I can see what is not there to be seen at all. Today the world is inside out.