There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time.
There is always something to see, something to hear.
— John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings

All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence.
— Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

To get to know the city, I run through it. I do this not for the sake of healthy living. I pulse in the city’s arteries and it pulses in mine. Running is how I appropriate space. The asphalt wears down the soles of my shoes; my heart beats faster than normal; I stumble over potholes and cracks. Maybe I even go flying. The drains are blocked, so my feet get wet from pounding through the puddles.

Monday, 7:30am. A classic beginning of what I call Pizdiabr – Shitember – the time of year between the end of October and April when it seems like you’ve screwed everything up, that summer will never come round again and that only heavy mist, freezing rain and low-grade fever await you ahead. It’s my first week in Mariupol. I am told to practice an open relationship with the city and read John Cage’s Silence. I really don’t feel like running; it’s like going on a date when you can spend the evening in bed with unwashed hair and unbrushed teeth. But I lace up my shoes and run out into the humid air of the Livyi district, which envelops me like soapy water. The city is submerged, along with its trains to nowhere, dirty seagulls and dogs, night terrors and smoke, wars, fears, tenderness and head colds, puddles and last year’s leaves. The warm muddy water of December fills my lungs, and it seems that all of us will be washed clean. We will be as good as new and only slightly washed out in those places where there have been ingrained stains for years.

I run towards the sea along the alley of chestnut trees whose leaves have already fallen. I am wearing arm warmers, but my fingers grow numb with the cold. Somewhere in the fog, the hardly discernible pixels of Yorkshire terriers start barking. From afar, I hear the dogs’ owners, also barely perceptible, calling the names Angélique and Joffrey. “I’ve got him!” a woman with a loudly barking German Shepherd wrapped around her feet shouts to me frantically. “I’ve got him, don’t worry, run past!”

Running on the beach is like running on Mars. The leviathan of the slag heap is dozing in the distance. “No sword can stop it, no spear, dart, or javelin.” In my earphones, I hear people talking on Wisconsin Public Radio.

It’s nine in the morning, winter. I’m wearing summer running shoes that are not great on the frosty ground. Near the sea, it is windy. The wind gets under my jacket, chilling my sweaty back unpleasantly. Along the route, I find a frost-covered boot of some Remedios the Beauty who ascended into the sky while hanging out sheets. The sea speaks to me through a faded poster, telling me to dive from the breakwater and swim far from the shore. At the sea’s edge, a man strips down to his swimming trunks, scoops up a handful of water and splashes it over his bulging stomach. Clearly, winter is here for some time. Just like war. I can feel that too. I’m not dressed for the weather in my short flimsy jacket, light leggings and a thin striped hat. My clothes cannot withstand the test of rain that turns to sleet, the icy soup of the sea, the piercing wind. All I can do is run without stopping, perhaps escaping, perhaps chasing something. So I run, treading the sand that’s wet from the frost. In the distance, a jogger moving in my direction raises their hand in greeting. That’s something that joggers do. Every runner has their own void inside, every run is a lonely run, but you are never alone.

It is 4:40 pm, Sunday. Today is Easter. It’s sunny and windy. I run around the front gardens of the homeowner association, mindful of the borders, freshly painted white in preparation for the holiday. Our yard is meticulously maintained; the head of the homeowner association even won a prize for her work. We have a certificate to show for it: she distributed them among the neighbours. Therefore, I run through our yard nicely, in a respectful manner. The neighbours on the benches in the yard have broken their fast and advise me to do the same. They say it’s prohibited to do anything today; even running is probably a sin. The wind howls, and the neighbours wonder why the “Jewish cold snap” [єврєйскіє кучкі] is not over yet.

I run past a rusty rocket in a playground. We’ve decided that when the apocalypse comes, only those who have a rocket in their yard will be saved. The rocket will take each person to their individual paradise.

The road down to the sea smells of outings: people are barbecuing next to their  buildings and on the grass. Today’s run is an Easter run, a recovery run after intense training on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Little by little, I am coming back to life, and the neighbourhood sings its Easter songs to me. I see them on fences, poplars, walls and flashy signs. “Value my style,” they sing. “The sea does not like cops.” “Give up the chatter in your head, do you really need this mess?” A polyphony of voices instead of music in my earphones. It’s finally sunny. Winter did not last forever.

It’s eight in the morning. June. Running along Prymorskyi Boulevard, I pass by the Mariupol nightclub Barbarys, a real anthropological panopticon. In summer, both in the week and at the weekends, as if intuitively sensing my approach, Dionysian people emerge from the club and dance towards me. They are Kronos’s children, disgorged from his stomach: Hades and Poseidon with bare torsos, Demeter, Hestia and Hera with sandals in their hands. The vortex of their chaotic movements swallows me as “Sexy Sushi” plays through my earphones. They shout something after me, their mouths moving soundlessly, like the mute mouths of goby fish in August, when there is too little oxygen in the sea and they throw themselves onto the shore, angry at idle vacationers. I want to stop and say, I am also angry, I am also like a goby fish; it’s just that you dance, and I run.

The taste of a chemistry lab fills my mouth. Ahead, I see a group from the running club. The joggers are warming up picturesquely, as if posing for the Illichivets newspaper. They wear bright vests and bum bags with water bottles. They radiate the enthusiasm of the chosen ones and follow me with curious looks. I run along the railway tracks, knowing that soon I will reach a dead end where my two and a half kilometres will end, turn and run back. Five kilometres of the city. That’s it, I don’t need any more. Just my five kilometres of the city.

The running app shows me the twisting lines of my route. They form a capillary network beneath the surface of the city. Perhaps someone is walking along it right now, or even running. Those zigzags and loops should be recorded on a CD-R of memories, so that none of them are ever erased.