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.