Moscow

Moscow was shrouded in smoke! I got here day before yesterday, in the evening, and the whole city smelled like the inside of a woodstove. People march stony-faced up and down grey streets with surgical masks hiding their expressions (or lack thereof), buildings fade off into an otherworldly haze that obscures the ends of streets and wipes away the skyline. After dark the city transforms into a dreamscape; maybe it was the bottle of Bordeaux I shared with Vasya, maybe the shock of leaving Petersburg, but more than anything the surreal sensation of walking into a dream was from the omnipresent smoke. Дым, it's called in Russian. Dym. And it seeps into the metropolitan, and it cuts at your eyes, and it reminds me of my father and the 3rd-degree burns I got when I warmed myself too close to our gargantuan iron stove. I was so tiny, and the stove looms enormous and black in my memory; was it really twice as tall as me?

The smoke has cleared somewhat, but the singed smell remains, and the whole city is parched. Grass is sand-colored and harsh, trees are already shedding crumpled, crisping leaves. August is a force to reckon with here.

Tomorrow I'm taking the train to Kiev.

I'm too busy having adventures to write them down! I'm too busy jamming under the bridge on the far side of town, playing my kazoo, drinking rum on the banks of the Neva, riding Petya's spare bicycle in between lanes of traffic, shooting watermelon seeds at pigeons, swimming in the Bolshaya Nevka, making galettes, packing my suitcase, being locked out of my apartment, walking across town (and back again), birthday partying, giving concerts on the roof, sleeping under the table, in the park, at friend's houses, everywhere but my bed. Oh I wish I could give my time here the description it deserves.

Нам не так уж долго осталось быть здесь вместе

I feel, again, for the hundredth time in my life, like my life is a text scrolling past me faster than I can read it, and it falls to me to reach out and grasp at it, try to slow it down and at least make sense of the moment before it's gone. But the moments fly by and I gain no understanding, just a fleeting sensation that I've missed something important and it will never come back. I feel the weight and guilt of having taken even a moment of my time here for granted, I feel like I deserve bruises for how much I've wasted wallowing in loneliness, helplessness, self-pity when I was down. I can't believe I let myself get away with it. Once again I've come to that point where my stay has been whittled down, the days have dwindled to few and I can count them on my fingers but before I can close my palm on them another chalk line appears on the wall and another day has disappeared. I am sad, because I don't want to go home. I am sad, because part of me thinks this is home. I am sad, because it is a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only once. If I had two lives, I'd spend one of them here.

I am scared, because I don't know if I'll ever come back.

It seems like I discovered all of the books, films, songs, and pictures that resonate with me early in life, all at once; I turn back to the same pages and notes to describe my state of mind, even though I've heard hundreds of songs since then and read more books than I remember. Maybe I've grown harder, the way babys' skulls are in pieces at first but stitch together with time; maybe I'm not growing anymore.

My life is so incredible and I miss it already.