Standing with

For a few days now, no one has visited these pics, thoughts and impressions of mine (not that I am complaining, in fact I am surprised, after more than a year, to still have a couple regular visitors). I take the opportunity to write to myself in a slightly more uncensored automatic way, even if I am trying to minimally correct it afterwards and to share it somehow. These same few days of war in Europe have been hard to bear. I am alone at home: there is no one to try to stop my compulsion to consume non-stop horrifying news or to calm my nightmares. I am spoiled that way, not used to care for myself on my own for decades. For reasons that are alien to me, or rather, stemming from an upbringing based primarily on ideology and the duty to form and express one's own opinion on all and everything in public, it has been strangely easy to reflect a little before spewing opinions on social media. In moments as severe as these, maturity tells me, it is more sensible and useful to do so before vomiting judgements and take sides at all costs. 

What reflection is telling me is that there are countless numbers of people (whose lives are in actual danger) just a few hundred kilometres away in need of practical support - and that, yes, is the only reality that matters at this point. Beyond the more than questionable role of NATO, the hypocrite US foreign policy, the lucrative German war businesses, the millions of refugees from equally horrible wars in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Afghanistan [etc.]; now the dictator Putin, president of a totalitarian state (unending examples in recent years are not lacking to support this statement), has brutally invaded a neighboring sovereign state and, so far, what the victims of this war - both Ukrainian and Russian, apart from world citizens in a near future - desperately need is immediate solidarity and not vain ideological virtual wrangling. This is not the same as Crimea 2014, but that is not my point anyway.

I see men of all ages literally forced to stay in Ukraine to resist as civilians against one of the most powerful armies in the world while women and children form endless lines to flee into exile, and there is nothing that can hold my tears. This too is patriarchy. Yes, we have already seen this many times before, history keeps repeating itself no matter how much we insist on the need for citizenship education. But it's so close home that almost hurts for real. After all, I am part of a generation that learnt at school that a world war would never happen in Europe ever again. Immoral perhaps, the degree of empathy moving so much people to act now that never before went to a demo or said something vaguely political ever, but so human too. Less understandable is the amount of already politically engaged people remaining in silence or even preaching neutrality due to basic anti-American and/or pro-soviet feelings. I am proud to say that I have been seeing many fellow Russian artists declaring shame and solidarity with Ukraine... may this wave of consciousness inspire many more European comrades in the coming days. We all should know by now that not only silence but also virtuous arguments without taking a stand only favor the oppressors. It is only fair to notice how deeply most Poles seem to have this knowledge right now, even if this very same knowledge doesn’t apply to refugees who are people of color... 

In other words, let us give up on some of our privileges for a while, whether they are a moral superiority insisting on Manichean statements that support civil apathy or the refusal to rethink alternatives to the energy supply that is funding the Russian dictatorship: we owe it to ourselves and future generations, even if it means losing a healthy desired comfort and normalcy. Before we can't even do that.

#StandWithUkraine

Massive Demo in Berlin, 27.2.22