On Your Side
Oksana Lutsyshyna takes us to the shores of Ukraine and memory for solidarity in grief
Grief is a tricky thing. Hierarchies of grief are a messy thing. Binaries of grief are designed to divide and conquer. In all its manifestations, however, grief is ultimately relative and painful and something we must find a way through no matter where or how we stand.
Oksana and I met in Athens, Georgia in the southeastern USA—and not the city in Greece, nor the country where eastern Europe meets west Asia, which is where more people than I can count assumed I must be—more than a decade ago when we were both struggling, as almost all do, through the PhD process. Since then, we’ve independently spiraled through Poland and Texas but not yet alighted once again in the same spot, save perhaps in spirit. And, in spirit, I feel a deep kinship even while our respective stories and paths are largely very different.
One aspect of this kinship manifests as an apparent faith in the beauty of art to elevate and heal grief, coupled with a drive to create art, so that the unbearable can be not only bearable but shareable and accounted for.
This week on FED, Oksana invites us, through her art, into the spaces she shares with her friend and fellow writer, Victoria Amelina, a casualty of the war in Ukraine. This personally inflected space offers us myriad opportunities to find our own personal paths through our respective grieving—the large and the small, the personal and the global.
So, pause to take a big breath of sea, and feast. We are all on the same side when it comes to a question of the mutual and reciprocal shore of humanity and planet. Even the cat. Yes, the cat. On your side.
Big love, Ashley
Who is on Your Side
Oksana Lutsyshyna
translated by Olena Jennings
who is on my side, you ask who is on my side? – this tree here, as if it could be against you? as if trees could be against people? a whole park of trees a whole forest, you could say – and are all on your side all of them and the cat? is the cat against you? no, the cat is on your side this cat and all in the world’s cats all – on your side, all – your army nimble, yellow-eyed and gods? yours and others – and everyone in the world? wouldn’t they help you? of course, they would they are on your side how could they be – against you? and that teacher that said – thoughts are everything? what’s his name – Swami Vishnudevananda is he – against you? why waste his time! of course, he is on your side on your side and the sea? what – you think, the sea is against you? all its waves and pebbles and beaches visible and invisible everything is for you, don’t doubt it everyday and every minute do you hear – the sea roars? it says to you: I am on your side on your side and music? which of the notes is against you? which of the melodies? Mozart? rappers? pianists? The Accademia Bizantina? Paul McCartney? no, what are you thinking everyone is on your side on your side and there is no one against you and there will never be and so love, keep on loving don’t be afraid
July 7, 2024
This poem was a favorite of my friend, a Ukrainian writer, Victoria Amelina, mortally wounded by Russian shelling on June 27 th of 2023; on July 1 st of last year she died. Victoria authored two novels, a non-fiction book in English about the war, a book of poetry, and a couple children’s books. She always asked me to read the “cat poem,” as she called it, at various poetry readings. She especially liked the parts about the sea. When I was at the seashore in May 2023, something prompted me to record the lines “do you hear – the sea roars? / it says to you: I /am on your side/on your side” in Ukrainian along with the sounds of the ocean and send it to Victoria. Our last conversation took place on June 23 rd of 2023. From now on, June and July are the months of especially poignant grieving.
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