a dictionary of spectral curiosities
Random ramblings about life and other confusing things.
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"
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 …
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"
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 …
Answering 8 questions about transitioning from an English PhD into a non-academic role.
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 