Snake. Tiger. Monkey. Boar. Horse. Tiger. Focus... didn’t work again. Snake. Tiger. Monkey... I haven’t gone crazy—I’m just practicing Naruto hand signs. What else is there to do in the punishment cell (SHIZO, a Russian penal isolation cell)? You have to fill 16 hours a day with something. Stood around, sat around, read a bit. So I decided to learn how to do Naruto signs quickly. Actually, Zakhar taught me. After the poisoning and coma, my hands shook for quite a long time. And one day during our walk (that exact day is the one in the photo), watching me pour tea in the café while banging the kettle against the cup, Zakhar said: — I’ll help you. You need to get your own hands under control. Naruto will come in handy here. Then he said it and quickly twisted his hands into some intricate shapes. It wasn’t easy. Back then, my memory wasn’t in great shape either. I simply couldn’t remember that Tiger comes after Snake, not the other way around. And getting my fingers into those positions felt completely impossible. We practiced for a couple of weeks. I didn’t really manage it, although the exercises themselves helped. Fine motor skills. Kids need to develop them, old people need to develop them, and people poisoned with Novichok (a Soviet/Russian nerve agent) need to develop them too. Now here in the punishment cell, I remembered those lessons and I’ve gotten pretty good at doing the signs. Naruto would be proud of me. I still can’t manage the fireball at the end, though 😔 But I’m not giving up. So if you see green and red fireballs flying across the sky east of Moscow, it won’t necessarily mean nuclear war has started. Maybe I finally got the Naruto sign right 😉 ...snake...tiger...monkey...