Happy new year. I’m glad for the shift that a new year signifies. Maybe things will be different, maybe we (or me) can be more hopeful. This turn of the new year feels different from the previous four because I am not about to begin a new semester of classes. In the past having a whole new schedule of classes really did make the year feel “new” because the classes would determine almost everything I’m learning about, thinking about, and the schedule of my every day.

Now it’s more up to me to make this year feel new. I don’t really have any formal resolutions, although I do have some intentions for how I want to be -kind, loving, civically engaged, doing as much as I can for the liberation of Palestine. Right now I feel anxious about going back to work. Covid isolation gave me a lot of time to worry things over and I’m sad I missed out on what could have been a more restorative break in Portland, but oh well.

Me and Tilek went to Brighton Beach yesterday morning which was really lovely. The sun was out and so were a lot of people. I highly recommend going there.

I do not recommend the movie Poor Things, which we saw the day before (we wanted to see The Boy and The Heron but it was sold out). I thought it was hollow, unfunny, and that it dragged on. Sexual consent in the movie seemed pretty questionable and I found it to be not nearly as feminist as it seemed to think it was. Emma Stone’s time at the brothel seemed overall exploitative, not empowering. A lot of people seem to really like Poor Things so clearly this is just my subjective opinion, and I’ll add that I liked the costumes.

We also started watching the 1975 Russian romcom “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” which is over 3 hours long and still infinitely more interesting than Poor Things (again, subjective opinion). It takes place on New Year’s Eve and the plot hinges on the sameness of city design in the Soviet Union -I won’t say more than that! It also has a 2022 American remake starring Emma Roberts that seems kinda bad, sorry to Emma Roberts.