You arrive to Old Peterhof. Get out of the bus or leave the train station, and see an empty and still pavement. From time to time an emergency ambulance, lorry or a person in a wheelchair goes by. Here you can start to see the forest appear. You pass the trees, while their trunks blend into each other in the deep forest. You can feel the smell of the air, and suddenly hear the silence. If you walk this way for about 20 minutes, you will reach the huge white building of the asylum. People living there rarely go out, and most of them are unable to even walk in the forest.

You go up the stairs, open the door and find yourself inside the 3rd unit. It was opened for people with the most severe developmental disabilities. It is quite noisy there – the entire life happens in one long and finite space of the corridor, that’s why constant motion is happening. Apart from the employees of the asylum and the people who live there, you can see volunteers walking down the corridor, as they enter rooms and often just sit on the bed by the side of the residents holding their hand and embracing them. Just before lunch is the most lively time there– everyone gathers and gets ready in advance – you need to arrange the chairs, bring those who cannot come by themselves, wake up those who are asleep. At this hour, it feels as if the number of employees expands greatly: the stronger ones help those who cannot move, put on clothes, go to the toilet or eat by themselves. No one teaches them to do it, it happens naturally – for example, Ksusha always feeds Vika, who cannot hold her head by herself, and she often doesn`t have time to eat, but nevertheless both of them look very happy.

When you leave, you might feel that you can barely move your arm because it aches so badly due to so many people gripping it with inhuman strength. It is gripped this way because they want your arm to become their arm. They grip it because they want to. How often do you hold someone’s hand? It could be every morning or several times a day. Why do you feel this need? To overcome the longing for much needed closeness, to share what is yours, to feel compassion, warmth and response. We also want love. If we think about it, what truly important things happen to us? We feel the emotions of being happy, sad, worried, shy, jealous, concerned, we want to drink or sleep, we dream. And we try to express this. Everyone tries to express themselves in their own special way. We express it as best as we can.

You get out of the asylum, and again find yourself on the road. All around you is forest. When you leave, the road seems different, as if it became longer. Although usually it is the other way around – the road back seems shorter. Perhaps everything slows down – time flows in the asylum and in the city at a different pace. Here, on this road, appears a clearing in the forest, where you can stop. Layers of thought change places, and your thinking starts to proceed in a different sequence: about something uncertain and fleeting – about meaning, patience, truthfulness, death, normality, being needed, about yourself. You want to walk even slower, in order to remember this slow pace, to understand it and keep it inside.