The Ukrainian Refugee — The Year I was Invaded by the Russians

I’m working on some scenes and I’ll probably be creating separate blogs for these? Maybe using my newsletter to update people though Substack is a publication, too, which I understand. I just don’t know what that means yet for me — I’ll start sharing stuff on my social channels. I just want a clearer set-up. But since I’m working on these…Here’s an updated version of the scene with the Ukrainian refugee that the Russians asked me to speak to about a hallucination he had on the run from war…

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I’m trying to find a better picture of my place in Paris…especially of the shade of yellow on the walls, it was magical, wrapped up in a glow, because I had a yellow lampshade, though I’d clear all that extra bric a brac and let the yellow be. That’s Piccolina, that’s what I call her, as in Thumbelina — Sonya freaked her out with “oracle talk” about “a day in June when we’ll wake up without our memories, we will find each other in a new way.” It would be a new world, basically. So she makes a brief appearance in The Year I was Invaded by the Russians so I’ll use this picture.

In my kitchen the warmest shade of yellow, Sonya asked if I would speak to a refugee from Ukraine who had just arrived in Paris. He saw something that he couldn’t explain. She gave me no information because it wasn’t hers to give.

“You will understand him.”  

On the phone later that week, it took some convincing, but he agreed to meet with me at her country home, she laughed, “in a forest.” A little enchanted by the word forest and her delivery of it, “a forest in Paris,” I wondered. She spoke of her “country home” there.

“Well, how do you get there?”

“Metro,” she said.

Bratan would accompany me — that’s Russian street slang for “brother.”

A little backstory since they asked me to speak to this Ukrainian refugee. When I first met Bratan, the word thief flooded my senses in tightly braided cursive, and it ended up being true. I can see things that can then have a real application.

A Moldovan orphan, a thief, yes, who crossed all of Europe on foot. Bratan was first an extraordinary, on the path to leaving that life behind but that doesn’t happen overnight. I called him Robin Hood meets Aladdin; he stole from rich thieves and gave to the poor. He was also known as the underground justice keeper of Paris, France, I came to find out — busting into the most dangerous gang’s hideout in the city to put an end to their murdering, rape. Even I had heard about them.

Bratan was the type of extraordinary that could fool you into believing he was more than one, also called “the professionals.” You didn’t think he was one. He could be invisible, also, which I said to him, one night, wrapped up in a yellow that glowed. A peacock tile over his shoulder, he looked at me as if I saw into his soul, wanting to tell me stories, you know. He didn’t know how he did what he did. I had met someone else like that, who could almost disappear in plain sight. I approached her and she confirmed that. Anyway, he was my age and Sonya’s soulmate who was about fifteen years older than we were.

Wandering up Boulevard de Magenta towards Place de République…passing the cafe with a red awning on the corner…place Jacques Bonsergent…stores I never went into…Bratan had a feeling instinct, one of the best, truly. His French was limited at the time and he didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak Russian, though I had learned some phrases. But we could speak without words. Down the steps, I was about to buy him a metro ticket but his lean legs jumped over the turnstile. He opened the exit doors for me in under one second. I didn’t want to do it, and I had done it—I had been with little money. Signaling me to hurry up, I ran through the doors. 

Controllers appeared in front of us.

They were taking Bratan, not me, without pause or hesitation. Had they even seen him? I can’t really describe what this moment was like, almost as if these controllers weren’t even conscious. Bratan and I had a conversation that they did not notice. I ignored him, being taken away. I was speaking with them. He told me to stop. A woman—I was focused on a woman! How much for the penalty? He didn’t want me to—stop! He was being escorted down steps. That morning I’d been paid in cash for a few language lessons. I had exactly the amount for the penalty for both of us.

I put up 120 Euros in front of this woman. For me and him.

I went to the stairs, regarding him down there. He wasn’t pleased.

We were in the tunnel—back on track to go to “a forest in Paris.” 

He would pay me back…why did I do that? He was upset.

Nothing was happening to him, I stopped.

He was extraordinary.

I wouldn’t think of asking him for the money back. That stunned him.

On the metro, he couldn’t even wrap his head around me. He wasn’t going to accept it. I had worked for that money. I was firm. I had it. Was it an act on my part? It was, but it was sincere. He never would have imagined that I, and everything “I” implied, would ever do that for him. Had anyone in his life ever said—I don’t give a shit about 60 euros? I had it, call it a sign, or an act of “just put your money away.” The stories he had told me already. What he had been through. He was a person with real courage. His experience had value, and maybe I saw that in others, first, struggling with the unethical and immoral nature of my mother. This was a man who went to the most violent gang’s hideout and told them to stop. Why was he doing it? Why was I doing it? We came from our backgrounds. I believed in him. I would make the money back.

He didn’t know what to do in the seat beside me. This ticket, this metro penalty ticket. He showed it to me. He slipped it behind a photograph of his sister in his wallet. 

I thanked him for receiving it through these tunnels…on our way to a “forest” in Paris.

He looked at me.

I had to laugh as we passed Bastille. A forest. We were headed to Parc de Vincennes, the last stop on the yellow line. These were the woods, attached to an old chateau, the size of a small city, but it was a popular recreational spot. Walking off a path, Bratan led the way through the trees. A couple of tents pitched through the thin trunks, I had been here many times, but I had never noticed them. I was exiting the world by going inside it. A red towel hung a bit crooked on a branch as if a front door—green leaves. I moved around it, twigs and branches and leaves cracking under my feet. Outside the world but in.

Sonya came into view in her large tent smiling like a happy Buddha.

“Country home.”

She was proud, staying on the property of a Siberian refugee who pitched two other tents in this small clearing tucked in the woods. I brought rosé for her. She was smoking “cigarette” in a white zip-up hoodie. I relayed what had happened with Bratan. “Good,” her hands in her pockets. Nothing would have happened. I didn’t agree with her. Knowing him though…she might have been right. He was still knocked over by what I did but touched.

Looking up at the trees around the camp, the Siberian refugee had set up electricity. Oh yes, it’s what he did in the Navy. He had been living there for about a year. In a beanie, he didn’t have many teeth, his skin weathered like leather, wrinkled. LIttered across a long wooden table he had built were packets of sandwiches from Au Bon Pain and other deli shops. A fire crackled in a pit surrounded by rocks with potatoes cooking, wrapped in bright silver, aluminum foil. Sonya tended to the fire like a diligent servant. She had a point of view on what a queen was. She was in good spirits because she was at her country home. Pouring pink rosé into real glasses, she had brought a few, and she’d clean them up with a speedy respect. She introduced me as a clown, a storyteller. Not drinking.

I observed the scene in loose khakis, a khaki jacket, and sneakers. I wore no make-up, my hair pulled back. I made myself as plain as possible. A blond, built man appeared with a little gusto through the trees in my right eye as two runners came into view in my left eye— little ants in the far distance. His light eyes were large and kind but terrified, lost, nervous, trying to hide it regardless—glassy. Following Sonya’s lead, I greeted him with kindness and invited him to sit down by the fire.

He showed his nerves in his hands, a forced “everything’s fine” attitude on his face. I didn’t play into it but gave him space so I could also read him, non-judgmentally. There was nothing abnormal about “seeing things,” I didn’t treat him like that. It was a useful moment. I concentrated on his eyes, the flames flickering in them. He had seen something that made him doubt his sanity. It was obvious. I knew all his siblings had been killed. We stayed like this for a moment. I did not project any feeling that there was anything wrong with the silence. I didn’t try and fill it. I could have stayed like that for hours gladly but we knew why we were here. Blinking, it was not easy for him to begin, to talk about it, even smiling, understandable, blinking. I was going to think he was crazy. He chuckled. It was crazy. I had high standards for crazy, I wouldn’t worry about that. I could see already that he wasn’t crazy. He blinked at me. Sonya interjected to translate when we were…an image comes to mind instead of a word.

“Stuck in the mud.”

Yes, it was clear that he was not crazy. I reached into his eyes shuffling like sheets of paper.

“You saw something crazy…?”

I dropped my chin, brows high, I was genuinely interested and caring.

“What did you see?” 

Taking a deep breath, he took a long moment. I didn’t take my eyes off his clutching onto the fire.

He cocked his head like it was official. I was going to think he was insane.

Swallowing, he paused.

“I saw the devil.”

“Oh,” I said, “that guy. I hate that guy.”

I hooked onto his shocked wide eyes, knowingly. It was a little a crack in him—who’s crazy? Was I? Was he? Right on that line, I caught him, blinking, cracking into barely a smile, not knowing what to do. Was I being serious? Ah, I was trying to comfort him. I saw him. It was nonverbal. It took a second. I did not abandon his gaze. I had to hold him. I let him break eye contact. A little relieved, he searched into the fire. He took his time. I clarified that I didn’t hate. I don’t use that word.

“So,” he didn’t know what to say, taking a breath.

“You have…experience with this?” 

He asked in between a question and a statement.

“Not like you,” I said.

I pointed at his eyes. 

“I can see this. It’s clear. You saw this outside of a dream…this wasn’t a dream, yes? You weren’t sleeping?”

“No,” his eyes were huge.

“I can see that,” I said.

I wasn’t going to treat him with fear or weirdness.

“Okay.”

He continued to calm down, almost happy to have met me. 

“Well,” he said, putting his hands together. He had never been in this situation. 

I could have never…gazing over at Sonya. How on earth did she…? Hands in her pockets, regal in a hoodie, she stood respectfully aside, at attention, so she could come in if she had to. She trusted me with this. That moved me. Seeing things was, I couldn’t believe I was admitting it, something I could relate to. Hallucinations genuinely interested me, also. He had questions for me—no problem. It made him feel better. I recounted one of the dreams I had around this symbol.

“Two,” I said.

“I don’t see his figure. He is without a face on a dark road. He asks me to join him and I say no.” I lifted his eyes with my hand, “he lifts me far up into the sky,” and I threw my hands to the ground, “and slams me back to the ground.”

“And then?” 

“I just got back up again,” I smiled. I shared my genuine feeling with him about that. He cannot kill you, I said. He cannot harm you. No, not really. “This is a form,” I called it a form. “A form?” Yes, these are forms. I was young at the time so I was careful with him.

He was truly taken aback. 

“The devil is real…?” 

“This is a form,” I said again. “I don’t know what this form means to you,” but he was not crazy. I wanted him to understand that, in that, “a hallucination,” according to William James, “is a strictly sensational form of consciousness,” though I didn’t say that to him. I had met people who had a condition of some kind, too, which I told him. Yes, it wasn’t important. It’s a large thing we were doing — being alive. It was just to ground him. I had dealt with someone who had a break, specifically, around this time, after a shaman told me: “do you know how you can see into people’s souls? Trust that.” He did not have a psychotic break, though in his eyes, he was struggling with the reality of what he saw—"the devil.” Saying it like it’s all right. He didn’t have to be sent down a road that would have been more damaging considering what he had just gone through, was going through: war. Even if someone hadn’t but keep that in mind as we go through the hallucination.

“Do you want to tell me what happened? Take me through it?” 

He shifted himself forward, putting his hands on the fire, and thanked Sonya with a tender but broken smile for serving us a couple of potatoes. Bringing myself closer to the fire, I mirrored his body.

“Where did this happen?”

I began visualizing Gare de Lyon, the potato too hot. I loved potatoes. I made a visual map of the train station with a clock tower. I was walking towards it, opening the doors. It was an experiment for me. I saw things that ended up having a real application and I wanted to see what I would see and also establish a container. Details — the trains are set back and move along the station in a straight line, the vending machine where I had bought Vitamin water once, the restaurant behind me. I was more trying to connect to the energy of that moment, him, to imagine myself there as vividly as I could. The intention was enough. I removed agenda, asked for support, to be of service, that this exchange would benefit both of us. He prepared himself. I would not abandon him, not judge him. There was nothing that he couldn’t confess. I naturally didn’t remember what I didn’t need to. He was at the very end—in this visual construction.

Slamming into the encounter with the devil—fear, it was fear. You got off the train—stop. Too fast. Where was the train? Wait, what? He was lost. I saw a parked train car, found him there, as he recounted this story seated in front of me. Where did you come from? Lots of luggage around him, obviously, but not everything necessarily means something. It was tricky to get him to focus on the before. He didn’t want to. Rushing over that part? Where did you just come from? These weren’t clear images. It was disorienting, how could it not be? He had just fled a war. I saw green, suddenly, out a train window that looked like another one. He had a passage somewhere else before arriving here?

He blinked at me.

Yes, he did.

Oh, I saw that. It was clear though it wasn’t. Okay, wow, I saw that. That didn’t concern me, didn’t want to scare him. I was beside him at the train station, on this bit of earth. I was honored to be there.

“What happened before…? Where did you come from?”

“What did this part matter?”

His brothers had all been killed—I was not saying that. I wanted to get him onboard on some level, however, even to make a connection nonverbally that he came from a war. His eyes were blank. We couldn’t go there. What we were heading into it—something that blew his mind—that was accessible. I took that in.

I planted his feet.

“So, you stepped off the train?”

The devil approached him, seemingly out of nowhere. From where?

A derelict, tattered man startled him.

“What kind of hallucination was this?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Did you see this on a screen?”

I gestured.

“Like a movie playing in front of you? Was he transparent? Did you see him in your head, in your imagination, or in space? What was the quality of the image,” in other words? “How did he appear to you?”

Blinking at me, he was like flesh and blood in front of him. He was there. Did anyone else see him? Blinking, he had to contend with what actually happened. He seemed to be able to make things happen in reality but he wasn’t really there. Other people didn’t seem to respond…? He might have been confused on that point.

“Maybe he was real,” I had to wonder.

“A homeless man.”

The laws of attraction are a true subject. That is, from a certain standpoint, a homeless man could fit into this category due to hunger, drugs, and dehydration. Life on the streets? Fluid states? Hallucinations and hunger? He was having an experience in the state he was in. Reality can meet one’s state which it does. We’re talking about a person on the run from a war. In simple speech, it was entirely possible that the man could have been real. 

“How was that possible?”

I didn’t know. I gave him a hand. 

“So, people didn’t see him? Why do you say that?” 

I have a thought now. Who notices homeless people?

He had to deal with that thought as real material. He wasn’t sure and it was a delicate place to be in. I allowed that to sink in. He was trying. There wasn’t a right or wrong. It was to determine what was happening, excuse me. He was terrified even if it wasn’t apparent. Take a moment. He did, blinking. No, he didn’t think so, but maybe it could appear that way. The way that…he continued. It was real. He made things happen in reality that weren’t possible.

“Let me guess,” I said.

“There were temptations?” 

He asked, wide-eyed. 

“How do you know this?” 

“The Bible.” 

It was classic Devil stuff. I rolled my eyes at that figure. He’s a broken record like I was saying. He cracked a little, but he couldn’t just detach from his experience of it. That wouldn’t even make sense. I’m glad I could make him laugh, a little, though. That’s scary. I gave him a full heart there, also turning my hands towards the immediate past. I can’t even imagine, I said.  

“Isn’t this just a story?”

“Are stories not real?” 

I asked him. 

“These forms…they exist,” in a sense. They can happen. How you interpret these images was another step. I mean, this was war, terror. Had he eaten? (This is a later reflection.) He might have created a thought form, in simple language, out of feelings that he could not process but were really happening…he was in a heightened state, also, and could have met a real homeless man who took him on a ride.    

“He made things happen that a normal Man couldn’t do,” he said. Attached to that idea, okay, not wrong. I was assessing. Maybe he wasn’t a real person but really appeared like one. My instinct was to keep moving through it.

“Like what? What did he say? Where did he take you?”

We moved into the temptations after having been taken by his strange powers or was he just seducing him? Trauma? Having the freedom to speak about what happened unleashed him a little, reliving it, taking me through it. So, he got sucked in. I went there with him, unafraid. He struggled with that—sitting with this apparition now. Did he want a million dollars? Even more? Of course, I thought. Money, power, going down the line, the kingdom. A phone magically rang after this apparition said it would...twisting energy, tortured, even, desire, disbelief. More supernatural occurrences. How was this possible? His powers amplified—the display of them—as the refugee tried to break away from him. He demonstrated what he could do. Pinning people at random in the station, they fell down in intense agony to the point of death. It was real! He didn’t want someone to die! Stop, please! It spilled out the doors onto the parking lot. A final exchange happened in broad daylight but it ended. We were out. Just leaving the station.

The pain was the hardest element, I think, though he might not have had an embodied experience of it or couldn’t quite connect. He had never experienced anything like it. It was beyond what he thought possible. Think about what he just went through. The cell phone, for example, was particularly packed with hard, sticky feelings. We kept returning to this spot. It stuck with me, too. Money; I remember his hunger, his struggle, his guilt. We stayed here for a moment, returned. The temptations in this context illuminated a complicated internal struggle.

“The Devil is not necessarily bad…” 

I said.

“What do you mean?”

I mean, he wasn’t necessarily bad. If you don’t utilize the binary of good and bad, some religions don’t, then no. There are belief systems, my hand flew across time and space. The devil isn’t even there. It’s not the same thing. My arm descending, remember that, the final goodbye, to close the moment. Did he “really” see the devil? According to who? These are forms. They can mean something different depending on the person so I didn’t know what it meant for him. It’s not the hallucination itself but the feeling-states it contains — that’s the focus. He communicated that rather clearly in his expressions and body language. I’m not going to dig further in this first conversation. You can work with the hallucination.

He wasn’t a religious man.

Well, he was definitely spiritual because he was one—a Man. There’s a reason why there is a spiritual dimension of the self. The spirit is as real as the body. It’s a part of your body. There isn’t a separation. It’s just that aspect of the self is particularly confused and I mention that because of religious ideology but it’s real in that — he saw that, no? Right. I was thinking about the temptations, though, since they unfolded straight from The Bible. But it’s in the collective. You can reframe an experience like that, the important point, as in, we make meaning. “The devil is not bad.” And he blinked at me like “what?” As in, he had that idea in his mind even if he’s not a religious man. It exists. People believe him to be real, no? And also, not. It’s confusing enough. He’s a popular figure. There are dimensions of experience, also.

“Maybe he appeared to reaffirm your values. Were you battling yours? Maybe he was there to remind you of your goodness. If that was the question?” He took that in. He refused him. He didn’t surrender to these energies if that was the fear? He saw things happen that didn’t make sense to him in reality. It was a positive sign to me. He appreciated that. He wanted to understand, also positive.

Cautiously, I asked about his family. All his brothers, I see. Only his mother left. Maybe she could be sent out, he didn’t know. That’s a lot to process. I would suspect it had everything to do with the hallucination he had beyond the pure terror of being on the run, coming from war, suddenly ending up at a train station in Paris, France. A refugee. Was he wrestling with something that he did? Had to do? Did he see his brothers get killed? Did he barely escape? Did he feel guilty?

“You went through war—are you crazy?”

I looked at him.  

We made it back above ground, exiting the woods.

It would sound strange, wouldn’t it? Why would there be something wrong with you? Was there something that you lived through that could have thrown you into a different state of being, into contact with larger forces? War could do that, don’t you think, on a real level? His experience was real. Something like that can happen. A hallucination does not mean you’re crazy.

Walking away, flanked by trees, he kept looking behind him to say goodbye to me. I kept my eyes on him wishing him the best with more heart than words on his path forward. I waited until he was gone. In this type of situation, what does one say? What would happen to him? I couldn’t relate, and I made sure to tell him that. I feel it’s important to acknowledge our differences, too, out of respect. Processing an experience like that was going to take time.

I asked Sonya some questions about the organizations that came by, anything about how this system operated. It depended. Sometimes, they come through, dismissing people, but it’s short-lived. Others supply them with food. There were also different scenarios that existed for a refugee. I had gotten the feeling that he had safe harbor somewhere. I didn’t need to know these details and I didn’t ask. 

“Marushka…”

Back in a golden glow, my kitchen at night, Sonya said that love was the Russian way. Across from one another at the table, it wasn’t with weapons, she said, that we would fight the next war. This was not a warrior. Arms crossing over her chest, she said “love was the force.” It was unbreakable. Face stoic, freckles on fire, she knew that it would benefit me also, this “exchange.” I thanked her. I had to laugh a little. I was asked to speak to a Ukrainian refugee about a hallucination? Looking at Bratan with the peacock tile over his shoulder — he didn’t know that.

“It is in this exchange,” Sonia drew her hand between us, “that change can happen.” Not the material things. But then, the two of us in the lamplight, having seen an opportunity in one another, wondered. Maybe it was a material—bonds. “Da, da, Marushka…” Lighting her cigarette, I was a good clown, it was also my job — connection. A curl of smoke rising in the air, her finger making the point. She could make me laugh. Her green eyes wet, I saw a panther the first time I laid eyes on her, lithe and lethal and striking, in a restaurant called love. She drew a vertical line down the center of her body surrounded by walls of the warmest shade of yellow, like an oil painting at night.

“La force d’esprit,” the force of spirit.

“The panther,” I said.

“A symbol of motherhood.”

“Fierce,” I lifted my index finger, or so I read.