a dictionary of spectral curiosities
I first got the idea for this blog posts a few months ago, and it surely would have been quite a different kind of post, had I written it then. So much has happened since then that has now altered the flow of my thoughts, and the framing of my original idea. I am writing …
"We don't do politics here.""Personally, I don't support any particular ideology." These are two phrases I've frequently heard when issues connected to discrimination have come up. Most recently, the first was shouted at me by a very irate building manager who affected not to understand why her migrant-background neighbours might feel upset by the Prime …
Continue reading "“You can’t post this here”: The story of a poem"
Today, I teared up in a bookstore. Today, I bought a book because the first two paragraphs of its final chapter made me feel like crying. I picked it up and leafed through it to kill time, and because the title, Borderlines, caught my eye. I picked it up with some cynicism, wondering what this …
Continue reading "Crying in bookstores, thinking of borders"
For the past couple of months or so, if not longer, the media has been awash with rave reviews of Robert Eggers' version of Nosferatu, which was due to be released in the States in December, and was released in the UK on the 1st of January. The push to promote this $50 million-budget film …
Continue reading "Starved for Racism and Sexism? Watch Eggers’ Nosferatu Remake"
These past few years, I've made it a mission to keep a diary of books read per year, and every December, I take great pleasure in looking back on my 12-month reading history. According to my diary, in 2024 I read or reread a total of 43 books - including novels, graphic novels, nonfiction books, …
Continue reading "A Year in Books: The Ones that Stuck, and the One that Didn’t"
I went to Spain for the first time recently - it was a truly wonderful holiday, even better than expected. The sights were delightful, the food delicious, and the people friendly and accommodating. I spent a week there, looking at things through the eyes of a traveller, and here is what I saw. Poster reading …
I find there is something especially sad about old photographs sold at flea markets, curio bazaars, and similar places. I always ask myself how they ended there, at what point someone decided they were no longer interesting, no longer needed, no longer of any emotional value. Maybe they belonged to someone who no longer had …
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 HaÈ™deu: 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 …
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 