OEA

Something that should have been present stayed absent, and something absent kept making itself felt.

Something that should have been present stayed absent, and something absent kept making itself felt.

In the summer of 2025, I spent nearly a month in Odesa, which was my first trip outside of Kyiv since the full-scale invasion started. After the annexation of Crimea, Odesa had become one of the country's main vacation destinations; at the same time, since the start of the full-scale war, it has remained a target due to its port infrastructure and the historical narratives Russia keeps trying to appropriate.

Every walk felt like running a finger along a scar that hadn't closed. Something was wrong and I couldn't point to it, a city going through its summer motions while held completely out of place. I kept returning to two words from Mark Fisher: "the weird" (something present that doesn't belong) and "the eerie" (something present where there should be nothing, or nothing where there should be something). Odesa was both at once: war and leisure sharing a beach, a normality that had already long gone but whose shape was still pressed into everything.

With each passing day, the sense of absence grew more acute.