другий випуск ноги ще гримів та котився долинами коли з далеких верхів зелено-голубих, чи то з крану будівельного, залунала пісня, така дивна й забута що ви скажете ВАУ:
!~ми оголошуємо опен кол на третій номер~ !
час є але його і небагато. шліть нам ваші драми, доки, фенфікшени, частини неопублікованих книг, підслухані розмови, шматки, шматочки, маленькі віньєтки, вкрадені щоденники ваших друзів, колекції реклам, чеків, і прикмет, та і просто розповіді всілякі, художньо-документальні. приймаємо також і кураторські рекомендації + знайдені тексти. з нашими смаками можна ознайомитись прочитавши журнал. мерщій пишіть! як ви вже знаєте, наш журнал рухається в гіперзвукових темпах. чекаємо на вас дуже.
Ви не повірите, але за кілька тижнів виходить новий, другий, інший, наступний випуск журналу Нога. Тим небагатьом, хто за чотири роки забув, нагадаємо: Нога — це журнал художньої документалістики, тобто документальної літератури, яка написана або читається з художньою метою. Майже всі тексти що увійшли до нового випуску були написані до повномасштабного вторгнення рф. Ці документи дуже різних світів і поглядів дивним чином резонують коли збираються разом у червні 2024.
Ціна примірника за передзамовленням 300 гривень, а коли наклад буде готовий 350. Відправляти замовлення почнемо наприкінці червня.
На обкладинці використано візуальну роботу Каті Лібкінд. А що всередині?
Випуск починається з тексту Дарини Малюк. Вона розмірковує про бажані предмети, шанс отримати які було безповоротно втрачено.
Інеса Марґ описує вбивство і перетворення на їжу кози, що постарішала.
Назар Беницький згадує дитинство та інтернат. У його зошитах спогади чергуються з щоденниковими записами про спроби побудувати автономне життя на острові.
Альона Думашева продовжує розповідати про своє ув’язнення у рф. Її новий текст про життя жінок-увʼязнених у Володимирській колонії.
Антон Полунін у поетичному тексті заповідає нам одну цінну річ.
Ліза Білецька розповідає про своє знайомство з компанією, що надає людям похилого віку послуги “пожиттєвого утримання” в обмін на спадщину на квартиру.
Філіп Оленик переповідає історії нігерійців та українців нігерійського походження.
Текст Дарини Малюк, яким починається випуск, було написано у 2020-му році. У останньому тексті Дарина розповідає про своє життя у 2023-му.
Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenants paratroopers tankers navies a big thank you to all militaryservants men come back alive healthy you are our shields all soldiers please protect Kiev Sumy Lvov Kharkov Poltava Kherson snake island Zhitomir Lutsk Lugansk Donetsk Krivorog Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenants paratroopers tankers navies keep safe please keep safe our country don’t allow this scum dank brutes tell us how to live what to eat what to drink what clothes and shoes to wear how to feed and give ourselves drink that there are peaceful people here I beg plead implore Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenants paratroopers tankers navies please only protect our families wom en children veterans Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenants paratroopers nkers navies men militaryservants Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenant paratroopers tankers navies please come back alive healthy to your mothers and wives children save everyone the world Kiev Poland Germany Japan China Georgia Great Britain Amer ica France Azerbaijan Armenia Spain Portugal Ukrainian army soldiers captains lieutenants paratroopers tankers navies you’re our good sports like they sing in the song oh in the fields the red guelder volunteers you are our boys men militaryservants though I’m a Georgian my heart is Ukrainian a big thank you for everything you’re our volunteers you’re our protectors and brothers to our Georgio-Ukrainian country by blood our blood of all sorts Georgio-Ukrainian flows in our veins and we will never forget this day thank you our colleagues warriors of good th ank you that you gave us Georgians your Ukrainian shoulder to lean on in 2008 while this dank scum attacked in our beloved Abkhazia
16,04,2022 20:12 Saturday
Sasha Steshenko is a member of the art collective atelienormalno.
Will I ever be in Simferopol’, where I have not been since 2004? Will I ever be in Sevastopol’, where I have not been since 2011? Will I ever be in Yevpatoriya, where I have not been since 2009? Will I ever be in Donetsk, where I have not been since 2012?
Today at the train station I met Zelensky’s teacher. That’s exactly how she introduced herself—first as Zelensky’s teacher, and only then as Alla. She is traveling back to Ukraine. She says, “Girls, one month max and you can come back home.” She says it with such confidence that it is impossible to counter her. But first Alla needs to make it to Wroclaw to visit her grandchildren.
The free direct connection to Poland has been closed for at least a week: you can get there either by regional trains and a bouquet of transfers, or for money. This is Europe’s hint that evacuation does not entail the possibility of making a step back, yet many Ukrainians want to be closer to home or to return home already.
My job today is to explain this convoluted route to those traveling to Poland. I deliver a speech to Alla that’s now drilled into my brain, about Frankfurt on the Oder, Rzepin, Warsaw, times, platforms, train numbers. The train from Frankfurt to Wroclaw isn’t regional, it requires a ticket. Alla understands this but is still determined to board this train for free. There are these types of people who will break any silly human rule in the name of a great cause, and they do it with a smile, and they get away with everything, and Alla is one of them. I know that nobody will be able to unseat her from this train, traveling to the flaming east. Alla does not need a ticket home. I show her the path to the platform and take off my orange volunteer jacket.
war’s war and poetry is war while scotchtaping the window in case of an explosion so shards won’t cut any of us up i sealed a trace of marta’s lips on the glass marta loves to press her face to the windows though now you can’t come near the windows unless you’re taping them with scotch so that during an explosion the shards don’t cut anyone up now marta’s kiss is addressed to the world – the friendly that fights to the death sits in the basement stockpiles gas and food and body vests and everything to meet the inevitable – the hostile that pelts us with deadly things snoops around our forests leaving tracks generally deprives us of everything but dignity in an unusual way for me personally – the neutral that sends us its shitty love and support this kiss of marta’s has modest chances of being passed down should we have descendants as proof that in in this world there’s a drop of love or at least a trace of it what if i die asks jesus from the rock opera my kids love rock operas relax jesus everything will be fine just die
05.03.2022, Brovary
March 21st
so here we are blyad’ i’m an internally displaced person a fucking internally displaced suka person my dear lovely esteemed and highly esteemed refugees people who received additional protection and temporary protection and also idp’s i sincerely admire you and wish you all the best but to join your ranks well that’s like i don’t know to be a conductor a space paratrooper a merchandiser honorable work and so on but personally fuck that we left at seven and creeped for a long while along the fields black like chernozem until night fell also black starless children were bored first then hyper then pissed themselves right in my lap so we pulled over to a gas station where there was no gas or coffee or anything but half a dozen cars that huddled hoping against hope for something also the navigator constantly led us astray maybe because we originally set out astray and now I am here where I do not want to be my dear incredible wonderful you can’t even imagine how happy I am to see you but fuck staying here in this jackoff motherfucking safety where it smells like children’s urine and yesterday’s sandwiches though of course people live and war isn’t forever and rylsky too wrote love love he wrote is worth it all your pain separations disgust misery mad howling madness or mercy and some other thing i cannot recall
April 8th
you can appoint a poet controller of beaten rabbit meat chief of staff of territorial defense deputy head of the legal department but a poet if this is a real poet always remains first and foremost a killer and poems yes real poems are written at least with the help of an automatic rifle this is called automatic writing a protomodern/modern practice of creating wasted texts in the mouth of the bird of paradise there is a place for dead warriors who in the last in the very last moment did not fear death even now on their faces there’s this look like wow not scary you can write the poet’s phone number on a paperslip at the draft office you can tell him we’ll call you and then not call him and give his rifle to some prose writer or artist a poet meanwhile a real poet will still write that he cut out the enemies’ eyes and drank them in a bloody mary and cut out their hearts or whatever they have instead and watched as dogs gnawed the feet of the dead and gnawed them too and after the victory he’ll become a theme park soldier to eventually die of cirrhosis like he dreamed at sixteen in the throat of the bird of paradise there’s a place for those who in the last moment realized that this is in fact death disappointment is read on every one of their faces the paradise bird pecks pecks the paradise bird is occasionally sick and instead of muscovy there’s hardened pitch and over that pitch a sulfur mist and here the fields cover poets’ corpses sprouting factories and industrial plants banners and flags, titles and lands wonderful are thy works whats-your-face wonderful are thy works
Unfortunately, I have memories that I will probably never share, but let these notes, written from memory, remain with me. Here is the city of Bucha near Kyiv, under shelling.
A man draws circles across the sky with his finger, then furiously hammers the imaginary ground with his fists. This is how the deaf man shows me shelling that he is only able to see. Broken glass underfoot, abandoned things, the chaos of war. A man’s corpse by a shot-through car. About a week ago, people covered up the body with a blanket. Snow and ashes fall on his gray, tired face. The dead car still has unshot wheels.
Wheels
Our neighbors are taking off the wheels. My brother and I help roll them to the house. Wheels are needed to change out tires. When combat operations only just started, some unknown person punctured the tires on expensive cars. At first residents thought it was saboteurs, but later, an experienced person of uncompromising appearance informed us that this was probably the work of criminals. Broken windows and robbed car interiors corroborated this interpretation. The neighbors change out the wheels and prepare for evacuation.
Evacuation
Cars bunch together in columns and, under white ribbons and flags, move out of the city in nervous lurches. The sides of the cars read “People,” “Children.” Tired people look indifferently at those remaining in the city. The remaining, too, for the most part do not pay attention to the departing. Everyone has their own reality and their own tasks. By the houses there are fires, people making food, people laughing, listening to the news, helping each other, sharing medicine, food. People are living through another monotonous ashy day. The next day is declared the day of evacuation under the protection of the Red Cross.
Several thousand people have gathered near the city administration building. Many are in high spirits, even though a car with a “200” on its windshield is driving around in visible proximity. The car is collecting corpses from the streets. Here it is worth saying that the streets are not littered with dead bodies, but there are dead people. Children examine the military with sincere curiosity.
Children
Unexpectedly, a closed mail van stops near the filing refugees. The car is inscribed with “Children”. The driver, insistently, with a shout, declares that he will take only women with children. His humanitarian appeals are ignored by large, broad-shouldered men. Only a few women manage to get into the van. The driver, bewildered, waves his hand and gets into the car. The departing “children” are sent off with laughter and whistles: “Here are our defenders,” the women laugh, “children,” “orphans.” They leave. The remaining wait for the Red Cross several more hours.
We slowly drive through the city. Traces of battles, pogroms. Emptiness.
Beginning
On the street, a man playing the role of the intellectual drunkard, looking by turns at me and at the war, rhetorically remarks to the sounds of the cannonade: “Ah, but I am a purely civilian person, and I could shit myself.”
The unexpected, new reality has not yet become a fact. TikTokers on skateboards are making videos against the background of a destroyed military convoy. Communication with the outside world still works, and many feel that everything will soon end or even already has. Incredible rumors and optimistic plans for the future. To Bach’s partitas, through the window, we observe helicopter attacks on Gostomel airport. Then aviation and artillery. Flashes. Lights off.
Weekdays
Electricity, water, heating, everything has been turned off. Snow fell on the morning of March 1st. The temperature in the apartment falls: 15, 14, 13, 12… It’s cold and monotonous. People are cooking food on fires. Our bomb shelter is just a basement. The people of our house, neighbors, often meet for the first time by the fire. We are finally getting to know each other after living together for ten years. Very valuable are the meetings with people you know.
“You didn’t leave, Alexander Vladimirovich?” A neighbor greets me. I shake my head. “The people’s lot, and ours too,1” she concludes looking at the droning sky and goes about her business. A new social hierarchy has arisen very quickly within the group of people near the bomb shelter, and those who in the past, before the war, had more significant positions in society have remained on the sidelines. People of a different tactic have come forward, i.e. those who give orders, even silly ones. All of this is expected and natural. The ability to obey and command is now in demand. It calms people down. Everyone becomes a group that “absorbs” stress together. There is boiling water, food, night duty with an axe. Next to us is an abandoned bulldog cut with shrapnel. Everyone calls him Patron2.
Animals
The departing let their dogs and cats loose onto the streets. But in this house, in the apartments, animals are still locked up, we hear cats going crazy, left without food and water. We can’t help them. People are afraid of marauders, who break into places under the guise of saving animals.
Marauders
My brother and I go outside and notice strange, jovial agitation. Outside some of the houses, swollen-faced citizens have organized festivities. A little further on, we come across a man with bags full of beer and cider. Seeing me and my brother, the man is clearly frightened and begins to confusingly explain that “everything has already been snatched up, but you can look.” Understanding nothing, we move on until we stumble upon a looted beer stall. Then they started breaking down the shops. Later, the merchants themselves opened up the storerooms that had not yet been broken into.
The city’s food logistics are paralyzed. Emergency services, medicine, have remained inaccessible to us. Snow, broken glass, and sky soot.
After what was written
During the last days of my stay in the city, I did not take any pictures or videos. The war rolled in and became commonplace. A complete change in the informational space, in a broader sense than “the media.” The concepts of morality and mercy voluminously unfold. Everything changes, including one’s perception of people. Everyone adapts to constant stress in different ways here. Often, one reality disrupts into another. A girl who addressed even animals with the formal-you, now, under mortar explosions, cheerfully, enthusiastically talks about her niece. When the fire subsides, her face changes and she suddenly exhales hysterically with a cry, “Blyad’, when will this fucking hell be over.”
We are in Kyiv. Conversations with Volodya and Lisa Zhbankov, Polina Lavrova, Olga and Varya on abstract topics. In the morning, unexpected sun on the boulevards of an empty city.
February 24 – March 12, 2022
Bucha – Kyiv
1 Literally: As for the people, so for us. An ironic proverb.
2 Besides “boss,” Patron also means “ammunition round.” It is common to name animals after military effects during wartime. This time around, we have also seen Javelins and Bayraktars.
Every day my Kyiv is getting better at shooting down missiles with antediluvian anti-aircraft defense systems, sometimes not even bothering to turn on the sirens. It appears the anti-aircrafters have now gotten it down so cold, there’ll just be a loud bang nearby and then a message in the local Telegram channel like, “all clear, it’s just our guys.” At any rate, Kyivans are by now well acquainted with the vocalizations of the machines protecting them.
Open for the second week in a row—and keeping the fighting spirit of Lvivska Square residents afloat—is the city’s best third-wave coffeeshop, which even serves two types of croissants: classic and almond. But you’re only allowed one per person; they sell out quickly, and everyone needs to get one: the national guard from the roadblock nearby, to go with his oat-milk latte; and the female volunteer with her arm in a cast; and the Dutch journalist dispassionately sipping his pour-over over the bangs of the anti-aircraft defense and the wails of the sirens. The barista, meanwhile, speaks Ukrainian to me, russian to the fighter and volunteer, and English to the journalist. Nobody is running for cover—it’s a sunny day, the coffee and croissants are too good, and the russians too ham-fisted.
This giant city, it seems, has converged, braced itself into a barbed sphere—an antitank hedgehog—projecting out:
antitank barriers and concrete roadblocks;
a television tower, which rusnyavoye high-precision weaponry managed to miss, concurrently burning several fucking people in Babiy Yar (including one russian citizen);
the monster building in Podil (but even this I forbid the fascists to touch with their dirty rockets; Kyivans will decide for themselves what to demolish and what to leave standing as a monument to tastelessness and corruption);
Shchekavytsa, with its Old Believer graveyard crosses and the green neon of Ukraine’s main mosque.
Everything is oozing mysticism. Like smoke from the fires in small nearby towns creeps onto Podil and Troyeshchina from the north. Of course, it’s always been here, all one-and-a-half-thousand-and-then-some years. In the place where this photo was taken there is at once a pagan shrine; the ruins of the Church of the Tithes, destroyed, along with tens of thousands of Kyivans, by the horde; and a memorial stone, upon which it states that Kyiv’s defense line passed through here during the last people’s war. It is here that my russian-speaking friend, the granddaughter of a Don Cossack enchantress, comes to sing-sling hexes for the occupants’ demise, in breakthrough Ukrainian. Everyone is speaking of kharakterniks1, witches, molfars2. Magical troops are operating in social networks, all Kyivans and Kyivesses are seeing prophetic dreams, obeying their intuitions, and literally physically feeling time’s flow towards our victory.
Everyone is ready to die. Another friend performed a ritual: when they bombed the outskirts across the woods from Irpin’, she left her house, lay down on the ground, and took death into herself, became them: earth and death. Many Kyivans did just this (maybe not to the letter), many Ukrainians from towns that are quiet and from those of which there is nothing left at all after a systematic annihilation. Everyone here has come to an agreement with death, taken it seriously, released themselves from it, and gotten back to their work. They volunteer, write code, burn russian tanks and the fools inside them.
Only the russians have not been taken seriously here. Everyone is laughing at them, at which they get all huffy, and all that’s small and pitiful in them creeps out. But how can we take seriously those who marauded Bucha, are about to fall into a cauldron3 (which, it is proposed, we should name “Bagatiy”4), to burn alive in their tin cans, but are calling their relatives to find out how much a looted graphics card costs, happy that “the little trip was reimbursed.”
Or those who, fleeing from moscow or st. petersburg (from what?) are whining in Armenia or Georgia that they haven’t created the necessary infrastructure for them, that they’re refusing to house them, in favor of real war refugees. As they themselves, in the meantime, cluster together, like on Brighton Beach, refusing to learn to say “thank you” and “good evening” in the local language. As they are shatteringly confused and crushed by their hypocritical guilt, their petty imperial—I forget the russian word—pyha5 (not to be confused with pihva6, though that’s what’s coming for them).
1 A part-sorcerer, part-warrior Cossack, found only in the Zaporozhian Sich. A soldier-shaman, spiritual leader, keeper of the traditions and secrets of Zaporozhian Cossack martial arts. Cossack Mamay was one example.
2 Hutsul healer, magician.
3 Kettle, pocket. Group of combat forces that have been isolated by opposing forces from their logistical base and other friendly forces.
4 “Rich”, orthography implying a russian accent. To read more about the class axis of the Bucha massacre, let this translator suggest a post by Mykhailo Bogachow.
Our house is next to the forest. Behind the fence there’s the forest, a belt road, and then Irpin’. Yesterday Katya and I worked in the garden (at first I misprinted and wrote “in hades”). Planted some things. Fed the neighbors’ dogs. I won’t tell you about my days in detail just yet, there are a million details, all of them interesting.
Even before (this “before” is now synonymous with “before the 24th”), the forest echoed back fear. Our street and the adjacent street are always deserted in the fall and winter. People drive cars here, few walk. Is this the kind of garden Bulgakov’s Master dreamt of? The shudderings of the house no longer scare me; as long as the windowpanes are intact and the sounds far off, we are safe. The screeching of gunfire spurts in the forest has become similar to a bird’s. We have our own woodpecker too; he doesn’t live in the garden but comes to visit. The trees are sick, and he has enough food. Spring is wild this year. The water near the house is frozen again. Hello! It’s March 28th! I call out to my relatives in Kazakhstan. Why to them, exactly? I don’t know. Maybe not to them.
Good deeds must be kept secret. And I tell everyone. Not so much about good deeds, but about the mechanisms of good. About God. When I talk to people about God, something changes in me. A small good deed is a big beginning. What can this be compared to? For example, to the size of a 5mg pill, to the size of a needle and thread. The action of a small deed is like the removal of a stone or leaves from the watercourse of a spring. Small unresolved deeds are rolling pins (splinters, in Russian) that get in the way of living through work, plans, and well, everything, in short.
The house is humming with shelling. It’s as if the underworld is breaking out. But in vain. Vain efforts.
In the morning I understood and told Katya: “I have found the path to victory.” It sounds silly and it’s making me smile too. Here is the path: find one useful activity each day. At least one. And do it. God, it all sounds so much like psychiatric rehabilitation. Like when grandma and grandpa made me work, in 2013, and then for five more years. Though really, at first, there was no work to do. They just wouldn’t let me do it. Because they found their jobs in the house, orchard, and garden on their own. And they were copyrighted, they didn’t want to share them. In the beginning—and all these five years were the beginning—I had to wash, sweep, just help. They didn’t let me do a job from A to Z. Soon after Katya and I started doing something full cycle in the village in our lean-to, my grandfather died. Now, these days, I look for jobs to do. So the day passes. Sometimes I fall asleep accidentally in the evening. Work makes for good sleep and a good appetite. There is strength enough for jokes and no time for anger. I quickly tell someone “goodbye,” and then go do something.
“Nature is dead.” That’s what Myroslav Yahoda once told me. The photo is a view from the windows of his studio. Myroslav. He is one of the people who taught me that life is not a joke. Though I did not fully learn this. I look out of the window, and there are trees and grasses that will not tell me anything like you will. And yet sometimes they say something, they speak Universe. Myroslav heard angelic choirs, he told me. I was asking him something about trees. What did he say to me that night? I was telling him about love, about a craftswoman who leaves no traces, I was elusive, concealed the name of my beloved.
“Cities are people,” a friend of mine told me once. Cities, cities… To see Ilya, Anton, Larysa, Sasha, Misha, Serhiy, Sasha, Yan, Zhanna, Valera, these days.
Conclusions disappear in pilgrimage, as the end disappears in the process of laying out a mandala of bread crumbs and pieces of porcelain. To write a text, to speak out loud. Who makes a mandala of someone else’s hair? : 12:00
To the sound of Irpen’s liberation we treated the orchard. It thundered in a new way now. Something about sex.
Working the orchard as a meaningless occupation first flowed from my own hands today, this practice was grafted onto me by grandfather Turina, on the streets they called his father Root. I seem to be of some rootful kin. Right now someone from this kin may be mobilized from Shakhtarsk or Debaltseve. I don’t know if they know anything about their great-grandfather. And I know little myself. He taught my father about life. Like my grandfather did me. A family tradition, it turns out. Anyways, I’m tired. The wind and air do away with any excess energy. I’ll eat some mayonnaise. I’m fat.
Yesterday they sent us humanitarian aid. Mood’s like the time when they sent us humanitarian aid in the 90s. Everything is so other-colored.
It seems to me that I will be able to kill a person, but this is not certain. : 20:37
First photo: view from Myroslav Yahoda’s studio Second photo: our orchard
The day passes from a photograph of those shot in Bucha to a photograph of a trunk full of phones in Bucha The day passes from ideas for a monument to Zhenya Golubentsev to the news that Vablya was liberated The day passes from tasteless slept-on soup to sour cream The day passes from the night shock of battering rain to a meeting postponed The day passes in conversation with Petro Midyanka The day passes in transition from the room of despair and resentment to the room where I am little with God The day passes from searching for something and searching for my own voice The day passes from threshold to threshold The day passes from downloading a book to buying a book The day passes from being lost in the supermarket to being lost near the bed The day passes The time for the funeral prayer draws near and arrives Violetta says she heard the Angel of Death and I believe her words as if where there is no death, these days, there is no truth
one recent night i stayed up till two reading about nuclear escalation, a tactical nuclear strike, then woke up at seven, face to face with gek; he smiled and said: “do you know whose birthday it is today? yours! santa-frost will bring presents.”
i don’t remember what happened that day—after the nuclear detente—but when two weeks ago zhenya came to visit from nivky on her bicycle, she had to stay several nights. that arctic wind that was meant to turn tanks into 40-ton freezers grounded the bicyclists too. we went outside and reveled in how sharply it hit—a gift, a gift.
it’s hardest to wake from plot-heavy but peaceful dreams—the daily realization that nothing is over. the matinal creeping of sound: every day, a piece of the city is cut off. sometimes i look up the distance on a map—8-10 km from my house.
i know which russian army is sitting west of kyiv, in a marauding cauldron1, which is not a cauldron but a horseshoe, and we can’t just demolish it, we can only exhaust it with quick counterstrikes (will we take grandfather to irpin’ when everything is over? or should he not see what has become of it?)
i know that moshchun was liberated by a foreign battalion, i know the name of the anti-aircraft defense system that can shoot down a hypersonic “dagger” missile, i know the name of the general who is fighting against humanity in mariupol, i know that before this he fought against humanity in aleppo, i am waiting for his dog-death.
i know major prokopenko’s face well, with and without a gaiter. who will play him in the film about mariupol? orlando bloom? he just came to the moldovan border to meet ukrainian refugees.
the editor-in-chief of the bulvar newspaper delivers information to russia like a hypersonic dagger missile (get the fuck out of here!), and here is the information from major prokopenko: the situation is difficult but under control. no one is planning on giving up.
i know that for serezha, tenderness and metaphor are still possible, even on the night watch or in the morning, where these things end. this knowledge has illuminated one full day and illuminates minutes of others.
i hold onto the lives of those i know as if solipsism could be salvation, as if it is only those whom i know (have conceived of) that exist, and if they are alive and are not suffering, then everyone is alive,
as if in mariupol there was only daniil—and he has gotten out—and only major prokopenko, who is not planning on dying.
i think about how there is no enemy in existence whom we know better. we ourselves assembled its language three hundred years ago, we named it, we determined its ideological foundations. the great russian pomp is worth nothing here, the great russian impotence touches no one.
spring squalls, mine-studded bridges, kyiv split into halves—right bank and left bank. for several years i’ve lived in a house with the most beautiful garden outside my window. it stands on a sliding hillock, now placed on a powder keg. here, franya has teethed out 12 teeth in a month. for him, word has woven to object.
i can conceive none of this. and now the magnolias bloom.
—
1 (mil.) kettle, pocket. group of combat forces that have been isolated by opposing forces from their logistical base and other friendly forces.
I wake up every few hours amidst any kind of activity. Half-a-day barrages of catharses. Half a day of nothing. The thought does not let me alone that we are in some veteran’s recurrent nightmare, that they’ve slipped us a trauma that is not at all our own. Some dudes decided to create a reconstruction—with the same words, ideas, instruments, movements—a kind of game they’re using to displace what happened to them in WW2 and after. That the “great Russian nation” just needs to win the war again to forget that they’ve long been killed and repressed. Or maybe they feel that death is the only truth in their lives, and that’s why they so eagerly hurl their bodies at us, pressing to feel something a little real.
Time is arrested and deeply shocked.
I pray to materiality and to reality.
On the third day of war I felt fear creeping up to me, that kind of fear that, they say, makes your limbs go numb. I went out into the garden, lay down on the ground, and the earth went through me, through my tremor, and made me dead and invincible. I discovered that the only thing left from the fear now was its power. My body heats up and strobes like it’s getting ready to melt the world. I understand that the coerced freedom of humanity will begin with Ukraine. Everything that was, has gone to shit and will now grow again from this broken but very living and luminous center.
The butterfly in the video is Idea leuconoe. I bought her chrysalis and eagerly awaited the triumphant appearance of this sex machine, eagerly awaited her live beauty, and somehow attached too much importance to her arrival. A week before the war, she hatched; her belly was damaged, one wing was fully crumpled, the others she just couldn’t unfold. She tripped over her feet and tried to flap her soft wings for two more days. I fed her and weeped over her like I have not yet weeped over this war. My entire life coalesced in this unsymmetrical broken mandala. Everything that happened and everything that is possible will only be like this butterfly. Nothing more alive could have emerged for me. This is that center from which I now continue.
7 березня. Київ, Поділ. Назар звертається до чергової охоронниці на прохідній одного з корпусів Училища водного транспорту:
— А знаєте… Он та кутова будівля, ваш головний корпус, є у фільмі “Без году неделя”. Бачили такий фільм?
Охоронниця замислюється. Здається, не бачила.
— Там є такий кадр, коли Настя Філімонова випускається з училища і стоїть там у дворі. Це така світла сцена, у героїні багато сподівань, вона на відмінно закінчила училище і хоче стати капітаном річкового корабля. Вже потім вона з’ясовує, як важко для жінки робити кар’єру на флоті. Доводиться пробиватись, дуже важко працювати, щоб завоювати повагу і стати помічником капітана. Але зараз вона стоїть у дворі свого училища, а всі труднощі ще попереду.
Охоронниця посміхається. Здається, її тішить, що Назар знає такі деталі про місце, де вона працює. У відповідь вона розповідає нам про теперішнє хазяйство училища. Де які корпуси, де бібліотека, де вчаться, де здають в оренду. Показує кілька місць, які б мали нас зацікавити. На перилах сушиться червоний килим зі східними візерунками. Назар наближається, щоб сфотографуватись на його фоні. Виходить стривожений чоловік. Це його авто стоїть тут у дворі і він хвилюється за нього. Але нас цікавить тільки килим. Килим теж його, але він дозволяє Назару зніматись на його фоні.
Назар Беницький будує землянку на березі ріки Чорторий і працює вуличним музикантом на подільських вулицях. Початок його історії читайте в першому номері журналу “Нога”.
В цей буремний час наш перший випуск надрукований і чекає на ваші очі.
12 художньо-документальних текстів написаних в Україні наприкінці 2019 року. Тут: автобіографія людини, що живе на подільских вулицях, тюремні спогади студентки лінгвістичного університету, отруєне озеро та його пристосовані істоти, побоювання депутата, що лікарня це портал до аду, роздуми над мертвим тілом дельфіна, Google Borscht Results і дещо інше.
Автори першого випуску: Назар Беницький Оксана Брюховецька Сашко Протяг Олена Думашева Олександр Авербух Філіп Оленик Володимир Жбанков Катя Лібкінд Ріке Феронія Мішель Якобі Антон Полунін Ліза Білецька
Дякуємо всім, хто надіслав нам свої тексти. Незабаром, до 1-го грудня, ми вирішуватимемо, які твори потрапляють до першого номера. Намагатимемося відповісти усім хто нам написав.
Ми задумали щоквартальний журнал. Він називається “Нога”.
Для першого номера шукаємо тексти в жанрі художньої документалістики (англ. Literary Nonfiction). Твори цього жанру базуються на реальних подіях, але не обов’язково мають на меті об’єктивно інформувати (як репортаж), навчати (як популярна документалістика) або висловлювати думку (як есе). Таким чином, жанр художньої документалістики знімає з тексту вимоги властиві іншим жанрам: текст не повинен бути ні об’єктивним, ні корисним, ні вигаданим.
Особливу цінність для нас становлять тексти, які документують активний та свіжий авторський досвід. Автор виходить в експедицію, взаємодіє, реагує та створює реакції, документує. Одна з переваг жанру полягає в тому, що робота в ньому не відбирає від “реального життя”, а стимулює його і збагачує.
Нас цікавлять, наприклад, такі теми: праця в робітничих немодних професіях; взаємодія з природою, у тому числі антропогенною; самотність, соціальне життя та дружба; громади й клуби. Цей перелік наводимо просто для прикладу: насправді, ми хочемо почути, що цікавить вас.
Але ми не стоїмо над ідеологією. Навряд чи нас зацікавлять тексти, які виражають упередження або зверхність до великих груп: національностей, гендерів, орієнтацій, соціальних класів, вікових груп. Кращий, на нашу думку, текст передає досвід і персонажів індивідуально та конкретно, без зайвих узагальнень.
Приймаємо роботи, які раніше не публікувались (в тому числі в соціальних медіа).
Мови: українська, російська, суржик, англійська.
Орієнтовний об’єм: від 5 2.5 до 30 тисяч символів. (Оновлення від 12.10.2019. Ми подумали і вирішили знизити мінімальну довжину тексту з 5 до 2.5 тисяч символів.)
За прийняті до публікації тексти передбачено гонорар 1000грн.
Матеріали для першого номера ми шукаємо до 15 листопада 2019-го.
Запитання, коментарі та ідеї текстів надсилайте за адресою: [email protected]
А ще підпишіться на нашу розсилку і будьте в курсі всіх справ.
Про нас:
Філіп Оленик – Дилетант, читач модерністської літератури 20-го століття. Експериментує в жанрі художньої документалістики в http://tinyletter.com/philya.
