DThese three trees shyly cover the glittering water in the canal. Otherwise I would be blinded. The white flowers in front try to do it though. A few years ago, sticks were stuck into the ground here. In the meantime they have turned into white flowering, lush bushes. I am in Kiev for the first time since the beginning of the war. The bliss conquers me. These three trees embody something fairytale-like, although I am guilty of this composition, of this fragmentation. Early in the morning I met anglers watching a duck with tiny little chicks, a few determined joggers, girls with dogs and dads with toddlers. Nice that not everyone is at the front, it flickered through my head for a moment.
There was an air raid alarm again last night. I overslept him. It was an explosion in the distance that woke me up. Then I heard another one right above us. I watched the Telegram channels and found out what was shot down over us and what is still flying towards us. I didn’t feel fear, just a strange tension, a thrill. The wait. The amazement that “they” are aiming the heaviest weapons in the middle of a city of three and a half million people. We are the target. So is that the famous historical sentiment? Or does it simply mean “belonging” that is now being donated to me by the common danger? I have arrived where all “mine” have been since February 24th – in the world of direct physical threat.
The Florence Street in Kyiv
I went to the window and took photos. It was almost light and very beautiful. I don’t want to omit the word “beautiful”. I looked at gray and pink ragged clouds and tried to match the explosions with them. A cloud that was far away resembled a nuclear mushroom, shortly after which turned into a pine crown. I noticed this with a certain indolence, as if my indolence were a protection against the clear intent to destroy. The early morning cloud disappeared very quickly. Or was it a plume of smoke from a rocket shrapnel that had burned up in the atmosphere directly above my kindergarten? Some do not believe that there is a Florence street in Kiev. Does an air battle make my street more real? It is strictly forbidden to post such images, and everyone abides by it. So the photo I took from my kitchen at around five o’clock remains in the realm of half-asleep, in the fog of the forbidden and vague knowledge.
As if nothing had happened, as if everything was left behind like a nightmare in the night, this is what people look like in the morning. Perhaps only I, as a newbie, have these sharp sensations. Reality seems to me like a film where no one has thought about the editing.
A friend showed me his military hospital where he has been working as a surgeon for a year. I was at a soldier’s birthday party on home leave. I walked in the park with my college friend from Bucha and we sniffed at dozens of lilac trees.
These three trees are a few steps from my house, where I took the “war sky” photo. I arrived on time because everything is blooming in Kiev. I don’t just photograph trees, I also photograph people photographing trees, perhaps to expand the reality of spring, to cover up the ongoing war, as if photographing trees was also a means of struggle, each new day defying war. I look at those trees and I remember three young men I saw on a dark street in front of a store recently. They ate ice cream. All three were blind.
#Katya #Petrovskaya #Spring #Kiev