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.

Our Lives in Our Hands

An angry voice insists on squeezing its way through my window. He sounds drunk, but it could be the fury not the wine. Drying my hands on a tea-towel I wander idly across the kitchen and peer into the glistening street below. It takes me a little while to piece it all together, but finally I see her. A woman is lying on the road, partly concealed by the leaves of a tree beneath my apartment: only her arm and a foot are visible from my vantage point. As I watch, a team move towards her, lift her carefully, and wheel her into a waiting ambulance. Her limbs sway with the motion of the stretcher, but she is not moving.

There is time to notice details. I see that she is wearing a knee-length black skirt and dark tights. She has a light suit jacket over a cream blouse, but no coat. A pretty gold necklace glints in the afternoon sun. She is young. She had been lying less than two metres away from a pedestrian crossing: the one I use myself on a daily basis.

Angry Man is shouting into the open window of a police car. He has a lot to say. The police are here but are making no attempt to control traffic around the accident spot. Cars are driving up onto the pavements and creeping along the edges of the tragedy, some of them leaning on their horns in protest at the inconvenience. The traffic moves ahead, the rain begins again, life goes on. The nonchalant, passive apathy of the whole scene enrages me: me and Angry Man, who is still intermittently shouting.

The pedestrian crossing in Moscow may get you from one side of the street to the other (although you take your life into your hands every time), but it is also the site of intersection between cultures. Here you will immediately realise the difference between Russia and… other places. Never assume that a pedestrian crossing here is a safe place to cross the road. A driver may begin to slow down but change their minds at the last minute because, after all, it’s much easier to accelerate than to brake, especially if your free hand Is busy holding your mobile phone to your ear. The staggering indifference to the value of human life as demonstrated by many Moscow drivers is something I will never get over, however long I may live here.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), science-fiction, horror, mystery and fantasy writer, speaking half a century ago:

“I never learned to drive. As a kid, I saw too many fatal accidents and I grew up hating the idea. Automobiles slaughter 40,000 people a year, maim a hundred thousand more, and bring out the worst in men. Any society where a natural man — the pedestrian — becomes the intruder, and an unnatural men encased in a steel shell becomes his molester, is a science fiction nightmare.”

• (Story of a Writer is from the brilliant site of Maria Popova, who curates a consistently fascinating corner of the internet at: http://www.brainpickings.org)

Sam Gerrans on being a pedestrian in Moscow – very funny and very true. Click here:- Inside Out: The Voice of Russia

Hot on Her Heels

This gallery contains 5 photos.

FOOTSTEP ONE: My own feet pad softly on the dusty street. The footsteps I am tracking are heard but not seen. Behind me sharp heels ring out on the hard pavement and while I wait for her to pass me, … Continue reading →

The Secret Life of an Invisible Woman

I arrived in this city a stranger to myself, and I perceive that I am also not visible to others in this new place. In these streets I am unseen, in this language I am unheard, in this landscape I emerge, formless, like a shadow or shade.

My first encounters with this city are dry and strange, full of colour and dust and a brittle sense of adventure. This, I say to myself, feels more like the me I know. I think I like it here, but living here will take some work. Suddenly I am back in touch with my own instincts again: now all I need is the courage to follow them. I can’t quite believe I’m in Russia.

The last time I had a shape, it was already shifting. Today this is where I need to be, right here. Dreaming, remembering, storing, learning and preparing. All will be different from this point, and I know it in my bones. All over again begins the process of finding my voice. This time the search is so much more conscious. Time to finish what is finished and begin again with what is real. I miss my family so much. I want to be with them, love them, be close to them, and yet… Regrets: now I realise how many I embrace. Now I can see the habit I have had of clutching them close, like a kind of holding of the breath.

I have become invisible. It is not uncomfortable, it doesn’t exactly hurt, it’s just a little strange to feel that the particles of my being have somehow dissolved and that I am no longer matter – I do not matter. I am a transparent haze of unformulated desire. Is this freedom, or is this exile? How will I know the difference?