Getting Your Nails Done During a Drone Strike
and other acts of defiance
This is a picture of wartime Ukraine
And also this
Nail salons are a thriving business in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
An artist I know in Kyiv who could not find work as an artist finally got a job at a very successful salon where people would come to get their nails done for two hours – full sets, layer on layer – and she was trying to get clients and she finally got a big break: three clients of her very own, booked for a day her boss would be out of town.
And this was a win for her because she was trying to get her name out there, and it’s a big deal to be a designer in a nail salon right now. They’re called nail masters.
But the night before had been one of the largest air assaults of the war. 596 drones, 36 missiles. The heat was knocked out and the running water. No one slept, rushing to bomb shelters, wondering if their apartments would take a direct hit.
The next morning, as survivors were being pulled from the rubble, the phone rang in her apartment: a concerned friend in the US calling to ask: How are you? How is the situation?
How to answer?
So inconvenient, she says, matter-of-fact, as if she’d been kept awake by a noisy neighbor than a military escalation.
Her refusal to answer the question, her rejection of the ritual of concern and her dismissal of the air assault as anything more than a nuisance: it reminded me of something.
A trick I’d learned as a kid in judo class on the Lower East Side, in a walk-up studio full of six-year-olds stretching to the point of pain on a hardwood floor while our sensei forbade us from saying the word “ow.” If you must cry out, our teacher instructed us, you may scream the word discomfort.
Then he would slap our legs with bamboo sticks.
Discomfort! Discomfort! Discomfort!
My teacher was very likely unhinged, and yes this is a particularly 1980s NYC childhood memory (no criss cross apple sauce in this dingy dojo), but I give the dude credit for his thesis on cognitive distraction. Shouting ‘discomfort’ really does make the pain hurt less than ‘ow’. As if the reptillian part of your brain that registers pain trips up on polysyllables and gives up.
Was something like that happening with the word “inconvenient”?
How inconvenient to track down fuel for the generator when the power plant is hit by a Russian drone.
How inconvenient to navigate broken streets and emergency vehicle traffic.
How inconvenient to miss a night’s sleep before such a very important day at the nail salon.
The rest of the call drifted into nail science, discussions of UV/LED drying machines and the work she planned that day, painted geometries in micro-strokes that made me think of Ukrainian easter eggs.
Something fragile, enamelled to last.
The New York Times, noting the booming manicure business in wartime Ukraine, observes:
The act of keeping up appearances has also become a small way for Ukrainians to show Russia that this war has not broken them.
I think that diminishes what’s happening here. Prioritizing acts of beauty when your home is under seige isn’t just about keeping up appearances or putting on a brave face or pretending things are OK.
Just as shrugging off a massive drone strike as an inconvenience is not denial.
We choose what we pay attention to.
That is, at times, our last and only power.
In uncertain times, in times of violence, when the only public expression of art you might safely protect is art the size of your fingernail, is that not sustaining?
Not to mention, these are works of art that you can always look at. When you have to run, the work comes with you, to the bomb shelter. And these things are shellacked so hard that if you do get taken out by a Russian drone these finishes will follow you to the grave.
May your 2026 be full of such defiant acts of beauty.
May you too deflect and dismiss the headlines with linguistic judo.
As for me, 2026 will bring a few changes to this Substack. I won’t be posting as often, because I’m getting deep into making something new. If you haven’t heard from me, just know I’m working layer by layer. I’ll share more when it’s cured enough to hold.
If you’re a paid subscriber, thank you. Your support has meant so much. If you’re a free subscriber, welcome. You’ll get every update that matters.
And if you’ve made it this far, tell me in the comments: what daily rituals or acts of beauty are now sustaining for you? Or what makes you want to cry out:
Discomfort!