Vanya Bagaev's Blog, page 5

Cancelled Due to Weather Conditions

—Due to the abysmal weather conditions, the flight to Tulubaika is delayed. Passengers are asked to be patient and think about something else, something unrelated to Tulubaika, for example, read a book. Please, at least for a moment, distract yourselves already.

Our heroine inhaled the stale airport air and melted into her chair. If it were a proper port, it would smell of ship fuel and dead fish, but instead... it smells of halva and coffee from the pseudo-café nearby.

Can't imagine how people ca...

Of Love, Leisure, and Reality Checks

There she walked, unaware that Yakov had a giant snail hidden in his backpack. No ordinary backpack this—with a porthole which Yakov had taken care to curtain off, lest the lady of his heart catch sight of his voice of reason—improper to flash one's snail before a girl, and what's more—there's little proper about possessing such a snail in the first place. The embankment was quiet, armpits sweated with effort, the breeze wafted from the far shore doing nothing to air them out.

—What's it for?—Lic...

When Hell freezes over and Tolstoy learns to skate

John Collier's 1894 painting “The Devil skating when Hell freezes over” has such an impeccable ironic aura that it's hard to believe it was created more than a century ago, and rightfully so because it was not, neither in 1894 nor by John Collier, or mayhap was, chort knows—the gossip web is so wonderfully confusing at times!

"The Devil skating when Hell freezes over" by some John Collier, sometime

Comrade A stumbled upon this painting by sheer accident, details of which he prefers not to disclose...

Nevédomosti №3: Exhumations and Resolutions

§0 This post is an artistic exhumation of pieces I created a while back so thou must abandon all hopes for quality today. It serves my inherent throbbing urge of creating “something”, anything even, whatever that is, absolutely in any medium, totally no difference, as means of expression of I don’t know even what, because why should I? What do we express when create something artistic? Ourselves? Our egos? Emotions? Ideas? Indescribable, unattainable, fragile pieces of Truth or whatnot? Images t...

The Unremitting Monedey

Dear wanderer,

Today, in this pivotal moment in our daily lives, I’m sharing with you one of my favourite pieces written earlier. It hasn’t lost relevance since its original publication and, I should hope, can brighten your Monday.

Beams of appreciation,

Vanya

Symposium by Akseli Gallen-Kallela

An alarm noise disrupts the dream. No, I’ll carry on. A nightmare is a scream, it ends with the alarm, and yet again begins. Not like that, no. The morning lethargy’s a state pristine, the lack of energy, thou...

To All This Fuckery

"Asking The Stars", Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach

Into her eyes, the wind drove smoke and ash from a poorly kindled barbecue and made the sky dissolve. Celestial bodies rolled about like billiard balls, be it the stars, the moon, or satellites with the ISS. Our heroine felt them upon herself, their brightness, their weight, their distance, both physical and metaphorical. The sky above the dacha was clear. Visibility stretched far, so far, that one's eyes rippled from all its magnificence. Too beautiful...

Cases of Phobokenosis

Shapes of Fear (1930-1932) by Maynard Dixon

There were two of them: fear and fearlessness, vastly different yet strikingly similar. Together they, in tandem, steered minds, wit and beyonwit.

There was fear, more on that later, and there was fearlessness, a sensation of peculiar stock, born not as a feeling opposite to fear, not its antonym or archnemesis, conceived in a passion spree from courage or recklessness, but rather a homunculus of fear itself, grown from the gradual realisation that being...

Nevédomosti №2: Literary Discoveries

§0 Dearest comrades, I’m writing this with a heavy heart of 250–350 grams while drinking 3 in 1 coffee and experiencing a rather acute lack of sleep and time in an Istanbul hotel, whither a work trip led me. Luckily, I lived in the city for a month five years ago and had a chance to see places and try food and do all the touristic things, because this time it’s airport-taxi-hotel-taxi-work-taxi-restaurant-taxi-hotel type of trip with premium-like guidance by my dear colleagues with every day beg...

Moscow, Gooseberries, and Inexorable Motion of Time

Is there anything more frightening, tragic and inevitable than the inexorable motion of time and human's futile attempts to resist it or simply lament how it, time itself, imperceptibly slips away somewhere?

—Ghastly party, this one,—time would say.—Every other person here is some sort of esoteric normie. I bloody hate esoteric normies. Do loosen up already. With that, I take my leave. Adieu.

And then *poof* and it was gone, leaving an unfinished drink by the exit. Good thing it wasn't *bang-bang*...

Some Theories of Awakening

Nova Nevédoma is a literary locus and a solo samizdat imprint exploring the human condition through narrative experiments, reflections, and essays on literature.

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Somewhere in the depths of years to come, in the taiga around a moss-covered den, will gather people with flowers in their hands, fruits in baskets and nervous smiles on their faces. What emerges won't be a bear, nor even some divine being making its umpteenth return to the world, but merely a maiden of mystical disposition ...