Not an introduceyourself, but something more about me. Also featuring Monya as well as my other artistically inclined friends.

Since couple of days, I've been quite stumped as far as what should I tell you about. I should finish the 2014 series, and I will, as well as show you the photos from my current locale. The day when I walked to Kyren, I've seen a local shamanist shrine, and visited it, so it might be something interesting. But still right now I am just that random ordinary guy from Russia, that posts his travel photos for you. On other sites we have a profile, and I am kind of in want of one now. So, as the @thedashguy's idea of the #usersummary, I'll tell you a bit more about me, and what to expect from my blog. Thing is if your life is an adventure, and especially an extraordinary one it usually means that you aren't so ordinary. But that is something for other people to decide. ;-)

For some reason the portraits drawn by my artisticly inclined friends feature me with a birds head, whats up with that?

I use this as my userpic almost everywhere, and consider it to be the best drawing of me.

This drawing is actually a birthday gift from my really good friend the Owl who is also known as Gluki Goroda (City's Glitches). Go check her art, she is simply amazing!

The Owl, our friend, 3rd eye massager and the Room. :->
I am currently working on getting all of my artistically inclined friends to join Steemit, since they are really good, and it could make their life much better. It isn't easy being an artist, more so in Moscow. Hope they join soon, there will be announcements when they do, so you can follow them if you like their art.

Another drawing shows me like this. It was made after I crashed at a friends place on the new year (January 1st, it was I think).

This is me as a weird bird headed acid Santa, I guess. Cunning acid Santa!

In Moscow we have quite a few underground artists both musical and graphic that are inspired by the likes of Burroughs, Gysin, Spare, Thompson, as well as guys like occultists like Crowley & musicians like Coil & P-Orridge.

And every year we have a festival or several. And in 2011 there was one called "MRKBesie whout Jazz".

The poster also by our so ever tallented the Owl.
There was som poetry reading, as well as music. I was there, and I brought my friends. Amd the problem was that there was noone to be the Conferencier, or Master of Ceremonies for the gig. Part of the problem was that some of the artists had some really tongue twister of a names like "The Tampliers of Semantic Tesseract". Some yars later I was able to perform as part of their ensemble too.

MRKBesie 2011

So, it was a day after my burthday, I was wearing my normal attire and could pronounce anything that was on the programme list. So they made me do the Master of Ceremonies bit, and it was cool. Also it was perhaps what imprinted everyone with an image of a bird man when they think about me.

Me doing the MC gig with my friend Monya (held), that was given to me as a birthday present.

There are no videos that I know of from that event, but there was a mock mummy present, and during the closing part I even got to dance with her (it?). Okay, apparently there is! It is the poetic part, and the poetry is in Russian, but it is still weird & cool!

Perhaps a good idea would be to show you something from other of such gatherings. Here is TST performance (featuring yours trully) from the wild art exibition that happens yearly in one of the burnt down depos Kursky train station Moscow.

But perhaps the best photo of me as the birdman is this one:

The photo series also had some with a cane and a knife, but thats the one I like.

You can expect some of the posts to be about such endeavors as the ones depicted above, if I am presemt to take part in them. Possibly I'll convince the organizers to do a periscope feed from DNO festival, or maybe even get a Steemit accounts and you'll be able to hear about it from them.

Various geekery.

I am also wuite a bit of a geek, playing pen & paper RPGs since I was about 13 (that was '93, I think). It is quite normal in USA or Europe, but that was during the first wild years after the fall of USSR, and it wasn't really easy. For quite a while we didn't have any normal dice other then d6s, and no knowledge about GURPS and the similar systems that use them.
Still, I was one of the early RPG community, as well as LARP, but that started in like '97-98, or so. Planescape campaign setting has a special place in my heart, and I think that the first boxed set in Moscow (and perhaps in Russia) was mine. It opened the door for weird and quirky RPGs, and now I am one of the few people promoting knowledge about them for the Russian audience. Bundle of Holding helps a ton with that. Still, I read much more then I play, since my nomadic lifestyle hinders weekly gaming. Also there is the problem with most people wanting to play DnD, or perhaps Vampire, but my tastes are much more esoteric then that.
Of the games I played I prefer most that Jenna Moran (her tumblr) did, and that would be Nobilis, as well as Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine. Both systems are diceless, and are somewhat connected, and both of them are kind of mind screwy urging to push your creativity to the limit. Nobilis casts you as godlings that rule over different aspects of reality, taking part in a Great War (Valde Bellum, as it were) against the interlopers from outside its boundaries, that wish to erase it from existence.
Chuubo, is a pastoral game about place called The Town, that exists as a stabile island amid the chaos that happened after the world (or more likely worlds, plural) ended. It is actually even cooler then Nobilis, but it is possible that several years from now they will merge, since they are somewhat mechanically compatible.

Video games were also quite a part of most of my life, and were something that made me learn English to this level, but I suspect there isn't going to be much about them. Still, I take part in alpha/beta testing of some really cool games, like Torment, so if I am ever back at my computer there might be something about them.

Permaculture & Sustainable Living.

Those two topics interest me a lot, and I am aggregating news about them for some of my friends, but unfortunately am not really involved in them. I do like to keep my hand on the pulse, so if ever stay in any place connected with those topics there surely going to be something about them. Smart Village (or "the Mountain cave with Internet" as I've been calling the idea since I had internet and came up with the name for it between '94-'98) is what I want to do in five-ten years from now, and given the rate at which such communities are appearing it is going to be quite easy, it seems.

Storytelling.

I come from a long line of story tellers, shamans and the like, so it is something of a thing for me. While my writing is mediocre at best, my storytelling skills are at least okay. And my life is actually dedicating to living so that I have more stories to tell. I really value when something weird and even unpleasant happens to me, if it brings a good story with it. I am an avid tvtropes fan, and it did gobble up quite a chunks of my time. One reason why I find Steemit to be so valuable to me, is that it forces me to work on my writing, and get better at it. It is something that I was putting away for so long, so the value is immense for me.
I really like authors like Joseph Campbell, that deal with the structure and meaning behind the stories. Still, I have absolutely no idea how to write fiction. Perhaps it is because life is so rich, varied & cool, that I don't have much imagination on how to add fantasy to it, but that is because...

Magic (or Magick)

There are quite a bit of misconceptions about it, and while it is mostly an unscientific discipline, it has things that help turn peoples lives for better, if they want to and work on it. Perhaps one of the best books on the subject is The Art of Memetics, which is available for free as the official "Pirate Edition".
Quite a bit of magic in my life comes from my childhood, when I've seen a lot of really interesting things in my dreams, that translated in bits of trivia that I had absolutely no idea where they came from. Also, between 12 and maybe 24 I've experienced almost daily episodes of deja vu, sometimes with some cues as to what is going to happen. A lot of times it was useful, but mostly it was just weird. Especially with a lot of episodes that had no such warning and quite a negative consequences.
My roots from my fathers side are from the Buriat, and some of my ancestors were prominent shamans and ulighershin, which is something like a skald, or bard in Germanic or Celtic cultures. Still as a part of my heritage I am expected to pay homage to the sites where my ancestors lived, as well as learn some of the traditions. It is quite fascinating, and since I've started involuntarily throat singing during my massage practice it is something of a real interest for me, especially since the healing results have improved since then.
It is for this reason as well as storytelling one that I will have to visit Buryatia and Irkutsk region for next five or so summers.
If I happen to write down any folk lore, it is going to be featured here.

Anyhow, this is getting rather longwinded, so I'll stop now. There are more topics that my appear on my blog, but those are going to be most prominent ones after the travel photos. Glad to have you on board!
And now back to writing other scheduled posts.