this odd inertia

There are nagging dreams, with a soft bed and water leaking from the ceiling above it. The warmth of the covers is eclipsed by the cold, wet neighbor’s drip. After a brief search, the translation is a loss of power, an inescapable vulnerability. There is nowhere to sleep, and nowhere to go. All the same, morning brings its headlines, chewed and digested, chased by cold coffee and the flat gray sky. I need to manufacture something, some chore to shake all of this off, while innocent people are shot across the world and closer to here and everywhere in between.

There is a store I must visit that is on the outskirts of the city, dropping off something that broke ages ago - so it just might be fixed. A taxi would be far too expensive and I hatch a plan to take a bus, not that I have ever taken a bus here. We New Yorkers walk for miles and dismiss all other forms of transport, except trains and taxis. It is 16 kilometers away, and the bus stop is not terribly far so I venture out, with a camera tucked in a bag and various directions.

The plan goes south fairly quickly, as I understand it is not a bus but a mashrutka, a minivan crammed with people, famous for getting sneezed on by a stranger or a driver that acts out some psychosis on anyone and everyone around them. I decide to walk to the nearest metro instead. I have not been on one since before Covid, a good six years ago. There is a stray mask in a coat pocket and here I am, going down one of those epic Soviet-era escalators, rumbling slowly into the bowels of the city. A twinge of Moscow dejavu hiccups in the air, as the stairs beneath me rumble, as I remember to lean to the right so anxious people can shove past me on the left.

The Tbilisi metro has just two lines and one transfer point, so it is almost impossible to get lost. The wheels screech and I understand that I missed this odd inertia, this trying not to stare at faces, this grabbing for the handrails, this listening for the name of the next stop, this rush of cold air as a train churns away, this climb to the street, re-orienting and looking for landmarks. And now, waiting for a bus, an actual bus and the 18 stops slowly click by, as old women ease out of the doors, as students crack gum and laugh and whisper, as I try to put the world behind me and take a good look at this one, the parts of the city I have never been to.

So many years ago, a famous man in Moscow with a last name people whispered as he entered the room asked me to work with him. At one point during lunch, he asked where we lived and I told him Kutuzovsky and he laughed long and hard. “There is a whole world beyond that apartment on Kutuzovsky, and you know nothing about it!” He was prone to salty comments that were impossible to argue with. The job never happened, as 99% of the Russian jobs I was asked to take part in were prone to do. All the same, I remember him saying that now, as I stare at corners of the city I have never seen, passing streets and churches and shopping centers that could just as easily be on Mars.

The sun is going down, and people are winding their way home, sprinkled across the sidewalks with plastic bags dangling from their wrists.

On the way back, I pull the camera from the bag only to understand it is the wrong body with the wrong film in it. I might have laughed at myself, but thoughts of going home and returning to that cloud of reality, those headlines, those violent acts, the greed and the desperation come racing back. Tomorrow I may need to wash all of the windows, to pretend I have done something.