This week I have finished a third version of a 40-page learnings report for work, got a positive review on my first Intercultural Leadership assignment, took a Kanyen’kéha test and did a good progress on my second Leadership assignment. Also, I managed to sleep, excercise and eat greens almost every day of the week, which should at least partly account for my relatively stable mood and stamina. Yes, I have a right to be proud of myself. I may not be proud of myself at every given moment, but overall I think I did pretty damn good. I also got hooked on the new Netflix rendition of One day, which is worth mentioning here, since I have absolutely no one to talk to about that. So, about One day: I had read the book when it came out and created a huge buzz and I hadn’t particularly liked it. I can’t remember though, if it was because the book wasn’t that good, or because everyone else liked it and I wanted to contradict. I do remember that I genuinely didn’t like the film. I have not thought about it in the years since (there ARE many books that I come back to mentally on a regular basis, like The God of Small Things, Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Shaggy Bayne, Jane Eyre or Gut gegen Nordwind). But lo and behold, Netflix puts the forgotten book into a 14-episode story with a “diverse cast” of talented Gen-Z actors, and I can’t get over it.

I notice how my attention to book genres swings depending on my overall state of mind and, I suppose, the sate of the world that hasn’t been great or even acceptable for a very long time. During my good periods, I feel intense passion towards non-fiction in the Community and Culture or Indigenous Voices sections, or towards good solid literary novels (for some reason, I love reading through Booker and Governor General Award shortlists, but completely ignore other literary prizes). In the bad periods, I am drawn towards horror, science-fiction or, as was the case in November and December, at the worst of my mental health crisis, “historical” romance novels. I think the deal here is not just the escapism, or rather it is not just escape from reality, it’s escape from myself. Those genres are foreign to me, they do not reflect me, so reading them I can pretend not to be myself, put aside my intense and tiring personality and be someone else, someone who reads on the beach of an all-inclusive beachfront hotel during the Spring Break.

Reading on the beach brought me back to the memories of our summers in Crimea. There was no hotel and absolutely nothing was included. We rented a small room from aunt Natasha, an emergency nurse who worked in Eupathoria and lived in a small military settlement with her always drinking husband (sometimes, without him), her rebellious daughter Marina and young son Zhenya, whom I intensely disliked for no apparent reason. I used to borrow books from Natasha’s library and smuggle them to read on the beach, because other than bathing the beach was boring. I was never particularly interested in building sand castles (I mean, real sand castles, I’m good at building methaphorical ones). So, I smuggled books to the beach, only adult books. I remember reading some biographical novel about Beethowen, crime novels, Dickens. The only book I was not allowed to take to the beach was Gone with the Wind, because it was rare and hard to find. So, I pretended to be sick and missed wonderful summer days and the warm Black sea to read the story of Scarlett and Rhet Buttler. Now Crimea is under occupation and I wonder what happened to aunt Natasha and her kids. Would they still remember us, if we met? Would they consider us friends of enemies? Do they still have the little flat we used to share during our summer vacations and the books that lined entire wall of their little living room slash bedroom slash guestroom?