Fiction Friday — So, that was last Friday. I had great plans for the evening — to draw myself a bath and chill for a bit with my own new toys that arrive in discreet boxes— so I tried my best to put the spawn to bed a little earlier. Naturally, that backfired. …

Fiction Friday — She goes through the dusty boxes and broken furniture of the attic, settles on a stack of shabby leather suitcases under a tiny window, and fishes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her bra. Her white dress is stained and dirty from a long stair climb, and…

Following the fashion world descending from celebrity castles to TikTok videos, as a bystander — For me, it starts within the deep snows of the Ural region of Russia. My university classmates repost translations of luxury runway shows, show off statement bags and LV checkered patterns. I move through the city wearing a second-hand fur coat, huge wool boots, and up to five layers of…

hands-on exploration of the forms of emptiness in urban life — Publish something every day, better trice. Hustle. Refresh the newsfeed. Read the news. Keep up. Network. Sell. Refresh. Watch. Buy. Share. For a Westerner of the twenty-first century, nothing is more unsettling than an empty space, than a piece of time and space not chock-full of content — be it…

Once, I’ve found a pupa of a butterfly. Actually, it was my mom—the cocoon fell from a branch of blackcurrant where she was collecting the berries, and she brought it to me, without taking her heavy gardening gloves off. It was the middle of September, the time of falling leaves…

Is it you, or is it me? — Some days, I think you are not enough for me. Some days, I think you are way too much. Sure, you are not New York, or London, or any of these progressive, edgy, sci-fi megacities from the movies. You are not who I imagined being with. You know that. I…

It’s okay to change the climate — Once upon a time — approximately 2.4 billion years ago — when the Earth was young, steamy (with volcano eruptions) and intoxicating (with over 70% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), there lived a bacteria called cyanobacteria. She floated in a world ocean surrounded by her merry single-celled cousins, busy…

Predicting a new genre for the coming decade — According to Aristotle’s “Poetics”, the role of theatre in human life was to drag the recipient through the catastrophe in order to help them achieve catharsis — a state of total purification of all emotions. Aristotle was an ancient philosopher whose ideas served as a stepping stone for modern cinema…

When you find yourself up at night discussing the meaning of life, again. — In Philipp Pullman’s vision of the afterlife, all human souls go to the underworld: a chilly place guarded by mean harpies who see every malicious twist within each soul, love to torture people, and are sensitive to lies. Those mistresses of the underworld have only one weakness: they have no…