a dictionary of spectral curiosities
Today is Christian Orthodox Easter. I don't celebrate for religious reasons (I'm not religious), but like many I fall prey to nostalgia and find myself wanting to reacreate the Easters of my childhood: the special foods, the treats, the smells, the excitement of egg dyeying, the joy of coming together with loved ones over meticulously …
Continue reading "Happy Easter, Cooking Throws Me Into a Rage"
Let's talk about one of the strangest, creepiest literary landmarks of Romania. About an hour and a half's drive north from Bucharest, lodged among the hills, lies the rather sleepy town of Câmpina, once upon a time a key transit point on the commercial route linking Transylvania, the mountainous northern region of what is now …
Continue reading "Iulia Hașdeu: the Cult of the Dead Girl-Prodigy Who Wasn’t"
One of my long-time hobbies has been collecting old photos. Nothing compares to the feeling of rummaging through reams and reams of old photographs at flea markets and wondering: Who were these people? What were their lives like? How did these once-cherished keepsakes end up, anonymised, in a plastic bin at a flea market?I recently …
It's that time of the year again: the time I look back on what I've read over the past 12 months and reflect on what I loved the most, and what I want to read more of in the year to come. I will have read over 40 books in 2023, many (most?) of them …
How do you feel today? How do you really feel? To be honest, I'm not feeling that great. In fact, every day I feel myself getting angrier, more heartbroken, more disappointed. How could I not be, knowing what I know? Dead bodies keep piling up in Gaza. In Ukraine, a madman threatens with the ghost …
Eugène Carrière, Sleep (1897). Source: National Gallery of Art As a child, for many years, I used to have this experience at regular intervals: I'd wake up from a deep nightime sleep or a brief daytime nap, suddenly very alert, my heart racing, with a strong and unshakeable feeling that I had something very important …
When I was younger, I used to get excited about celebrating International Women's Day every year. Receiving bouquets of flowers, hearing enthusiastic discourses on TV and radio praising the achievements of girls and women everwhere made me feel motivated and appreciated. But as I grew older, I started to really experience the difference between that …
Continue reading "International Women’s Day: Wicked (?) Women"
Answering 8 questions about transitioning from an English PhD into a non-academic role.
A litle over two years ago I was writing about my struggle with people's assumptions about me in my adopted country. In that blog post, I was reflecting on the pitfalls of the not-so-innocent "where are you from?" question that many migrants like me face when they open their mouths to speak. The culprit? Doubtlessly …
This month I made jam for the first time in my life - my first ever preserve of any kind. My mum has made jam many, many times. When I asked her to give me a run-through of her jam-making technique she just said: "Oh, it's easy, it's very easy! There's nothing to it, you'll …
Continue reading "Jam, pickles, and the ghost of domestic Gothic"
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 