White Nights / Black Holes

I arrived in St Petersburg on the day of the Summer Solstice during the so-called White Nights - those few summer weeks when the sun does not fully set because of the city’s high latitude.

I checked the time: at 2 am, the sun shines, at 5:40 am, it's already up in the sky. Nearly round-the-clock daylight; moon and sun meet, me in-between.

The sunlight was penetrating everything and the Neva River seemed to fill the entire city. But instead of flowing and moving, everything felt frozen - trapped between night and day, dawn and dusk, yesterday and tomorrow.

I walked in the streets and people made me think of wax statues or dead animals preserved in formalin jars.

by AK/span>