Most of my days now are walking through this district. I lived here for a large part of my life. The house behind the trees on the right is the house of my parents. This asphalt path leads to the yard where I spent most of my childhood with my best and only friend.

I lived in this yard for some 20 years, then moved to another similar house/yard in the same district with my wife. 10 years ago we finally moved to a small private house some 2km from here (where I am now).

I never liked the district. There are many like it, in Kharkiv and other cities, built in 70th-80th and nicknamed “sleeping quarters” (because people only sleep here, work and entertain elsewhere).

At first, accepted as “that’s how we live”. Then, considered it boring and ugly.

I still do, TBH. Those similar boxes of homes, similar yards (they even copied the positions of yards and homes and repeated it endlessly), standard schools. Well, at least there are a lot of trees.

Walking here for 3-4 hours every day now to deliver food, recognizing every corner and every turn of asphalt paths, I am not bored. And in place of ugliness, I see fragility. My district is mostly intact (the photo is from today), just a few windows missing, a few trees fell.

There are districts now, the samely looking “sleeping quarters” that became corpses and skeletons of themselves, during one month.

There are those in Kharkiv (say, on Saltivka, where my wife’s childhood was spent), Kyiv, Chernihiv, numerous other cities.

In Mariupol and Okhtyrka, even the skeletons of buildings are vanishing, so heavy the destruction is.

Turns out, those ugly gray concrete boxes are too fragile, after all.

Turns out, our life and our resiliency are attached to them.

Turns out, we belong to this land.

Please proceed with your day.