bishkek
Home. The flat, the desk, the samovar, Osh bazaar ten minutes away, the mountains at the end of the street. Everything else on this blog is departure and return; this is the place both of them point at.
50 entries, newest first.
2026
The hours nobody paid for
· Four games, hundreds of hours, no price and no store. They went up today, and the titles are exactly as I typed them.
A helmet over the bed
· A sitcom genie, a decade of white plastic that reached me late, and a spherical television hung from its factory chain over the brass bed.
Rain before the launch
· A wet Bishkek morning, small final edits, and the ordinary week that refuses to pause for pre-launch nerves.
Proofing Days
· On the tedium and low-grade dread of reading your own finished book again, and the typo that survived four drafts like a smug stowaway.
When the Manuscript Outruns the Room
· A short note from the nearly finished stretch: when the book feels more solid than the chair, the cup, and the afternoon around it.
Small and Hers Again
· Jetlagged homecoming to Bishkek after two countries: the city shrinks back to scale, and summer writing finds its quiet edge.
Courtyard Bench, Palo Alto
· On a research-adjacent return to the Symbolic Systems courtyard, and the gap between the student who sat there and the novelist who sits there now.
The Pitch That Got a No
· On a side project politely declined, the usefulness of a clean refusal, and why I am not staging a grievance from Bishkek.
Almaty cafe corner
· Working through Kazakh-archive threads on Soviet computing history in an Almaty cafe, with mountain light on the table.
The Kind of Man I Notice
· A Sunday call home leaves a chair in the middle of the room, and a quiet inventory of who becomes visible.
Spring Light and the Kyiv Pages
· Home in Bishkek, ten days of notes spread across the table, and the slow turn from travel toward a long essay on Ternary Dreams’ real roots.
A Sunday call home
· Weekly phone call with my mother: weather, gentle pressure, and the subjects we circle without naming.
Feofanija
· On researching Kyiv’s Feofanija district as a frame setting, and why a live war can never be treated as scenery.
The watch that cannot calculate
· A twelfth birthday, a chronograph from my mother, and a bezel scale that does nothing: fourteen years of slowly changing my mind.
The Niva, the Market, and the Wallet That Stayed Home
· A red Lada refuses to start, the Osh bazaar waits for no one, and the cash is still on the kitchen table. Dry comedy from a Friday that stacked its luck poorly.
Der Buzzer UVB-76 Is Out
· A second launch in two days. Quieter pride, a wry calendar, and a Siberian signal that kept me company through the drafts.
Secret Dawn Among the Stars Is Out
· Launch day. Holding the printed book for the first time, thinking about what a 1985 sealed hull asked of the work, and saying thank you.
Glass and spring light in Leipzig
· Notes from the book fair: the great glass hall, a panel, readers who linger, and tram rides washed in early spring.
Four digits in the entryway
· Last Sunday at the barakholka: an industrial wall clock in a wooden frame, a classroom I had not thought about in years, and a day that is suddenly countable.
Desk, cezve, radio
· What a working day actually looks like in Bishkek: coffee in the cezve, a desk by the window, handwriting first, and the shortwave after dark.
Olivier salad and fireworks
· New Year in the Bishkek flat with Aigerim and Dinara: Olivier, mandarins, the TV countdown, and fireworks stuttering over the rooftops.
2025
The library the industry built
· The corporation that owns the plants also runs a free digital library about itself, which is where the women of this book actually live: memoirs, jubilee volumes, flattery.
Point twenty six
· The trip died in one sentence of a decree from 1996: foreign citizens, private matters, entry restricted, and no line in the procedure with room for me.
A difficult phone call
· A slightly tense call from Bishkek about a family matter I cannot fully rearrange from here: no neat ending, only the sound of the line and what I can actually do.
The Reading Where Everything Failed
· Microphone, water glass, power cut: a small Bishkek bookstore evening collapses in sequence and somehow becomes the better version.
Frankfurt halls
· Notes from the Book Fair: publisher meetings, a signing hour, sore feet, evening receptions, and imposter feelings handled dryly.
Holding the First Copy
· The first printed copy of my debut novel arrived this morning in Bishkek. I sat with the cezve and tried to believe the years had led here.
Counting other people's receivers
· An evening with a map of receivers instead of a receiver: hundreds of antennas in other people's gardens, twenty three in Finland and Poland, none here.
Issyk-Kul with no laptop
· A deliberate blank weekend at the lake with Aigerim: swimming, apricots, guesthouse naps, and why the work needs the absence of work.
Still here, still writing
· High summer in Bishkek: heat, market fruit, the cezve, and the faint circling of something not yet named.
Manas at Three
· An almost empty hall, the tripod wedged between two rows of blue seats, and the odd cheerfulness that only a night departure produces.
Three hundred and nine files
· A finding aid downloaded to the kitchen table: a design bureau in Frunze, three hundred and nine files, and a register of who was cleared to know.
Lunokhod on the Duvet
· Marat charged apricot candy for one supervised drive. Decades later the moon rover patrols my blanket, and I write a late letter to the girl who paid.
2024
Twenty-five
· A birthday kept mostly quiet, and a set of questions I am not dressing up as answers.
Looking for August 1964
· Forty som, a photograph three by four, and a week of republican newspapers that will not confirm the story the whole valley tells.
The Little Box on the Hot Shoe
· A used Nikon GP-1A from a Bishkek stall, and the quiet relief of frames that finally know where they were taken.
People who know my face but not my name
· The apricot seller, the neighbor on the stairs, a classmate I almost walked past: the loose weave of a life in one city.
2023
Eight inches
· Half a year of looking ends with a polite no, a joke I made myself, and an evening that took the rest.
The Address Is Not Mine
· A broken archive page, a fourteen-dollar host, and the small humiliation of writing at an address with somebody else's name in it.
How I Came to Own a Red Niva
· A retired engineer in Bishkek sells me his Lada like introducing a difficult relative. I stall once and fall for it anyway.
The setup that went nowhere
· Dinara sent me to a gallery opening with a name and a description. The evening was pleasant. That is most of what there is to say.
The Idea That Would Not Leave
· A Bishkek balcony, a blanket, and a shortwave radio that has quietly turned a year of notes into the beginning of a book.
2022
The Robot from the Barakholka
· A silver wind-up robot lived behind glass at Baba Roza's. Years later it marched off my desk, and something in my chest was five years old again.
Coffee on the Only Copy
· The cezve chooses the exact second I reach for a pen. Three weeks of notes meet Turkish coffee, then the laundry line.
The Lit Window on a Dark Street
· A late-lockdown walk through empty Bishkek, a closed lingerie shop still glowing, and a quiet click I was not ready to name.
2021
A cousin I am missing
· A cousin's wedding I cannot get to, a video call standing in for a hug, and my mother saying almost nothing about it.
The First Time We Sat in a Room Again
· Nearly a year on: tea with Aigerim and Dinara, masks half-managed, gratitude braided with a wariness that will not simply switch off.
2020
The Quarter From the Kitchen
· An autumn quarter attended from a kitchen table thirteen hours out of step, and the particular shame of losing the middle of a sentence to a stuttering line.
A Notebook Against the Quiet
· The city went quiet, the phone stopped being enough, and a plain notebook became the only room built to hold a whole thought.
The Week the City Went Quiet
· A state of emergency, a last run through Osh bazaar, and the sudden hush that settled over Bishkek almost overnight.