When the war is far yet near. Pysanky and other reflections from Sydney
Sydney is my second home after Lviv. Two weeks ago, I travelled from Adelaide to Sydney to spend some time with my adopted family. My time in Sydney was between two Easters — the Australian one and the Ukrainian one. It was a week of listening: how does the war sound in the words of people living half-way around the world?
Listening is best done in silence. Before my trip, I sat down to make pysanky, Ukrainian decorated Easter eggs. One pysanka per evening, — six evenings of meditative silence. My room smelt of melted beeswax and vinegar. I assembled a row of glasses with food colors on my table, raided the nearby supermarkets for white-shelled eggs, and kept my evenings free for this most treasured Ukrainian Easter tradition — pysanky-making.
Making pysanky, my mind goes quiet. My hand gets steady. I enter the world I’ve known as a child — that of pure, bright-colored joy, the kind of joy adults hide not to seem silly. Except this time, my fingertips give me away: they whisper of happiness in words of yellow, red, and green.
My hand luggage travelled with several layers of insulation and my great reluctance to let go of the backpack at airport security. I always make pysanky on empty shells — that way, they can be preserved for years. They were the most fragile thing I’ve ever carried on a plane. I was glad to arrive with all pysanky intact. Here’s a happy photo upon arrival in Sydney:
Easter has always been a special time for me — its meaning revolving around earthly rebirth, spiritual renewal, and inter-generational unity. All of those meanings are encoded in pysanky patterns: the “svarga” depicting the movement of sun, the “pine” (actually, wheat-ear) symbolizing life, the “infinity” standing for continuity of generations. Pysanky, similar to many other Ukrainian art forms, are a blend of pagan and Christian traditions, cutting across time and distilling culture to its most elemental, yet most meaningful signs.
I was blessed this year — having a chance to spend Easter in a circle of closest friends outside home. I’m also deeply grateful for being able to contribute these pysanky to a good cause: with the help of my Sydney family, we auctioned them off for a grand total of 2370 AUD, all proceeds going to direct humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Six Easter eggs landed in five Latvian-Australian families, and the auction itself was a lot of fun! It involved the singing of “Red viburnum”, a mini-lecture on effective donations, and a speech (by me) on the symbology of pysanky. It looked something like this:
In Sydney, I made time to listen. I listened to stories from Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Australia and beyond. I listened to stories from days ago and from decades ago — when Latvian refugees were running from the Russian atrocities just as Ukrainians do today. They made me hopeful — that human kindness has no geographical borders. That we can — and must! — live up to higher ideals than mere survival.
… A Belarussian friend shared her plans for this year’s vacation: “ I can’t go to Belarus as I planned to — they're arresting people left and right. So I’m going to spend two weeks in Poland, as a volunteer helping Ukrainian refugees.”
…A Latvian colleague talked about his admiration for Ukrainians’ bravery: “Me and my brother own a building in Riga — we decided to sublet all flats for free to Ukrainian refugees. Early in the war, some women arrived together with their husbands. But days later, the few men that brought their families to Riga left to return home and fight. My brother tells me, not a single man remained with their family — despite having a chance to just stay in Europe.”
… My Ukrainian colleague from University left Donbas over a decade ago. She talked about her school years in Eastern Ukraine: “It’s strange to think of now, but not many people actually travelled from Donbas to Western Ukraine in those days. We did once, spending two nights on the train, and two days in Lviv. I loved that trip so much! Of course, there were no “banderovtsy” and everyone was super-welcoming, there was no problem at all with us speaking Russian! Alas, not many people could afford to travel, and to see for themselves that the whole “banderovtsy” myth was an invention of Russian propaganda.”
The war sounded differently this Easter. Transcending pain, the sound of the war has also brought notes of hope and renewal.