Thinking of you and praying daily that this nightmare will end...The frustration that I feel, the grief, the rage, all of these emotions I feel daily and I am living in the USA, thousands of miles away from this brutal savage invasion of a sovereign country...I can only imagine what you and all Ukrainians must be going through...May it end soon, and until then may you and your family remain safe and may all of Ukraine be protected from any further harm...Sending you love, comfort, and fortitude...
Thank you so much for your kind words and support, Anne! I live in the U.S., too, but my husband’s family lived in Ukraine and went through the horrors of running away from Russian missiles and tanks and then becoming refugees in a foreign country with just a few suitcases where they packed all their lives. While they are in relative safety now, my husband and I have many people we care about who stayed in Ukraine and who try to survive daily bombings and attacks. We have friends on the frontlines as well. So, the deep worry for all of them, the inability to help husband’s family to return home or lessen their emotional struggles, and the realization that the developed world doesn’t want Russia to lose for their own selfish reasons and interests — all of this weighs heavily on my heart.
I did not realize you were in the US...How incredibly difficult to watch from afar as relatives and friends are suffering so needlessly...I can understand the weight of the worry you are feeling and I pray that you are comforted and that you know that bearing witness IS something of value and IS something we all can do if we have the capacity...You are so kind and have such a generous heart that realizes its connections across time and space...On a lighter note, I plan to make your Belarusian potato pancakes for breakfast tomorrow...My husband and I love them!
I’m sharing this post. You are a great writer. I don’t feel like I know the right words to say, or my words don’t feel adequate enough when I comment on posts about the war. I want so much to show my support for Ukraine and its people. I never want to say something that sounds insensitive. I have been interested in Ukraine for a large part of my life and I will speak out against the horrific crimes against Ukrainians. I don’t understand how or why so many people are foolish enough to support Russia. It’s mind boggling. I have friends in Ukraine and I care about them like family. Even if I didn’t know people in Ukraine, it would not be at all difficult to understand that the atrocities against Ukrainians are wrong. I hope the war ends with Ukraine’s victory soon. I believe in Ukraine’s ability to win this war, but you all need the weapons and other support that you deserve. I’m so sorry that there are such asshats in governments around the world. I am American and I am so ashamed that my country hasn’t continued providing necessary aid to Ukraine.
Those poems are some of your best yet Darya (in my view anyway!). Your comment about looking into the darkness being necessary is so true - one has to look hard into the dark to see what’s really there.
Thank you so much, Tanya! It's always very scary to share poems, especially if they are honest and emotional like the ones in this post, so to hear such feedback is priceless!
The 2 soundtracks are soothing. especially for those suffering, directly or indirectly, from the Russian aggression on Ukraine.
I'm starting to realize how much this distant war (from Canada) has affected me.
And how I am at a loss as to how many are indifferent, or even supporting the aggression, such as Trump & his MAGA supporters in the US.
In Canada there is too much indiffence. No one would dare to openly support Russia's aggression.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe.
It reminds me of a short story about the slimy green rain. At first, everyone panicked when it first appeared from time to time. Gradually it became more frequent, eventually the only rain that fell. And everyone came to see it as normal, not remembering that rain had once been clean.
Thank you for your support, André! I agree, too often, it does seem like a parallel universe. If not for the Internet which connects me with people who care, I would think that almost no one cares at all. However, I remind myself that in order to change things, we don’t need the vast majority of people to support our cause. We just need to find the same caring and active people and keep pushing together. That how it always works.
Thank you for sharing the story about the rain. I agree with your metaphor. Let’s keep working together to get rid of this slimy rain.
Thank you sharing your thoughts and these poems. These are indeed powerful poems. Simple and direct. It was... a pleasure (there is no other word) to read them and agree with every word you wrote.
Harrison to the Indians, would be like what Putin and a lot of Russians are to most of the civilized world. Ya, Harrison did go on to become President of the US, but he is more famous for being made a fool of by an Injun.
Hope takes many forms. I am not a big believer in anything mystical, but I do know that those that care give each other hope in something in knowing that we are not alone. I too get so depressed, and reading your posts hear, the quality of the writing and the obvious intelligence of the writer makes me feel comfortable with my constant angst about the state of the world. Not comfortable that I will someday be able to ignore the situation, rather comfortable in the knowledge somehow, someway we lucky few will find a way to develop meaning from our struggles and channel our hard learnt lessons constructively. Not all of us can become a Tecumseh, but leaders only can lead when they are heard. Keep posting Darya...it is helping some of us to stay real.
I didn't know about the Tecumseh Eclipse of 1806, thank you so much for sharing! I read the article, and it was very interesting. Whenever I read about the colonization of America and what Indians went through, it always makes me very sad. Not only because it shows pain and injustice but also because such pain and injustice continue to happen centuries later.
What you wrote about hope deeply resonated with me. Thank you for always hearing and understanding what I try to convey through my words, and thank you for your support!
Thank you, and to everyone who labors almost sisyphean like to put the current situation in context. What I have read here, and on a few twitter pages resonates far louder than the stuff that comes out of main stream media e.g. Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.
I respect immensely that in addition to the words you write that you don't try to redeem your moral self worth vicariously. Rather you commit to action. IMHO, it deepens the richness of the soil for future individual growth.
I remember during my down and out days, sitting alone in my skid row apartment wondering WTF and reading about Robert the Bruce, how he laid alone in a windswept cave seemingly beaten and with good reason to be without hope. Apparently, as he laid on the cave's rock bed, he watched a spider struggling to spin a web. Each time the wind blew the spider down, it crawl back and kept on trying and it eventually succeeded . The legend goes he had an epiphany that if a lowly spider could succeed despite seemingly insurmountable odds then who was he to stop trying, i.e. a person with the ability to reason and derived context from his circumstances.
While I am no Robert the Bruce, I understood why reading about Robert the Bruce resonated with me. I come to this site to be reminded why caring matters.....so thank you for all that you share. It is appreciated.
Thank you, David! And thank you for sharing a story about Robert the Bruce and your wisdom. I always learn something new from you, and I appreciate it very much.
I generally don't like posting for it often seems to me that I come across as narcistic.
Let me try to be real in my way. Today, I went to a chamber orchestra concert, and during one of the pieces I started to ask myself what does spiritual beauty look like to a classically trained musician. For a barbarian like me, my interest gets initially triggered by a person's eyes or smile..a pretty low bar. Nevertheless, as the concert played on my thoughts drifted to what I consider my strongest sources of motivation and what in the physical world draws my attention.
Very recently, I had watched a translated video on Facebook (fuck the term META) post by an older Ukrainian woman who strongly expressed her faith in God for she was very grateful that some strangers out of nowhere brought her some food, and gave her a little money for she had been recently robbed. I am not a person of strong faith, but I could hear in the intensity of her voice the utility of having faith in god. I think it was what triggered my mind to wonder during the concert I watched today.
I have fears too of a different sort. But in comparison to the horrors I constantly read about about Ukraine, they are of a different order. But, my fears, are just as consequential to me, as say those people in Kharkiv who have good cause to believe that ruzzia is planning to pulverize their city to the ground.
I think I wrote here that as a teenager I worked in a sort of hospice as a janitor of sorts. Before I worked there, I was very uncomfortable talking to people who were obviously seriously injured or seemingly handicapped (and older people). Often, on weekends, it fell to me to clean the hoods on steam tables. When I did, often the young men with muscular dystrophy (MD) would buzz around me in their electric wheel chairs and ask me questions. Over time, I began to slowly realize that as I was relating my experiences outside of the hospice, that they were living vicariously thru my words. In short I was living the life that they would be living if they had not been cursed with MD. I could not cure them, but the more I opened up and shared whatever, I think the more they realized what could've been for my experiences were not that of some jock, or super rich Brainiac but of an ordinary person. And, the reward for me, was that I became far more confident in expressing myself in different and difficult situations which I think saved my life. a few times, when I traveled overseas and found myself in some hotspots.
So here I come sometimes, and really my goal is to express in real terms, as best as possible the viewpoint of probably many in my position who have not been exposed to the things that you have been, but at the same time at the core perhaps understand the intensity of the emotions that you have been expressing.
Back to the concert, I think it is an interesting question about what strikes a classical trained musician as being beautiful in a person. I think it is a normal type question that may come when one is not dodging missiles. I wonder if at the beginning of their journey were they driven with the same intensity as many of us by are our fears and insecurities. It seems like such a shallow thing, but is it the question that is really the issue or the questioning.
So I don't come to this forum to preach or anything, I come to learn how to stay real. When I do share something, I am just relating something I read or experienced. I know people who talk, and talk, and talk, and to me they sometimes come across as being too full of themselves. What's that saying, it takes one to know one.
I'm sorry you're getting so much of this lately. I like to think it's worse online, but it sounds like you get it from a lot of people in 'real' life as well - do you find it's getting even worse with time? Fortunately I was able to write up some good news today: https://annabowles.substack.com/p/helping-rebuild-a-village-in-mykolaiv
In my personal experience, people in real life gradually started to care less and less until many stopped caring at all. They don’t read/see/are interested in the news about Ukraine anymore, and the attitude that I described in my poems started to return. There is a huge gap between people in the pro-Ukraine Internet bubble or community and the rest. When I step out of that bubble, I’m often shocked how little understanding people have and that I have to explain some things to them as if I am talking to 2 years olds.
I’ve just read your article, and it’s amazing how much you help Ukrainians in the Mykolaiv region! Thank you so much for your work! Please stay safe, and don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.
Thanks for your kind words. I'm in no danger of not taking care of myself while I'm with Freefilmers - for one thing they start feeding me Ukrainian soups and my diet is instantly 10x healthier than at home. The health benefits of Sashko’s ‘solidarity borscht’ – he’s somewhat of a leftist – probably outweigh the small chance of a missile landing in our yard.
I don’t talk to that many people in real life (when in the UK) as I work at home and even the nearest coffee shop happens to be run by a Ukrainian, so I am probably insulated. It must be exhausting putting in so much time to trying to reason with people who are barely engaged. I don’t think I need to tell you to take care of yourself, too, though, as this blog shows you know how to do that, even though it’s very difficult these days.
Thinking of you and praying daily that this nightmare will end...The frustration that I feel, the grief, the rage, all of these emotions I feel daily and I am living in the USA, thousands of miles away from this brutal savage invasion of a sovereign country...I can only imagine what you and all Ukrainians must be going through...May it end soon, and until then may you and your family remain safe and may all of Ukraine be protected from any further harm...Sending you love, comfort, and fortitude...
Thank you so much for your kind words and support, Anne! I live in the U.S., too, but my husband’s family lived in Ukraine and went through the horrors of running away from Russian missiles and tanks and then becoming refugees in a foreign country with just a few suitcases where they packed all their lives. While they are in relative safety now, my husband and I have many people we care about who stayed in Ukraine and who try to survive daily bombings and attacks. We have friends on the frontlines as well. So, the deep worry for all of them, the inability to help husband’s family to return home or lessen their emotional struggles, and the realization that the developed world doesn’t want Russia to lose for their own selfish reasons and interests — all of this weighs heavily on my heart.
I did not realize you were in the US...How incredibly difficult to watch from afar as relatives and friends are suffering so needlessly...I can understand the weight of the worry you are feeling and I pray that you are comforted and that you know that bearing witness IS something of value and IS something we all can do if we have the capacity...You are so kind and have such a generous heart that realizes its connections across time and space...On a lighter note, I plan to make your Belarusian potato pancakes for breakfast tomorrow...My husband and I love them!
Thank you, Anne! ❤️🫂
Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you love the pancakes!!
I’m sharing this post. You are a great writer. I don’t feel like I know the right words to say, or my words don’t feel adequate enough when I comment on posts about the war. I want so much to show my support for Ukraine and its people. I never want to say something that sounds insensitive. I have been interested in Ukraine for a large part of my life and I will speak out against the horrific crimes against Ukrainians. I don’t understand how or why so many people are foolish enough to support Russia. It’s mind boggling. I have friends in Ukraine and I care about them like family. Even if I didn’t know people in Ukraine, it would not be at all difficult to understand that the atrocities against Ukrainians are wrong. I hope the war ends with Ukraine’s victory soon. I believe in Ukraine’s ability to win this war, but you all need the weapons and other support that you deserve. I’m so sorry that there are such asshats in governments around the world. I am American and I am so ashamed that my country hasn’t continued providing necessary aid to Ukraine.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tracy, and your continuous support! It means a lot to hear!
The second one is incredibly moving. Anyone who tries to whip out those lies around me gets set straight real fast. And I'm rarely nice about it.
Thank you for your feedback and support, Rachel!
Those poems are some of your best yet Darya (in my view anyway!). Your comment about looking into the darkness being necessary is so true - one has to look hard into the dark to see what’s really there.
Thank you so much, Tanya! It's always very scary to share poems, especially if they are honest and emotional like the ones in this post, so to hear such feedback is priceless!
Putting any art into the world is brave but it’s so necessary to help people understand what life is about.
The 2 soundtracks are soothing. especially for those suffering, directly or indirectly, from the Russian aggression on Ukraine.
I'm starting to realize how much this distant war (from Canada) has affected me.
And how I am at a loss as to how many are indifferent, or even supporting the aggression, such as Trump & his MAGA supporters in the US.
In Canada there is too much indiffence. No one would dare to openly support Russia's aggression.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe.
It reminds me of a short story about the slimy green rain. At first, everyone panicked when it first appeared from time to time. Gradually it became more frequent, eventually the only rain that fell. And everyone came to see it as normal, not remembering that rain had once been clean.
Russia in Ukraine has become our green rain.
Slava Ukraini
Thank you for your support, André! I agree, too often, it does seem like a parallel universe. If not for the Internet which connects me with people who care, I would think that almost no one cares at all. However, I remind myself that in order to change things, we don’t need the vast majority of people to support our cause. We just need to find the same caring and active people and keep pushing together. That how it always works.
Thank you for sharing the story about the rain. I agree with your metaphor. Let’s keep working together to get rid of this slimy rain.
Heroyam Slava!
We need your inspiration. Thanks for all you do.
🙏
Dear Darya you are not alone, I feel the same as you. My life since February 24, 2022 has become incredibly dark and sad.
I deeply wish for peace in Ukraine and a return to the lighty.
With love Carla from Portugal
Thank you so much, Carla! I appreciate your support very much! 🫂
Thank you sharing your thoughts and these poems. These are indeed powerful poems. Simple and direct. It was... a pleasure (there is no other word) to read them and agree with every word you wrote.
Thank you, Laurel!
Thank you sharing your poetry which captures images and emotions in ways ordinary words cannot.
Thank you, Mark!
Have you heard of the Tecumseh Eclipse of 1806, the last total eclipse visible in eastern US.
https://www.eclipse-chasers.com/article/history/tse1806.html
Harrison to the Indians, would be like what Putin and a lot of Russians are to most of the civilized world. Ya, Harrison did go on to become President of the US, but he is more famous for being made a fool of by an Injun.
Hope takes many forms. I am not a big believer in anything mystical, but I do know that those that care give each other hope in something in knowing that we are not alone. I too get so depressed, and reading your posts hear, the quality of the writing and the obvious intelligence of the writer makes me feel comfortable with my constant angst about the state of the world. Not comfortable that I will someday be able to ignore the situation, rather comfortable in the knowledge somehow, someway we lucky few will find a way to develop meaning from our struggles and channel our hard learnt lessons constructively. Not all of us can become a Tecumseh, but leaders only can lead when they are heard. Keep posting Darya...it is helping some of us to stay real.
I didn't know about the Tecumseh Eclipse of 1806, thank you so much for sharing! I read the article, and it was very interesting. Whenever I read about the colonization of America and what Indians went through, it always makes me very sad. Not only because it shows pain and injustice but also because such pain and injustice continue to happen centuries later.
What you wrote about hope deeply resonated with me. Thank you for always hearing and understanding what I try to convey through my words, and thank you for your support!
Thank you, and to everyone who labors almost sisyphean like to put the current situation in context. What I have read here, and on a few twitter pages resonates far louder than the stuff that comes out of main stream media e.g. Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.
I respect immensely that in addition to the words you write that you don't try to redeem your moral self worth vicariously. Rather you commit to action. IMHO, it deepens the richness of the soil for future individual growth.
I remember during my down and out days, sitting alone in my skid row apartment wondering WTF and reading about Robert the Bruce, how he laid alone in a windswept cave seemingly beaten and with good reason to be without hope. Apparently, as he laid on the cave's rock bed, he watched a spider struggling to spin a web. Each time the wind blew the spider down, it crawl back and kept on trying and it eventually succeeded . The legend goes he had an epiphany that if a lowly spider could succeed despite seemingly insurmountable odds then who was he to stop trying, i.e. a person with the ability to reason and derived context from his circumstances.
While I am no Robert the Bruce, I understood why reading about Robert the Bruce resonated with me. I come to this site to be reminded why caring matters.....so thank you for all that you share. It is appreciated.
Thank you, David! And thank you for sharing a story about Robert the Bruce and your wisdom. I always learn something new from you, and I appreciate it very much.
I generally don't like posting for it often seems to me that I come across as narcistic.
Let me try to be real in my way. Today, I went to a chamber orchestra concert, and during one of the pieces I started to ask myself what does spiritual beauty look like to a classically trained musician. For a barbarian like me, my interest gets initially triggered by a person's eyes or smile..a pretty low bar. Nevertheless, as the concert played on my thoughts drifted to what I consider my strongest sources of motivation and what in the physical world draws my attention.
Very recently, I had watched a translated video on Facebook (fuck the term META) post by an older Ukrainian woman who strongly expressed her faith in God for she was very grateful that some strangers out of nowhere brought her some food, and gave her a little money for she had been recently robbed. I am not a person of strong faith, but I could hear in the intensity of her voice the utility of having faith in god. I think it was what triggered my mind to wonder during the concert I watched today.
I have fears too of a different sort. But in comparison to the horrors I constantly read about about Ukraine, they are of a different order. But, my fears, are just as consequential to me, as say those people in Kharkiv who have good cause to believe that ruzzia is planning to pulverize their city to the ground.
I think I wrote here that as a teenager I worked in a sort of hospice as a janitor of sorts. Before I worked there, I was very uncomfortable talking to people who were obviously seriously injured or seemingly handicapped (and older people). Often, on weekends, it fell to me to clean the hoods on steam tables. When I did, often the young men with muscular dystrophy (MD) would buzz around me in their electric wheel chairs and ask me questions. Over time, I began to slowly realize that as I was relating my experiences outside of the hospice, that they were living vicariously thru my words. In short I was living the life that they would be living if they had not been cursed with MD. I could not cure them, but the more I opened up and shared whatever, I think the more they realized what could've been for my experiences were not that of some jock, or super rich Brainiac but of an ordinary person. And, the reward for me, was that I became far more confident in expressing myself in different and difficult situations which I think saved my life. a few times, when I traveled overseas and found myself in some hotspots.
So here I come sometimes, and really my goal is to express in real terms, as best as possible the viewpoint of probably many in my position who have not been exposed to the things that you have been, but at the same time at the core perhaps understand the intensity of the emotions that you have been expressing.
Back to the concert, I think it is an interesting question about what strikes a classical trained musician as being beautiful in a person. I think it is a normal type question that may come when one is not dodging missiles. I wonder if at the beginning of their journey were they driven with the same intensity as many of us by are our fears and insecurities. It seems like such a shallow thing, but is it the question that is really the issue or the questioning.
So I don't come to this forum to preach or anything, I come to learn how to stay real. When I do share something, I am just relating something I read or experienced. I know people who talk, and talk, and talk, and to me they sometimes come across as being too full of themselves. What's that saying, it takes one to know one.
D
I'm sorry you're getting so much of this lately. I like to think it's worse online, but it sounds like you get it from a lot of people in 'real' life as well - do you find it's getting even worse with time? Fortunately I was able to write up some good news today: https://annabowles.substack.com/p/helping-rebuild-a-village-in-mykolaiv
In my personal experience, people in real life gradually started to care less and less until many stopped caring at all. They don’t read/see/are interested in the news about Ukraine anymore, and the attitude that I described in my poems started to return. There is a huge gap between people in the pro-Ukraine Internet bubble or community and the rest. When I step out of that bubble, I’m often shocked how little understanding people have and that I have to explain some things to them as if I am talking to 2 years olds.
I’ve just read your article, and it’s amazing how much you help Ukrainians in the Mykolaiv region! Thank you so much for your work! Please stay safe, and don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.
Thanks for your kind words. I'm in no danger of not taking care of myself while I'm with Freefilmers - for one thing they start feeding me Ukrainian soups and my diet is instantly 10x healthier than at home. The health benefits of Sashko’s ‘solidarity borscht’ – he’s somewhat of a leftist – probably outweigh the small chance of a missile landing in our yard.
I don’t talk to that many people in real life (when in the UK) as I work at home and even the nearest coffee shop happens to be run by a Ukrainian, so I am probably insulated. It must be exhausting putting in so much time to trying to reason with people who are barely engaged. I don’t think I need to tell you to take care of yourself, too, though, as this blog shows you know how to do that, even though it’s very difficult these days.
Love “solidarity borscht” ❤️ Ukrainian food is the best!