the (story of a swanky gipsy sidelined into a mythic hero’s)
journey
This page is an experiment designed to help me with an unusual task. Once I had to write a formal CV, and I had a finding. The refined bullet list of tangible validities never explained my inner world. Instead, it portrayed me as someone with specific life goals. The goals I no longer desired to set for myself. A “resume” rarely points at sensitive aspects of human personality, but if you’re a professional artist. Neither demonstrates benevolent qualities unless you intend to work for a charity.
Occidental society disassociates high-achieving individuals with self-expression, sensitivity or kindness. We recognise a material success or a potential for reaching one only as a result of an utter persuasion. We collect titles, accomplishments, and connections. We overwork stability first as evidence of mastery and later as an indulgence for our hard work. We call it security.
Earlier in life, I used to be a professional with a designated money-making category. A designer, a tech entrepreneur, and a venture investor. Today I call myself a “communication generalist.” It doesn’t hold as a specific response to “What do you do?” An absurd profiling question, anyhow. But I comfort myself that questions I can’t answer are better than answers I can’t question.
I thought I enjoyed the “Venture Capital and Technology Startups” scene. I had fun working in the tech industry. It fed my witty “Mercury in Gemini” mind very well. And my stomach. A VC job allows springing more projects than anyone intends to finish. And to work with ambitious people, perhaps more talented than yourself. Tired running your own marathon, it retains you the right to sit at the table and be listened to, behind the “veto rights.”
Yet, time compresses when you work ‘in Tech,’ everything changes fast. Seven years felt like a lifetime for me. I dropped out of the partnership when there were political reasons already. Still more, I realised that I had little enjoyment with all the busyness. It took me years to accept that there is nothing wrong with either capital or technology alone. There is a knife, and I can use it for cooking a meal, performing surgery, or killing someone.
People with their “Moon in Capricorn” are considered ‘Senex,’ overly conventional. A more intimate look unveils that we have a novel interpretation of origins and traditions. I learned that I am a product of three distinct ethoses. One-third of my ancestors were Russian aristocracy. My great-grandfather was a high-rank officer of the Imperial army. Executed by the Bolsheviks, he never lived the day his daughter, my grandmother, was born. The others were Ashkenazi Jews. My grandfather migrated to the Russian metropole after the “Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre” in Western Ukraine. Then, the most mystical were “Turkic Shamans” from “Volga Bulgaria.” I don’t know much about them.
I am among the youngest Generation X and the oldest Millenials. And I haven’t been raised in any specific tradition. I was too young to apply the hatred and distrust to the State of the Soviet Union. And already self-authored to get conditioned to the updated military-nationalist agenda of Putin’s regime. At some point in my early 20s, I began watching American TV shows and shopping on Amazon. An invaluable probe into another culture I explored but never accepted after. Ambiguity and contradictions are a true family of a chance of mine.
It took me painfully long to get comfortable with the idea that I’m different from others. And I made many mistakes, trying to conform to the masses, so I could only distance further. I searched for a better place to live, work, and simply be. Bricklaying the future on top of what appeared as a solid foundation of the past. The past is always a construct of the mind, and it is a fraud, really. It fooled me into believing that I am my past. It is each man’s quest to find out who he truly is. And the answer to that is concealed in the present. Rewriting this page helped me to continue searching.
The Cold War and unbearable gravity of change
Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory
Fundraising for Home Improvement Retailer
Co-Founder & CEO
London
Moscow
feel great naked
Digital October
A farewell party
Tel Aviv
Gorky’s Apartment
Crimea
Santiago California The Orange County Santa Cruz Chao Mama
Writing this ending, I feel stuck in the loop of political events that affect both my extrinsic and intrinsic lives. I keep reminding myself that history tends to repeat itself and that I am not fucken special. People in every generation feel the same way, experiencing the same strength of gravity from current events later dismissed into insensible chronology. Speaking of which… Everything that has a beginning should have an end. I need empty space to bring new things, a blank page to write upon. It is one of the laws of the universe that demands dismantlement. Finishing, forgetting, and starting over. One ending suggests another beginning. And as for a home - home is a feeling!