My American Graffiti

 

And as we all play parts of tomorrow, Lord no
Some ways we'll work, and other ways we'll play
But I know we can't all stay here forever
So I'm gonna write my words on the face of today

And then they'll paint it 

Blind Melon, Change

(Shannon Hoon, dead of cocaine overdose, 1995) 

I’ve taken LOTS of pics of public graffiti and other forms of public art while I’ve been here. Not sure why. Maybe because the graffiti is so unusual, in that there are no gang symbols or territory marking, just random words, street names of kids, and websites/hashtags to buy illegal drugs (posted previously). If you look closely above, you can see “right sector” which is the white supremacists group here, and a few nazi symbols, and someone wrote “ANTIFA” but I think it’s just more kid stuff. Others have come along and crossed some of it out, which is even funnier to me. And some of the graffiti isn’t half bad as art. Here’s a whole folder of graffiti/public art pics I’ve taken if you want to see more:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LiVIkzlHQgDlItaBuE4p6AdMxvGMCt9k?usp=sharing

In this folder, you’ll see some of my own public art. In particular, these messages I write on the sidewalks in colorful chalk. Why? Well, because with the fair amount of down time I have these days, I’m finding a need to express my creative side more than I usually do. Also, because this place can be quite dreary and gray, especially on these freezing cold days where it gets down to 40 degrees at night (and only up to 50 during the day), and because the government still hasn’t turned on the heat, we have no heat in the so we’re always bundled up in all our sweaters and blankets apartment. It sucks (as of Oct 15^th, but it’s supposed to come on this week, so don’t worry about me).

So, partly to stay warm and partly because I just get up real early these days, I’ve been getting up at 5-5:30 in the morning and walking around the still quiet streets (the closest thing I have to nature), and writing these positive messages on sidewalks occasionally, to cheer people up I guess, and to cheer me up I’m sure. This led me to initiating 2 weeks of “random acts of kindness”, where I’ve been randomly placing $200 (in gryvna, equals about 5 bucks) in public places with a sticky note that has one of those “pay it forward” website addresses on it (wikihow/Pay-It-Forward), telling the recipient to do the same. 

Video here

At first, I was putting the cash in the elevator of my apartment and just hitting a random floor and running away, but that wasn’t working too well (see video here)

 so then I started placing it outside on benches, front steps of a school next to me, and at the water station. I was hoping to spark a revolution of kindness in a city of desperate, isolated, dull faces. But since there’s no way to know if I started a chain reaction or not, I got bored of doing that. And also I ran out of gryvna 😊 So I started feeding some of the (many) stray dogs and cats around my neighborhood (which spawned a previous post titled, "The Stray Dogs of Odessa". I even went to the Silpo (grocery store) and bought bags of dog food! But all these damn pigeons eat it (and not the bad-ass crows that I was hoping would, see below), so this was another failed attempt at local do-goodery. Kept me mentally occupied for awhile though!

 

 

Anyway, my next post will be the last, time to start closing shop! I’ve been working on a list of “10 Things I Miss About the U.S.” but it has started to transform into “10 Things I Love About Ukraine” instead 😊