It was a cold February afternoon at the -20’s celsius in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Lake Tom was fully frozen, and there were no signs of traditional winter swimming festivities around the river—another dying Russian tradition. Spending his 124th day without leaving his home, Arseny spent an hour between the unconscious and subconscious as he slowly woke up in his fully orthopedic bed. The past 4 years he had repetitive dreams of falling, in some dreams he was falling in an airplane and in other dreams he was falling down from a building, but the theme was all the same, a terrifying feeling of rapid descent. On some occasions his dreams haunted him for up to 3 hours after he had woken up. He wanted to get back on a normal sleep schedule, since he promised his newly divorced mom Alexandra that he would go with her to an all inclusive beach resort near the city of Latakia located in the Russian state of western Syria. He took a glance at his alarm clock which read 4:53 from a distance. From the day light outside he couldn’t discern wether it was morning or the afternoon, he had completely lost track of time. The clock for him was nothing more than meaningless numbers.
Şahin Kaya Arıkoğlu 