Україна

It's quite bewildering that the political turmoil, civil disaster, and overall strife of a nation I've never even seen with my own eyes makes my heart so heavy. But it somehow aches like home.

Боже, я молюсь за Україну,
Боже, молю Тебе за людей.

Andrew

I saw a stray photo of my little Andrew a few days ago and, well, he's not so little anymore. I was dumbfounded. Lexi was the one who posted it and although she's growing fast, it's just normal, and then especially Natalya, she's always been practically grown, but Andrew, my Andrew - I just, I'm at a loss for words. I don't know when this happened. I don't know how it came to being practically a year since I've seen him. I don't know how I could let my bitterness toward the community make me desert them, of all people. I don't know how I can bear him growing up without me.

I Want to Inspire You

I want to inspire you. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I want to be your muse, I just want to stir something in you. I want you to feel passion, to feel energy roaming through you, pushing you towards something. I want to be the cause behind a poem, a story, an act, a dream. It doesn't have to be grand, it doesn't have to be all that memorable. It doesn't matter whether our lives are intertwined for years or if they simply intersect for a moment, and then bounce off one another. It doesn't matter whether you love me or feel nothing but indifference towards me. It doesn't matter, the details don't matter. I just want to inspire you.

If I Knew Where I Was Going

If I knew where I was going, I’d stop reading maps like they hold some special secret. I’d realize that they guide people toward a destination and not just away from themselves and I’d stop blaming physical boundaries and distance for all of my problems. I’d accept that the reason I always feel stuck is because I’m too afraid to cross the rivers and mountains that I’ve built up between myself and the people around me, between my actions and my ambitions, my muscles and my mind.

If I Knew Where I Was Going | Thought Catalog

Feeling Sentimental

I don't often get very sentimental, but my heart is simply filled with love right now. I do love this place, and I do love these people. And I do love that place, and I do love those people. I've realized that no matter where I go, I will always be missing something and someone else. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with leaving bits and pieces of my heart scattered about, because what good is a whole heart, not shared, kept to itself and alone?

Culture Cravings

I have never been especially in tune with my Ukrainian heritage - as a child detesting Saturday morning Ukrainian school, resenting learning the language, pleased that my features are more "American" than Slavic - but I've noticed that, at random times, I experience what I can only call culture cravings. 

Growing up, at school or in the community, I never associated myself with "the Russians" (as all Slavics were lumped under one label) because they were an embarrassment. They dressed funny, talked funny, almost always had a poor reputation of being shady, judgmental, and haughty. They looked down at Americans, refusing to accept the fact that by immigration, or for many even by birth, they themselves were Americans. They disgusted me and I didn't want to be associated with them but in rejecting these specific people and their specific flaws, I rejected the entire culture. 

But now that I'm so far removed from it, I miss it. I didn't fully realize it for a while, but I would find myself actually speaking Ukrainian to my parents when they called (as opposed to English, how I usually conversate with them) or listening intently to the documentaries in history class when they interviewed Russians or Poles, wanting to catch just snippets of a familiar dialect. When Angela came to visit in the fall, it was so refreshing to watch Everything is Illuminated and laugh at the jokes, to flow between languages in a conversation (because sometimes you just need a good "аж ну" or "ти шо, з дуба впав?"), and yes, I'll admit, to actually cook vareniki. It just felt nice. It felt nice to be near something that is so familiar, something that I never would have imagined that I would find myself missing.

I call these feelings "culture cravings" because I don't know what else to label them. I'm surrounded by a predominantly white American student body, in which the average person knows a single language, and sometimes, it just gets tiring. My tongue randomly gets tied up and I want to blurt out a Ukrainian phrase but no one would understand, or I find some Slavic joke or comparison amusing but no one would get the reference. I find myself craving culture - my culture, the culture that I spent so many years rebelling against and rejecting. 

I guess this is what is called growing up.

Coincidence

I think of a person I haven't seen or thought of for years, and ten minutes later I see her crossing the street. I turn on the radio to hear a voice reading the biblical story of Jael, which is the story that I have spent the morning writing about.  A car passes me on the road, and its license place consists of my wife's and my initials side by side. When you tell people stories like that, their usual reaction is to laugh. One wonders why.

I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that's going on, but I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten."

- Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC