A few slogans do no harm on that one day when women are reminded of their free will—mostly, alongside pictures containing flowers.

So, fellow women

Please, take care of yourself.

Once you do it properly, it helps to take care of those who’re dependant on you (children, the elderly, the sick, pets). Please, remind men that taking care of those who’re weaker is a shared responsibility; let’s hope that the men in your life don’t need this reminder, but if they [constantly] do, maybe it’s time to separate your paths: it is not your duty to change the mindset of a fully grown person if they don’t want to change to be more conscientious.

Please, focus on your needs, professional and whatnot.

The older you get, the better it will reward you. You are supposed to be not only your own harshest critic, but your own sympathetic companion. Hard, I know, yet possible (don’t ask me how: despite my advanced age, I have still not figured it out myself).

Please, be independent.

“Literature in Laputa: AI’s transformative translations” by Tim Parks (TLS)

What’s left? The feeling of humane coarseness, the range of relatable imperfections that hopefully will still make translation work.

So, at seventy, I find myself revising the assumptions of a lifetime. However humbling this may be, you have to admire the creativity of the scientists who have produced a machine that demonstrates how little of what you do is creative. At the same time an uneasy inkling tells me deep down we always knew this, or feared it. What were Jonathan Swift’s parodies of mindless, jargon-spouting hacks, or, in Laputa, his vision of a machine thanks to which “the most ignorant person … might write books in philosophy”, but the betrayal of an anxiety that mechanically produced language could prove indistinguishable from our own? Doesn’t Barbara Pym, in A Few Green Leaves, have a protagonist who delights in predicting how others are going to finish their sentences? Wasn’t Samuel Beckett obsessed with the concern that everything said is perfunctory and compulsive. “The word is not out”, he wrote in 1936, “before I am blushing for my automatism.” ©

Nothings and triviality

The art of mastering small talk has been lost a while ago: as of now, we are observing its last death throes. Everyone is so used to the casual drabness of shitposting on socials (I am no exception) that going irl and facing other people turns into a disaster.

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.9 “Overstrand”

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a
Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come
near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the
flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on
the foam of the sea ©

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.8 “To Overstrand!”

To Overstrand!

Review | “The story is old, but the horror feels fresh“ by Mark Dery (The Washington Post)

Love to see all my favourite things mentioned in one paragraph. And the artworks (illustrations, posters and such) made by Richard Wells aka Slippery Jack are highly recommended.

Folk horror was a literary genre long before it made its screen debut. “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835), “The Great God Pan” (1894) by Arthur Machen, “The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood (1910), “The Dunwich Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft (1929), “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948) and “Children of the Corn” by Stephen King (1977) are all folk horror. But three films known as the “unholy trinity” established it as a cinematic genre: “Witchfinder General” (1968; based very loosely on the murderous career of the 17th-century witch hunter Matthew Hopkins), “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” (1971) and “The Wicker Man” (1973; about a pagan cult that has survived, on idyllic Summerisle, into the mod 1970s). ©

Forgiveness Sunday

It’s a tough Forgiveness Sunday, and I am not good enough to accept the assignment, but at least bliny are here (not bad).

Fiat lux.

Trying to comfort myself with the thought that I got plenty of great papers for the next “Lovecraftian Proceedings” volume today (the deadline is due), and that I also managed to send an abstract to an interesting conference in Gothic studies in the nick of time.

Can I enter another timeline, please? I don’t want to participate in this one anymore.

“Creative Differences” by Tad Friend (The New Yorker, August 29, 1999)

I find this old article (from 1999) about Lynch and his usual whimsical search for making his perfect artwork (Twin Peaks first, then Mulholland Drive) very telling: mind you, it was written BEFORE the actual production was finalised, meaning that the author of the piece hadn’t seen it and the only thing he knew was that (unsuccessful) attempt to make it as TV series for ABC. Quite fascinating. (Apologies for over-quoting, but it’s worth it)

In January 4th [1999—E.T.], Lynch turned in a ninety-two-page pilot script to ABC. Like much of his work, “Mulholland Drive” was conceived as an oddball film noir, opening with some gruesome deaths and then introducing an ensemble of desirable women and baffled or misshapen men. Lynch had kept many of these strange men to himself at the pitch meeting, because, he says, Krantz worried that “getting into them would blow the deal.” The most important, in the completed script, was an edgy young director named Adam, who is forced by a pair of mobsters to cast a particular actress in his new movie. (Adam appears to be a stand-in for Lynch, who is known to fear creative interference of any form. When Lynch was living with Isabella Rossellini, he refused to allow cooked food in the house, lest the smell contaminate his work.) Adam smashes up the mobsters’ limo with a 7-iron, then hops into his silver Porsche and drives home to find his wife in bed with the pool man. He pours hot-pink paint in her jewelry box, gets cuffed around by the pool man, and must eventually take counsel from an oracular cowboy.

Should women over 50 eat strawberries?

Should women over 50 walk their dogs?

Should women over 50 have a cup of coffee and dare to enjoy life?

Those and other exciting questions must be found in my new book ”Fuck off and stop masquerading your casual ageism and misogyny as a self-care promo makeup ad”

Those are certainly not the first crocuses and narcissi you will see, but not the last either. Their bloom in our back garden grows exponentially, despite the volatile weather.

 Три года.

Завтра очень тяжелый день впереди, и я пытаюсь морально к нему подготовиться.

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.7 “Rainy day: a recap”

Rainy day’s recap: surfers (two of them in the first pic), reflective sands, mighty emptiness, a pearl horizon, a few strangers and a doggo:

“Monstrously conventional: Caroline Blackwood's republished tale of suburban horror” by Muireann Maguire (TLS)

A brilliant review on suburban horror written by a (sadly) forgotten writer, Caroline Blackwood, whose fate reminds me of another smart and witty (yet unhappy) not-exactly-siren, Maeve Brennan.

Sincerest congratulations to Muireann Maguire who’s done a fantastic job!

Recently republished by Virago, with an illuminating foreword by Camilla Grudova, Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose (1981) is a forgotten classic about suburban monstrosity. Too often remembered as a socialite and a siren, or for her succession of gifted husbands (including the artist Lucian Freud, the composer Israel Citkowitz and the poet Robert Lowell), Blackwood was an author of considerable talent: here she writes with both gothic verve and psychological precision. ©

Дорогие израильские друзья, скорблю вместе с вами.

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.6 “That one rainy day” (photos)

And as per usual several illustrations to the previous post:

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.6 “That one rainy day”

Today Cromer turned into its usual misty northern self, with intermittent (quite lengthy) drizzles and fog, but we weren’t disappointed (we actually cannot be disappointed by anything, while staying here). So, our previous plan to walk to Overstrand during low tide was altered, and we strolled around the town instead.

First, “Bookworms”; nothing has changed since our last visit: it was quiet and empty inside, with a (usually) contemplative owner, who was meditating in the tiny room behind, listening to his beloved Classic FM (it was Mahler today). I bought di Lampedusa’s Leopard (my memory about Visconti’s classic is quite vague, although you’re not supposed to confess such wrongdoing, as your highbrow friends would laugh at you… or maybe not), Gormenghast (L. has been mentioning Peake for eternity, so there) and one of the relatively vintage Rupert books (the newer ones, albeit masterfully executed, are lacking that awkward charm of the earlier series). A book combo somehow makes perfect sense to me.

Кромерские tutti quanti: P.5 “’Cromer sunset”

Winter Cromer has one of the best sunsets, no doubt about it.

«Носферату»: итоги

Борат 2.0 с элементами всех плохо сделанных готик-RPG, вместе взятых (это когда разработчики вместо того, чтобы довести игру до ума, срутся в твиттере или реддите), кровь, говно и муравьи (то есть, крысы), выдаваемые за фолк-хоррор, метаироническая вампука, в которой «он пугает, а нам не страшно». Очень жалею потраченных на стрим фунтов.

1/10

Snowdrops-2025

It was a hassle to catch up with the snowdrops this year (they emerged two or so weeks ago), as the weather has been particularly ghastly this winter—idiotically warm, bleak, sunless and damp. But today I finally got a chance to take a few pics, and here they are.

Reading about the last Poe’s wanderings around (as if Highsmith was personally invested in this sorrowful story), I was reminded of Hart Crane’s “Forgetfulness”:

Forgetfulness is like a song

That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.

Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,

Outspread and motionless, —

A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,

Or an old house in a forest, — or a child.

Forgetfulness is white, — white as a blasted tree,

And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,

Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness. ©

And here’s Highsmith’s description of Poe’s last days:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You can have a slice of cake
For whatever reason or even without one

“Pomes Penyeach” in Cambridge

L. gifted me a rare copy of Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach (1942 edition): Joyce’s attempt to create neologisms wasn’t exactly appreciated at the time (and was initially rejected by Ezra Pound), yet it still works in odd and enchanting ways.

Rosefrail and fair—yet frailest

A wonder wild

In gentle eyes thou veilest,

My blueveined child. ©