I’ve been reading the excellent Phonogram. Thinking about music as a kind of amber that can preserve both the beautiful and the bloody. In Kiev last week, I toook a break from Phonogramming away and met a friend for drinks comparatively late one night, then caught one of the newer marshrutkas home. Now this particular death-on-wheelsContinue reading “Monday Music: the Yaroslava Edition”
Category Archives: Ukraine
Being nearly 25, unmarried, female and from Kyiv
Being thus is a flashing green light for anyone who is dying to quote out loud that awesome thing they read this morning on the metro in a women’s magazine. Being thus is that pause in conversation. Being thus is the following phrase: “Get married, you can always have affairs later!” Being thus is rememberingContinue reading “Being nearly 25, unmarried, female and from Kyiv”
Anyone who’s ever lived in a run-down neighbourhood in Kiev or Moscow or…
I first heard this song this past winter, and have been thinking about it for a while: Instead of the fantasy world of boutiques and Porsche Cayennes and lip implants, I get the reality of my own neighbourhood in Ukraine: colloquial pronunciations, walls covered in graffiti and guys named Vasya, along with gossiping grandmas inContinue reading “Anyone who’s ever lived in a run-down neighbourhood in Kiev or Moscow or…”
Monday Music: the Chestnuts of Kiev Edition
It’s good to be da king. And it’s good to be back in the city of blooming chestnuts, for a bit. Everyone’s talking politics and, despite the crisis, the bars in the center appear packed. One of my grandmothers has fallen in love with Susan Boyle, the other one is drawing upon her extensive experienceContinue reading “Monday Music: the Chestnuts of Kiev Edition”
Today, Yaroslava would have been 31
Since I am in Kiev (yay!), I got to participate in the rituals: the graveside wine drinking and remembrance, and the wine drinking and remembrance at her family’s home. Yaroslava was as pretty as the month of her birth; she was flowery and clean like the rain. My mother told Yaroslava’s mother that she hadContinue reading “Today, Yaroslava would have been 31”
Natalia A. 