#flash essay

Our life is not as horrible as theirs. We are not in the trenches. My loved ones are safe and sound. Electricity is available. Grocery stores are open. All my friends, close and distant, often (in fact, all the time) talk about a deep sense of shame. A shame to live when others are dying; a shame to eat when people out there are starving; a shame to desire something when so many people have no desires whatsoever. Psychologists call this feeling “survivor’s guilt.” Well… I would not be so sure. We are “survivors” at this moment. The minute I am writing this line. At this moment, we are not in the trenches, and the electricity is available. It is curious, though, that the soldiers defending us on the frontlines sometimes (not all the time, I hope) feel guilty too: for doing something not well enough; for not being on the battlefield; for being alive; for not doing more. I am not thinking about the normal/abnormal state of mental health against the backdrop of a large-scale war with the cannibals. I am thinking about them, the cannibals “repeating their grandfathers’ heroic deeds” and their slogan: “I am not ashamed.” Fuck you. Our country is choking on the feeling of guilt for all the could-haves and should-haves, while the I-am-not-ashamed hashtags stick out of the abyss of hell.   Not ashamed to kill, loot, rape, and piss their pants after being captured. Not ashamed to know that they target their missiles and drop their bombs on civilians. Not ashamed to be happy about getting a fur coat looted from an apartment whose owners were most probably murdered. Not ashamed to lie; not ashamed to curse; not ashamed to threaten the whole world with a naked ass crowned with the nuclear button. But now I understand why. The feelings of shame and guilt indicate the ability of the brain to process difficult emotions. It has not been established yet whether cats and dogs can feel shame. Well, it’s clear with the cats. At the house where a cat lives, everything belongs to the cat — it is its two-legged slave who must be ashamed. It gets more complicated with dogs. They are believed to pretend to feel shame or guilt. At least, they can fake it.    But russians? No. In the surrounding world, some animals can feel shame, but plants, minerals, and products of human labor — cannot. A rock, a rose, a tank cannot feel ashamed. Can a russian be a rose? Definitely not.

Excerpt from the flash essay "Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. March 24" from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity”.

At last, I have decided to touch on this, my most heated opinion.

Beginning as far back as I can remember, this recurring problem has caused me unparalleled frustration.

Can I describe for you a scenario?

Dinner time has arrived once more, some evening in a winter of my childhood, and my family is preparing to head out the door to drive to a restaurant.

Even though I have donned my shoes and socks and am all ready to go, I am stopped by my mother.

"For crying outside, Gracie," she exclaims, "aren't you going to be cold?"

God.

How could my young mind formulate a response that fully communicates my argument against her point?

I, of course, am not wearing a jacket, which my family sees as pure suicide.

Jacket's are, to me, for wearing when you are going to be outside for an extended period of time--not for putting on for two seconds to walk from my warm home to my warm car, where I will take it off until it is time to walk ten feet from the warm car to the warm restaurant, where I will once again take it off and have to babysit it and keep it from sliding off of the smooth booth seat and onto the filthy restaurant floor and try not to forget to take it with me when the meal is complete and it is time once again to depart the establishment and reverse the entire process once again, concluding the journey back at my centrally heated house.

Knowing all of this intrinsically does not help young me to articulate the silliness of the matter.

Like a good daughter, I go put on a jacket anyway.

My life has been riddled with these sorts of situations.

No one seems to ever be able to deal with the idea of me not wearing a jacket for the cumulative sixty seconds a day that I might be spending outside.

Of course I still wear appropriate garments if I'm going for a walk or someplace that might actually be cold, but I'm not going to bring an outer layer with me if I'm going to be wearing it for two minutes and carrying it around with me for an hour.

Perhaps you think I am being unreasonable.

Questioning my sanity even.

Really though, I bet more people agree with me than are willing to admit it.

Stop giving in, I say.

Tell the pro-jacketers in your life that your wardrobe choices are aspirational.

"Um, you're supposed to dress for the job you want, not the job you have," you must say, "and I want to be inside."

Very likely they will roll their eyes and give up on trying to reason with you.

Wow, that means you've won the argument.

X-rated films show more skin than me, not that I consider that the bar, just sayin'.

Yes, I am cold sometimes, but I am always a form over function type of woman, and if the outfit doesn't call for a jacket, the weather doesn't call for a jacket.

His name is Denys. I met him at the bomb shelter on February 27, in the first days of the war. Denys and his mother came from Sartana. They hunkered down in our basement, trying to save their lives during the first air raids. Agitated, the boy told me about their experience. He repeated over and over again how frightening it was when a fighter jet swooped down so close, dropping bombs on the neighboring houses. He was so terrified that his heart almost jumped out of his chest. Denys also told me how he had saved his best friend, a teddy bear, even though he was so terribly frightened. “I pressed him to my chest to protect him from bombs,” the boy said. “I covered his ears and eyes so he wouldn’t hear and see those horrible things. When the fighter jet left, we jumped into our car and drove away, very-very fast. Under the bullets, because the shelling never stopped. Why do they do it? Why do they kill other people?!”

Excerpt from the flash essay "Oksana Stomina: Appeal from the Boy in the Photo. March 22" from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity”.

A “little man” is the alpha and omega of the “great russian culture.” A little, despicable, cowardly, uncomplaining, gray, voiceless someone. Whatever and wherever they are, their ability to act is non-existent. A burly, deaf and mute Gerasim obediently drowns the only soul that loves him. Looking into his dog’s eyes, he wraps a rope around a brick, makes a loop, and ties it round his neck… He betrays his dog and kills him. He could have taken him somewhere, sold him or given him away. He could have tied the dog to a tree in the forest and visited him every day, feeding and loving him. But no. Gerasim is a little man. He is too weak to resist the circumstances. But he is strong enough to kill. A “trembling creature,” Raskolnikov decided to measure his largess and height with murder. A murder out of curiosity. He is a little man who believes that he has to kill another person to grow bigger. A little man is an unknown soldier, a nameless hero, a missing warrior. Their name is legion. And they don’t have a name, at the same time, being fused together into the body of a machine that either devours or kills. For many decades, the “great russian culture” has been trying to make the world choke on its tears over the destiny of people who trembled with fear, doubt, and helplessness and committed crimes, unable to resist them.   When the war broke out, my older children’s landlords called them and said, “Well, now that this happened, you can pay only for utilities, if you can afford it. It’s alright if you don’t pay the rent. We’re good people, after all.” I wouldn’t call them good people before the war. The landlords, a mother and daughter, were “half-Vatniks.” * Lots of people like them lived in Kyiv back in the day. Their opinion about what moscovia did in 2014 fit the pattern of “it’s not so straightforward,” “we’re brotherly nations, after all,” and “we have no power over anything.” I am not sure if their opinion has changed now that the “brotherly nation” is skinning people alive out of curiosity or helplessness. I hope it has. But even if it hasn’t. They called us to clarify what kind of people they were. Between the “little” (those who don’t decide anything) and the “good” (those capable of doing something), they chose the latter. Ever since the war started, I have been using the crime series — about riot squads, police departments, and private detectives — as my sleeping pills. They lull me into confidence that good really wins over evil. They drew my attention to the fact that even the most cruel maniacs put the guns down; the filthiest bastards willingly cooperate with the investigation; and the most corrupt police officers admit their treason and often shield their colleagues from bullets to remain — at least for a little bit — good people. “Are you a good person?” — this question, a key one in the negotiations with the criminals, creates a completely different mirror in which the civilization is looking. Not a nameless soldier, but Private Ryan who has to be saved, for he is his mother’s sole surviving son. “Am I a good person?” is a question that teenagers and seniors, the rich and the poor, men and women keep asking. What’s more, even zombies from apocalyptic movies say, “I’m a good person,” refusing to bite a child. This is the difference. The war between “the little” and “the good.” The ruthless, cruel, mindless, unscrupulous, filthy little people — and the good people. If the civilization shaped around the question “Am I a good person?” loses, Gerasim will consistently drown dogs, and Raskolnikov will methodically kill old people. A new Z-swastika, sanctified by the “great russian culture,” will leave no chance for anything human. Anywhere in the world. White Fang will never find its Weedon Scott, and Private Ryan will be buried, unrecognized, in a mass grave.

From the flash essay "Olena Stiazhkina: Kyiv. March 23" from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity”.

It is too easy and convenient to state that the cultural and educational spheres are somehow “apolitical.” It is too easy and convenient for russian professors, researchers, scientists, lecturers, artists, actors, singers, conductors, musicians… to claim that the current humanitarian disaster in Ukraine is a result of the actions of “the regime.” If students of one of the most prestigious institutes of russia believe that their country’s forces are not killing civilians in Ukraine, their educators (and all educators in russia!) are responsible for tolerating a system of false propaganda that makes this possible. It is too easy and convenient to claim that somehow all of russia (every single citizen!!!) is not responsible for the war in Ukraine. Particular responsibility lies with those whose profession is to work with ideas, to teach critical thinking, to expand worldviews. They have failed miserably. And their failure has resulted in a catastrophe that simply cannot go unpunished.

Excerpt from the flash essay "Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. March 23" from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity”.

What does leadership really look like? This is a true story about leadership, socks, and learning what “presidential” really means. When I became First Vice-President of the California Council for the Social Studies, my friend—who was next in line for the role—looked at me thoughtfully and said,“Marsha, now you’re going to have to start looking and acting presidential.” “You don’t think I…