02.09.2024 / I'm fine
It's been a beautiful summer with nearly perfect weather in Kyiv. I read a couple books, spent a lot of time translating, and swam in the river across the street from my building.
Many mornings I stop in the kitchen at 9 AM and stand still, listening to the solemn beat on the radio while remembering those killed in Ukraine by russia's assault. I recall people by name, picturing their size and shape and where we were last together. The list keeps growing. Add Veronika Kozhuchko, a bright 18-year-old artist killed in russia's strike on Kharkiv over the weekend. You've seen her photo on Facebook. Some of these people I will never meet—at least not in this world—though surely we should have been friends.
PEN Ukraine has been keeping a public register of people involved in Ukrainian culture killed by russia since 2022. Together with The Ukrainians Media they're building a collection of commemorative essays about the individual artists, translators, historians, musicians, museum directors, etc. whose generous, productive lives were cut short by russian fire. It is a heavy archive—at once a rich history introducing us to talented, principled individuals from all corners of the country and a cold reminder that their hearts and minds have stopped forever. I had no idea there was a patriotic Ukrainian orchestra conductor living in Kherson until after the russian occupying forces killed Yurii Kerpatenko by shooting him through the closed door of his apartment. I got to know Victoria Amelina only through her writing and the recollections of her friends. How is it that I never crossed paths with Yehven Hulevych, who seems like such a kindred spirit, while he was alive?
READ about these bright individuals whose lives and works russia cut short: https://theukrainians.org/spec/peopleofcultureeng/
Poet Maksym Kryvtsov, killed in action this past winter, has become a friend, from that side of the threshold, as I've been translating his poems into English. He's surely had a hand in organizing this endeavor, for the way that I came to be translating his tactile, transcendent and playful verse together with the brilliant Helena Kernan is a bit too serendipitous. There is something safe in being friends with the dead. Someone who's already dead can’t be killed.
Spending time with the living has become that much more special. I may be dumb and tired, I never have time, but it's nearly impossible to refuse a chance to see or speak to my friends in those rare moments when the stars (i.e., our schedules) align.
The other day I ran into photographer Sasha (Oleksandr) Glyadyelov in the center of Kyiv. I said, "I saw you onscreen last month!" He said he's heading to New York (his first trip abroad in years), where the Ukrainian Museum will be screening the documentary that bears his name. It tracks his life capturing Soviet brutality, Ukrainian mettle, and decades of war on film. The museum is concurrently exhibiting a selection of Sasha's dignified, unflinching black-and-white photos of war in Ukraine since 2022.
GO: https://www.theukrainianmuseum.org/uk/umevents/
What gets me up each morning is the fact that I am still here, alive, what a ridiculous precious gift.
One Saturday in August I'm heading toward the National Museum of Art to see a couple old friends, remarkable dancers, perform in the galleries of the How Do You Dance in a War Zone? exhibition. Walking through Kyiv's central Maidan Nezalezhnosti, I cannot rush past the sea of flags that fill a sector of the square. Here and there faces look out from the dense carpet of fluttering blue and yellow; some of the photos and flags are faded, others fresh. I know some of these names. Each flag stands for somebody who was a friend, a brother a father an uncle a sister a neighbor a daughter a classmate a commander a person. Far too many to even think of counting. This is not about "lives"; these were people—rich, interconnected beings that move and think and act. Who could dance.
I don't want you to forget.
I don't want you to forget that these people died to stop russia from swallowing and destroying us all—first in Ukraine, then wherever they encounter the least resistance. I don't want this to sound like a fairy tale. There is nothing romantic about war. War is very concrete.
It's the pile of rubble outside the medical clinic that I pass every time I take the metro into the city center; it was destroyed by a piece of a russian missile shot down by our air defenses, killing nine people inside, earlier this summer. It's my friend's balcony crashing five stories to the ground (seconds after she took shelter in the bathroom) after a russian missile struck an apartment building in her residential neighborhood. It's my colleague's friend lying in hospital with life-threatening injuries after russia targeted the hotel in Kramatorsk where a team of journalists was staying. It is my neighbor's friend from school (they're in their 50s), who joined the the AFU and went MIA last week.
This is the substance of the massive installation that artist Oleksiy Sai (another old friend) and Vitaliy Deynega (founder of Ukrainian Witness) erected at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert this past week. A collage of road signs, metal fences from private homes, solar panels and satellite dishes, shot up by russian artillery, pierced by shrapnel, and collected from all over Ukraine, spells out in letters 7 meters high: I'm fine ;)
WATCH the construction and responses of festivalgoers:
At 32 meters long, the phrase speaks from a distance, but as people approach they can see and touch the evidence of russia's campaign to destroy Ukraine. As Sai said in an interview with the BBC, "I want people to stick their finger in these holes from the shrapnel. They may get more from this than from the news."
It's not enough to watch this gruesome show from afar. We need you to stop waffling and waiting for russia's next escalation. We need you to support Ukraine's efforts to incapacitate russia's boundless war machine. We need to stop their missiles, rockets, guided bombs and Shahed drones *before* they enter Ukraine's airspace.
If the terrorist rf is STILL free to dictate the terms to put on these shows of power—I wrote in my diary on August 26, sitting without power after russia sent at least 127 missiles and 109 drones into Ukraine in *one day*—even if these strikes happen monthly rather than weekly, like in 2022, then clearly I have failed. You'll say, "Don't be so hard on yourself." But that's the whole problem, isn't it? That you and I have a culture where we are constantly giving ourselves a break, taking it easy, when THE WORLD NEEDS US to make an effort. Not your employer, your career, your future, but the World, OUR world.
It's still a matter of each person doing their part and no contribution is too small. Olena Makhanova—remember the Peacekeeping Raccoons?—is raising money to buy a night-vision device for an anti-aircraft defense crew in the Kherson region. Why night vision? Because shining a spotlight at their targets immediately gives away their position. One of russia's goals in sending waves of drones into Ukraine, aside from obvious destructive intent, is to identify the locations of our air defenses.
Olena needs $3300 to buy an Archer TSA 10/40. Help her raise the remaining $2120 by DONATING via PayPal: olenamahanova@gmail.com
or credit card: https://send.monobank.ua/jar/2knrJLtv4f
We are fighting to live in our Ukraine, with its rich, complex, and aching for attention cultural history. You can hear what happens when Ukrainian artists from Kharkiv—poet Serhiy Zhadan (now serving in the AFU) and Berlin-based DJ Yuriy Gurzhy—let the voices and verses of Ukrainian poets from the early 20th century dance with contemporary grooves. Foxtroty is a 2021 album that brings the spirit of those hundred-year-old poets to life, while giving today's Ukrainian pop weight, texture, and grandparents.
LISTEN online: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTmrvRiEyOETbSu915-O9moPiKs_1JMfm
We need a living connection to our dead—and serious respect for this time we have to be alive.
Thank you for reminding us that the war is not just taking territory, cities and infrastructure from Ukraine. The loss of human creativity, potentional and kindness is devastating.
My god - what an achingly poetic essay - one that should never have had to be written. Yet so grateful that you expressed what you did in the way you did. And so necessary that enclosed is that ever so succinct reminder to make an effort. I promise.