The sky was a pale Ukrainian blue. My heels clipped quietly on the cobblestones as I walked my usual route home. Today, in front of the florist shop, bouquets and potted plants spilled onto the sidewalk. The cheerful women who ran the shop were doing a brisk business in the afternoon sun. I had bought yellow tulips from them one February night, in broken Ukrainian and with much laughter.
Ivano-Frankivsk has quickly become for me a collection of small but important places. There’s that stretch of broken sidewalk by the bus stop, and the slope of the parking lot down to the green island outside of ATB. Or the banister of the church porch, which I lean over to catch the last of the sunlight in the evening before English class. It’s opening my window to a sky mottled gray and blue over the gold roof of the Orthodox church. It’s the smell of cigarettes outside the restaurant in the city center, and low voices murmuring into cell phones passing me on the street. It’s the women sitting in the market in front of boxes heaped with fresh fruit and vegetables, or the sway of the bus as it speeds up over the bridge. In the summer it’s the feel of the river rocks against my feet and in the winter the crunch of snow underfoot.
It’s occured to me that I can’t seem to capture a place if I go there specifically to look at it. I have to catch it out of the corner of my eyes. I remember the beauty of Portland’s skyline from the way it took my breath away one Thursday afternoon as I left my therapist’s office, right at the golden hour. Or when I take the hill down to the highway in Oregon City, that’s when I notice the sun gleaming on the Willamette river. Or how, on the road to Lviv, if you look out the window at the crest of a certain hill, the green and yellow fields of West Ukraine rise and fall for miles before the feet of the blue mountains.
Familiarity is its own kind of beauty. There are some places you can’t appreciate unless you’ve seen them a hundred times. Places you can love only by immersion, by the experience of winding yourself so deeply in that you can explore the layers and levels below the surface.
Early that same morning, some subconscious urge had driven me out of sleep and to the window. I threw it open to find that the Orthodox church across the way was broadcasting their service. A fresh breeze came rushing in, while old and ancient chants spilled into the morning air, echoing off the surrounding buildings. I climbed back under the blankets and felt, just for that moment, perfectly content in the world.
L.M. Shearer 