Learning to Fly

 September 25th, 2021

A fatal attraction is holding me fast
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?

Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

                                                                           -Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly

I can’t stop thinking about jumping out of Oleg’s 10^th story apartment window.

I am obsessed with the thought of it. What would it feel like to freefall ten stories down to the ground? Would I remain conscious, or would I black out before I hit? Would I feel the concrete as my body splattered all over it, and what would my last thought be (oh, fuck!?)

I can’t stop imagining it, every time I peer out the window and down to the city’s cold, hard, concrete surfaces. Would anyone else even see it, maybe someone peering out a similar window, thinking about doing the same thing?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to jump out of my window. I am not suicidal. I am not angry, sad or depressed. In fact, I feel more alive than ever being here in Ukraine, in the city of Kyiv, amongst all these other apartment buildings. It’s so very different from where I come from, and what I’m used to. It’s such an unusual experience that I find it exhilarating, absolutely fascinating, and I am soaking up every second of it. I feel newly alive and refreshed, every day upon waking up (and I’ve never written so much in my life)!

But I still can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to jump out of this window. To be clear, I’m not thinking about what it would be like to die by jumping, really. My obsessive thoughts come from the wonder of it all, not about the consequences. So, I have no desire to end my life, quite the opposite, but I still find myself wondering what it would be like if I just leaned a little further out. 

You have to understand that I’ve grown up in the country, quite literally with both feet planted firmly on the ground, and have spent all my life on ground floors, in a house, maybe with a second story bedroom or office. But never in my life have I lived for any extended period of time at 10 stories, which is like, what, about 150 feet? So now that I’ve awakened every morning for well over a month now, at this height, you would think the amazement of looking outside to a sea of apartment buildings as tall and high as mine would have gone thin by now. But it hasn’t. Every day, I sit here on this closed balcony, in lotus position, and watch the sun slowly rise at about 5:30-6 a.m. each morning. I let my thoughts drift in meditation while doing a bit of stretch yoga and breathing exercises (I call this “Ronnie-yama”, since it was my mom that introduced me to meditation and yoga at an early age). It’s an invigorating way to start the day, highly recommended!)

And yet those thoughts always seem to drift out the window. I mean, just look at the apartment building directly across from my window on Oleg’s 10^th floor. Count up to the 10^th and that’s level with me here, both buildings being about 20 stories tall (so I’m halfway up).

 

Oleg’s windows, two in the back bedroom where we sleep and four in the front balcony (closed in) are about 4ft x 2ft and two or three of them swing open to the left, like a door, and the lower rail of the window ledge is about waist high, so leaning outward even just a little gives you just a little bit of the willies. When you lean out just a tad to see the ground below, you feel gravity’s weight, like one of those toy action figures we used to play with as kids. My Spiderman doll, for instance, was top heavy like me, the chest and arms exaggerated and much larger than his skinny little legs, so these dolls always topped over with the slightest counter shake or floor vibration, remember? And since my adult body is similarly top heavy and leg skinny, I often feel out of balance in this way, ready to topple over with the slightest push. I feel this awkward balance in my legs every time I even glance out Oleg’s windows, and especially when my upper body is fully outside of it, looking down at the ground.

In a different environment – the rocky mountains of the West – I’ve felt this exact same sensation. I’m not afraid of heights (but not in love with them either), so my spidey-senses start tingling every time I’m on a rocky ledge on an overlook high above everything. There’s nothing more exhilarating that being on a mountain top ledge that’s at or above the cloud line, even while just skiing at this elevation. it’s dream-like. I can imagine it now and it feels like I’m standing there at this moment. I have just slid off the chairlift. I pause to look over the landscape below, seeing my line and the trees I will need to avoid. Now I’m ready to drop into my first turns, feeling the initial heart-racing jitters, and adrenaline rush, quickly followed by a cold calmness as I imagine laying virgin tracks and perfect S-turns in fresh, wispy, champagne powder. Imagine it. If you ski, you know the feeling.

      

(yes, that’s me standing there, Grand Canyon, north rim)

At one point, about 2 weeks in to my Kyivian immersion, I became obsessed with the thought of hanging a bird feeder on the balcony window, to attract the hooded crows that often fly past it at eye level. To do this, however, would require a small hole drilled into the tin overhang that protrudes out of the floor above (to catch debris and water that sometimes drips down from above). So, realizing that I would have to stand on a chair to drill this hole where I would then tie a string to hold the feeder, and that my body would be more outside the window than inside, I thought twice. And even though it is a closed balcony with plenty of places to grip tightly with one hand while I drill, after consulting others, I realized it wasn’t worth attempting it. Shit, the gazillion rock pigeons that fly around the city would probably just raid it every day anyway! Don’t get me wrong, I spent days and days contemplating safe ways to do this, because the thought of attracting these crows every morning with my food scraps from the day before just seems like an exciting and cool thing to do. I still want to do it. But the thought of accidentally falling to my doom compels me not to. How stupid would I look if I fell out of the window accidentally, just trying to see a fucking crow! I’m not going out that way, dude. Not a chance. I’ll be lucky enough to survive the elevator!

I did find one useful way to exploit my newfound heights. After noticing that others up here have a tradition of painting messages to loved ones on the sidewalks below, I decided to try it for Tetyana’s birthday. So, I snuck out at 4:30 in the morning (in the pitch black elevator) and, using some children’s chalk, I drew this outside of our bedroom window. Don’t laugh at the fact that I forgot the “H”, it was dark! Tanya loved it!

Let’s jump ahead.

I think my obsessed thoughts of heights has something to do with always thinking about my new environment, and that includes other aspects of the physical environment and things I can’t help but notice about the country of Ukraine, not all of it good. For example, I see a LOT of trash and pollution here.

As I continue to notice a fair amount of trash strewn about the city of Kyiv, I can’t help but reflect on its “footprint” of carbon and pollution, but also on recycling and renewable energy. So, I did the classic, inexhaustive, distracted, cursory Googling research to find out and, from what I gathered, it would appear that Ukraine’s footprint is more like a toe-tap compared to larger and more consumerist countries like China and the U.S.

For example, I saw that Ukraine consumed 3,632,194,307,000 BTU (3.63 quadrillion BTU) of energy in 2017. This represents 0.62% of global energy consumption. https://www.worldometers.info/energy/ukraine-energy/

And from the U.S. Energy Information Administration…

Analysis - Energy Sector Highlights

·        Ukraine is an important transit country for supplies of oil and natural gas from Russia to countries throughout Europe.

·        The Dnieper-Donetsk region accounts for 90% of natural gas production. The remaining 10% of natural gas production originates in the Carpathian and Black Sea-Sea of Azov regions.

·        Ukraine produces coal, natural gas, petroleum and other liquids, nuclear, and renewables. However, energy demand exceeds domestic energy supply; imports cover an energy gap of about 35%.

·        Natural gas represents nearly one-third of Ukraine’s primary energy consumption, followed by coal at 30% and nuclear at 21%. Petroleum and other liquids and renewable energy sources together account for the remaining 18% of primary energy consumption.

·        Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine’s economy faced significant challenges, including excessive sovereign debt. The pandemic only increased these challenges, as both energy demand and production decreased, affecting Ukraine’s ability to repay debt.

But this doesn’t come anywhere close the U.S. annual energy use:

In 2020, total U.S. primary energy consumption was equal to about 92,943,042,000,000,000 Btu, or about 93 quadrillion Btu. May 14, 2021   https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

So we can safely say that, like other countries, Ukraine has its challenges; however, it’s footprint globally is relatively miniscule. So there’s that.

So should I be concerned that there are some, but not many, recycling stations around Kyiv? It’s growing here, to be sure, but most people continue to toss their plastic, glass and cardboard in the trash, and I’ve seen some sketchy industrial liquids/chemicals tossed in the trash around my apartment too!

So, like much of Ukrainian culture, it’s a mixed bag. There is an environmental ethic here. You have to pay for your plastic bags at the grocery store, so many people re-use them or bring their own. Out of necessity, people mostly walk everywhere, to the store and to work. Parents take their kids outdoors to play in the many ad hoc playgrounds that are scattered between apartment buildings, so kids learn to enjoy the outdoors (imagine that!). The tap water is contaminated, so just about everyone re-uses large plastic jugs to get their drinking water from water stations around the neighborhood. And babushkas leave milk and scraps out for the (many) stray cats and dogs that roam the streets (as well as the gazillion pigeons), and many people have pets that are well cared for and loved, so there’s some appreciation for non-human life. Camping, which here is mostly day picnics by the river cooking up shashlik (shish-kabobs) over an open fire, is something that families do often on warm, sunny days.

But when you walk around outside, either by the river or just around town, you often see piles of trash that have been hastily disposed of, and sometimes those piles are immensely huge – they are unofficial dump sites that people use, either out of desperation (no landfill in sight) or out of laziness, not unlike the piles I’ve documented in the U.S. in a paper I wrote back in 2006 called, “The Dump”

(PPTpresentation here)

Full paper here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a6H0jj-PfnavSuERTZZVycJ6vUe5Hg3w/view?usp=sharing

And I’ve already documented the overpopulation problem that results in a traffic and transportation infrastructure problem that is notorious around the world. Kyiv, in fact, ranks 9^th in the world for traffic congestion, so you have to be prepared for a very crowded and chaotic drive to downtown. It takes about an hour to drive from here to here, for example (12 KM). 

And although Kyiv has good public transportation, including a clean and easy subway system, rail, city busses, Uber and other ride share services, and the ever-present marshukas (like buses but not really), there are still far too many cars on the road and nowhere to park. So parking requires novel solutions.

Which is why you’ll see people finding novel ways to park, to put it mildly!

Now, I consider myself to be an aggressive but safe driver in the city, like in Chicago where I typically drive. I’ve never been in an accident and have managed some pretty hairy situations in heavy traffic. So, I planned to drive here on this third trip, thinking I was ready. But I’m not. Sitting in the front seat with Oleg driving, I had to reconsider.

Driving in Kyiv is crazy. Insane, actually. The rules are different here. You can cut in front of anyone as long as you are even slightly ahead of another car, and they will brake and allow you in, and you can expect that others will similarly cut you off at any moment (lots on honking everywhere, but whatever). And you can pass anyone, on any side, in any lane, at any time. You can even drive on sidewalks (technically illegal but no politzia will stop you)! When I asked Oleg about this, he explained that drivers have had to adapt to the fact that there are so many more cars on the road today, and that the infrastructure (roads and sidewalks in particular) cannot accommodate them all, so politzia look the other way and drivers just have to compete/cooperate with one another as best they can. It’s not rudeness that compels them to cut in front of each other so dangerously, it’s out of necessity.

One thing I DO like about driving in Ukraine is that YOU DON’T HAVE TO WEAR A SEATBELT. Not many people do, and I love that because, I hate to say it, I usually don’t wear a seatbelt in the U.S. either. I might strap in for a 90 mph drive up to Chicago, but rarely anywhere else and certainly not around town. You have to remember, I grew up in the 70s when we didn’t even have seatbelts, really, so I never really picked up the habit, so I’m very comfortable driving around Kyiv without my seatbelt. I haven’t worn one since I’ve been here, including on that ride you watched before. That’s just me, though.

 I also like the fact that many, if not most, dog owners do NOT leash their pets (maybe half of them do), even on city streets with heavy traffic (note: I’ve been told most dog owners take their dogs to obedience school). And I have yet to see any owner pick up their dog’s poop. They don’t do that here. Some of you will be horrified by that but I personally don’t care. Again, just me. Don’t judge me, or these Ukrainians, though. It’s just their culture, different from ours!

So when it comes to pets and driving, I would fit right in here, probably better than back home!

Moving on to my last cultural observation, and since I’m being a bit of a culture critic this week, I’d like to talk about the music scene in Ukraine. So since I started this post with music lyrics, I want to end on that subject.

Music in Ukraine

In my opinion, when it comes to popular music in Ukraine, I think it sucks. While I’m sure there’s diversity in music here that I just haven’t heard, I’m still searching for a rock venue here, other than 80s metal tribute bands. I love heavy metal, don’t get me wrong, I’m an old school metalhead to be sure, but they don’t seem to have moved beyond 80s metal. And there’s no live music scene to speak of. Maybe I’ll find that scene before I leave, but believe me, I’ve searched and found little to choose from. Not even a blues bar (I did see a Jazz bar once). While I have heard what I would describe as trance or soft house music at a few restaurants, and I even heard Jason Mraz once, and Sting, but not much else, no R&B or anything remotely sounding like it. No funk and no punk.  They seem to be stuck in the disco era. 90% of what I hear on the radio sounds like this, and it all sounds the same to me. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKl52BfOifk

But I’m guessing Ukraine has my music and that I just haven’t found it yet. I did find this interesting homemade documentary about the history of heavy metal in Ukraine, from the Soviet era of the 80s up to today, which if you still like your metal heavy, you’ll enjoy:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aP-KTznbuw

The subject of music, including a revision of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds into new, “Ukrenglish” lyrics, is forthcoming, along with my list of 10 Things I Miss About the U.S., coming soon!

Gotta fly!

p.s. no new birds these past few weeks ☹