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Letters to the Moon part 2
Anna, a 108-year-old Russian vampire, is sectioned in a Sheffield psych ward. I feel small and insignificant. They injected me with an antipsychotic, declared me insane, and destroyed all my powers. I am a vampire in need of help. I don’t know what to do. I can use the computer in the phone room, as… Continue reading
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Psychic files 4
What’s a book or movie that genuinely scared you? In late 1989 something strange happened in the Soviet Union. If you had a TV and a jar of water in front of it, you could treat yourself to hypnosis by Kashpirovsky, live on prime time, telling the whole country that everything would be fine. The… Continue reading
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Letters to the Moon: Part 1
Anna Slabodsky says she is a vampire. The hospital in Sheffield says otherwise. Anna, a 108-year-old Russian vampire, is sectioned in a Sheffield psych ward. They injected me with something and now all my powers are gone.I still have my ring. The ring is magical. It keeps me safe from the sun, and allows me… Continue reading
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Where did we go?
Share a few recent shots from your camera roll, no context needed. My camera roll this week, in motion. I created a music video with the help of Grok Imagine and wanted to share it with you here. It’s about a topic that is dear to me: what happened to our culture? Where did we… Continue reading
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Psychic Files 3
It was in Sheffield in 2015 that I briefly ended up working as a psychic, your best Tarot reader, on eBay. It is easy as long as you know how to interpret the Tarot cards, and possess the confidence to read them for other people. By the time I landed in that job, I had… Continue reading
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Do you have ties with Russia?
Anna, a 108-year-old Russian vampire, is sectioned in a Sheffield psych ward. Some of you asked me on X what happened in Leeuwarden, and how come I am in a psychiatric hospital in Sheffield, trying to protect my ring? Let me tell you. I came to Sheffield for a conference: “Folklore in sociological studies”. The… Continue reading
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Psychic Files 2: An Island by the Sea
My psychic said I would move again. I didn’t believe him. In 2007, I had just moved back to Brussels from Amsterdam. Move again? Why on earth? I loved Brussels. I had called a recruitment company from Amsterdam, hoping for a job in finance, where six years as a bank analyst had given me some… Continue reading
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Psychic Files 1: Somewhere Sunny
In 2007, my psychic, a French expert in I Ching, told me: ‘You will move. Somewhere sunny.’ Why on earth would I move? I was thirty and thought I had kind of made it. With two psychoses behind me (or maybe three?), I sat in the PhD students’ room at the faculty of sociology in… Continue reading
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I have many homes
What’s a place you visited that felt like home? A simple question if you travel. For me it is painful. I almost cried when I saw it. I have lived in four countries. Each one became a home. Brussels first: six years. I arrived at nineteen to study in French. The start was hard. A… Continue reading
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I was Buddha
It was on a rainy day in November that I looked outside the window of my workplace in Amsterdam and asked: “Is there more to it? Is there something else?” I was three months into the promotion – portfolio manager – still a financial analyst of banks, still no diploma, at a consultancy in Amsterdam.… Continue reading
About Me
I am a doctor of philosophy, a university lecturer, and a lover of cats, fine wine, dancing, theatre, and human eccentricity. I was born in the Soviet Union (Moscow). I am fluent in four languages, and have spent all my adult life studying (except from 18 to 19) working and living throughout Western Europe. Despite a surname-Netchitailova- that translates from Russian into English as “unreadable”, my greatest passions in life are reading and writing. My personal struggles have made me appreciate the manifestations of weirdness that exist everywhere.