I've been on three very long photo-walks already, and today's was the longest: from Darnytsya metro station, via Leningradska Ploshcha, to the railway bridge over the Dnieper (the Left Bank side of it), then marshrutka to what I think was some part of Poznyaky, and then some more. Yesterday, I walked from Besarabka to Lybidska along Gorkogo/Antonovycha, and back along Druzhby Narodiv, Patrisa Lumumby, something else, and Lesi Ukrayinky... And earlier this week, I walked from the point where trolleybus routes 16 and 18 separate, to Kyyivska Rus movie theater, and then to Ploshcha Peremohy... Don't ask me why I'm doing this. Definitely not because I need exercise, though I definitely do need some.

My pictures don't tell much. If I didn't know where I've been these days, I'd think I was circling the same block. It says something about my pictures, yes, but it also says something about Kyiv. I like walking through backyards - and they look more or less the same everywhere: rundown, dirty. Cheerless.

I keep thinking of a story that I heard from Kyiv friends who emigrated to the States in 1994: their U.S.-Kyiv friends once brought their pre-teen son here, to show him where they were from, and, back in the States, his grandparents asked him if he'd liked Kyiv. "Yes, I liked it," the boy said. "But why does everyone live in the projects there?"

This, I guess, pretty much says it all. Unfortunately.