Teaching:

Again, not much...though I did have some fun playing improv games with one of my sixth grade classes. Anyway, one more week!

Learning:

Did some more Romanian Duolingo. Also attended a somatic movement something something workshop run by a local coach person whose workshops I've come to enjoy quite a bit. I wouldn't say I necessarily "learned" anything in particular from this one, although these workshops are generally about practicing moving/connecting to your body in somewhat unusual ways, and I've found that I really enjoy this sort of thing. I often feel pretty disconnected from my body, and I have a whole narrative in my head about being clumsy, uncoordinated, etc., so these workshops have been pretty helpful...and they've given me some tools I can use here and there throughout my daily life to sort of "ground" myself when I start to feel a little anxious or in my head. One interesting part of the workshop was when we had to imagine dancing with a younger version or ourselves...and I sort of instinctively imagined myself fencing/swordfighting with my little kid self, since I spent a lot of time as a kid swinging tree branches around and imagining myself fighting various invisible bad guys. So I did this fun little swordfight dance. Honestly there's a lot of gender stuff that comes up for me when I do these sorts of exercises...

Listening:

Had a craving to listen to Metallica's "Black Album." I really like James Hetfield's "gentler" vocals, like on some parts of "The Unforgiven," which I've had in my head for much of the week. Also danced around one night listening to an Ecstatic Dance mix on Youtube. Oh, and right now I randomly put on  this album Cosmically a Shambles by someone named Polypores, and I'm really enjoying it. 

Podcast-wise, listened to a few episodes of The Daily, but like I said last week, I wanted to listen to some more Romanian-language podcasts. So this week I listened to an episode of Perfect Contemporan, a pretty cozy interview show with contemporary Romanian poets and authors, and an episode of Mind Architect.

Mind Architect is one of the most famous podcasts in Romania. It's personal development/pop psychology stuff. I learned about it by reading an article in a couple-years-old issue of DoR about some Romanian neuroscientists taking issue with the oversimplification and outdatedness of much of the content of the podcast (at least in its early years), especially given that many (private/progressive) schools were beginning to include the show in "personal development" type curricula. I found the article pretty thought-provoking, centering around the question: if pop psychology helps people and exposes them to ideas they might not encounter otherwise, how much does it matter if those ideas are watered down or even somewhat inaccurate? Anyway, since then I've listened to a few episodes, and found them pretty inoffensive and kind of enjoyable. This week I listened to their latest episode, in which they invited two psychologists on to reflect on the Romanian election situation. A few takeaways:
    • When asked what the election revealed about Romanian society, the guests talked about the pervasive lack of trust in institutions and in other people, as well as the lack of a sense of belonging, especially among the diaspora, who voted for the far-right candidates in big numbers. The guests also mentioned a recurring theme, which was how radicalizing the pandemic was, especially among "educated," middle-class, middle-aged people.
    • According to exit polls, 40% of women voted for Simion, the far-right candidate, despite his track record of misogynistic comments and the obvious fact that his policies, if implemented, would be bad for women and everybody else in the country. The guests (both women) said that among the threats they got for the opinions they expressed online in the lead-up to the election, many, and many of the worst, were from women. Their explanations: 1.) Simion and Georgescu stoked fears that military-age boys would be drafted to fight in Ukraine (along with the usual anti-EU/anti-"West"/anti-"woke" rhetoric about boys being turned gay or forced to wear skirts), which resonated with mothers. For me this raised the question of why the fear of misogynistic violence or rollbacks on women's rights didn't resonate just as much, but that didn't come up. 2.) Simion is a recognizable, familiar sort of male figure: the type of man that many women in Romania are accustomed to and familiar with. In the context of so much upheaval and uncertainty, many people gravitate to what feels familiar. The guests talked a lot about the dynamics of abusive relationships as a way of understanding why so many women voted for Simion.
    • There was also an interesting conversation contrasting the kind of masculinity Simion embodies/performs with that of Nicusor Dan. I think there was a narrative shared among many people that Simion is this virile, fiery, passionate guy (and that Georgescu is this eloquent, wise, charismatic guru-type figure), while Dan very much isn't any of that. Simion has even mocked Dan for being "autistic." But the guests and the host talked about how there's something actually very inspiring about Dan's story: growing up in a small town, eventually studying mathematics at the Sorbonne, coming back to Romania, becoming mayor of Bucharest, and now President. It's a real Hero's Journey type story, they said, and there's something potentially empowering in there for people to look at and try to aspire to. And yet, the models provided by the Simions and Andrew Tates of the world somehow feel more resonant for so many boys and men. 

Reading:

Taking a break from The Raven Cycle and reading Nell Zink's novel Doxology. I had mixed feelings about it at first, but now I'm pretty invested. There's something interesting here about the transition from Gen X to Gen Z, the former characterized by a kind of irreverence and cynicism and "reaction formation" and a strong investment in subcultural production/consumption as both a marker of one's identity and a sort of coping mechanism ("Culture came to the rescue," Zink writes as the two Gen X characters learn of the death of their Holy Fool-type friend, "Like a Mobius strip, her mind twisted into eighties hipster mode. Their conversation after that was pitched low and on the inside, knowing and hopeless, every clause meaning and mourning its opposite")...the latter characterized by a wholesome, frustrated idealism ("She had been raised to help save the planet," Zink says of the aforementioned characters' college-aged daughter, "and she couldn't. To help save the planet, she had to find out who was saving the planet and offer to help. Nobody was saving the planet. Was it all just a trick that had been played on her?"). 

Watching:

Nothing really. T. was away at a conference and I'm pretty much incapable of watching anything on my own; for some reason I get immediately bored and just can't sit through anything. Now that she's back, we're back on The Big Bang Theory.  One interesting side effect of watching it: it's making me want to read superhero comics again. Huh!

Writing:

Finished the poem I've been tinkering with (see below). Kind of a slow week on the RP front. 

Other stuff:

I went to a Pride-related spoken word event the other night, and performed this poem I've been working on. I felt good about it, and it got a pretty good reaction, but as usual I felt a little uncomfortable with the whole experience. I'm used to being the oldest person in the room by far at spoken word events here, but this crowd was especially young. I like writing and performing spoken word poetry, but sometimes I want to quit, because I just feel so out of place at these events. I'm hoping I can go to at least one open mic when I visit the U.S. this summer, just so I can see how it feels to read in a different and more diverse context, and maybe that'll give me a sense of whether I should keep going with this stuff or bow out.

I did a couple things with people this week (the movement workshop, the open mic), but again didn't hang out with any friends. Exchanged a few texts with My Poetry Buddy and My Anarchist Friend, and that was nice, though it would also be nice to hang out with them sometime. I generally get a lot out of our conversations.

At the same time, I'm proud of myself for not forcing myself to go to certain events I could have gone to but which in my gut I just knew I didn't really want to. I often feel a lot of guilt and shame about that, and I have a whole story in my head about it, but it felt good to just be like "I don't want to go" and let that be okay.