Instead of New Year’s resolutions (En)

Every time I tried to write something that could be regarded as a brief summary of my year*, I failed. There is nothing that can be considered even remotely more substantial than the ongoing war. Everything has been overshadowed by it: nothing, even the most anticipated events, or long-awaited and desired work projects, or meetings with friends, significant colleagues or just new lovely and interesting people can’t feel as genuine and great as it would’ve been without the war.

This year promised to be one of the most successful in my refreshed scholarly career. After I decided to focus primarily on academic Lovecraftiana and horror/Gothic studies, there was NecronomiCon Providence in August, and my engagements with public talks at round tables, and being a speaker and a chair of the panels at the Armitage Symposium, and conversations with the utmost fantastic people to whom I will be insanely grateful as they found the time to listen to me and to spend time with me—it was precious and will stay in my heart forever. My gratitude to them all who didn’t mind seeing me as the new editor of “Lovecraftian Proceedings,” which is released by the best ever publisher “Hippocampus Press,” is endless. Dennis, Derrick, Niels, Martin, Bobby, Faye, Nicole, Joshua, Teri, Sean, many thanks to you all, dear friends, for making it possible.

Yet it was not as fabulous as it was supposed to be: while doing my job, I was in two places simultaneously—in the Old Gent’s town of glory and in my beloved Zaporizhzhia, where my family, my closest school friend, my dearest university friends and professors, my neighbours whom I knew since I was four years old (I am a forty-seven year old woman now) suffered from air strikes, blackouts and endless sleepless nights. How could I feel any triumph, or joy, or satisfaction from work if I know that my help to them is so minuscule? I can’t, of course.

There were also other travels—to great Boston and Newport, to Corfu (too splendid to even imagine that places of such opulent beauty exist), to Cromer (it has that magic North Norfolk power to heal, yet even its magic wasn’t enough this time), and to Georgia, a place I loved dearly since I was a little child, and it met all my childish (i.e. fabulous) expectations. However, it always felt as if part of me had never left my bedroom, and my phone, and messengers with its everyday “Are you here? How are you today?” Everyone in my closest circle has done the same; everyone in my widest circles did it, too. I wish it could be different, and we all did different things, but it was impossible and still is.

There is no such thing as a summary of this year: there is pain, and sorrow, and anguish, and grief, and a longing to change everything for the better. Could it be possible? I don’t know. Nobody does. Many years ago, I heard a song by Moby, whom I never particularly liked: it was called “Lift Me Up.” My English was so poor at the time that I barely understood a word of this song, hooked only by the catchy Indie Electronic tune. A few days ago, I listened to it again (don’t ask me why: I have no idea), and suddenly it resonates with everything in me:

Plain talking

Served us so well

Travelled through hell

No, how we fell

Lift me up, lift me up (higher, now I’m up)

Push me up, lift me up (higher, now I’m up)

Push me up, lift me up (higher, now I’m up)

Lift me up, lift me up (higher, now I’m up)

Lift up higher: hope prevails. Take care, friends. And hopefully happier New Year to us all.

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* for myself, of course: making it public doesn’t change anything specific about it as we all stopped trying to be “interesting” for others a while ago—and, especially, now: a good thing I guess; we write it for our next time hop, just not to forget what we had done in that specific moment of our lives.