Mathemagenic

One day I should write a long story about disconnecting with the land and finding the connection again. Those with whom we get into the deep and difficult matters know that several years ago I had a difficult experience in our local homeschooling group that involved a lot of pressure to invest in group cohesion and ‘gezelligheid’, to stop talking to my kids in Russian while being in the group, and to adhere to Dutch cultural norms of how much of individual values and choice could be exercised publicly and how much of self-censorship one needs to apply to fit in*.

That resulted in an almost physiological repulsion of everything Dutch.

It has been a long and winding path to overcome that and to restore the connection with the country where I live, love, raise kids and grow garden. Step by step I rebuilt and regrew the connections to the land, language, homeschooling community, people and culture… Last weekend an unexpected change of plans brought me into a group where I could rewrite the experience of being part of the group in a way that honors the delicate balance between group cohesion and holding space for individual identities, choices, special needs, and random quirks.

So, before everyday life fully takes its toll with happenings and to-do lists I want to mark this as a milestone. With gratitude to Land van Lisa and the people who shared the space, work, food, words, and all the unspoken with me.

Finding this experience in a former school building that is being redefined and rebuilt as a learning and community space is also symbolic. As well as the fact that the connection to something happening half an hour’s distance from home is made via a homeschooling friend from another side of the country.

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* Despite the stereotypical freedom of expression and creating pragmatic accommodations for all sorts of deviations, the Netherlands is very much guided by the culture of ‘doe gewoon’, adhering to the rules and social control.

Local elections. I almost forgot they were coming. The future is so uncertain it’s difficult to believe that voting would make a difference.

I don’t look anymore at what the parties promise to solve. I look at the signs of how. With the efficient one-size-fits-all blanket bombing of well-thought measures or with giving people a voice and embracing diversity.

Tiny differences are difficult to spot on a big scale. For the mainstream parties, I know, more or less. I’ve seen how they voted on the bills that are relevant enough to show up on my Twitter. It’s not what you say it’s what you do. I know which ones I would not trust anymore.

Local elections are different. There are local issues and small-scale parties that I’ve hardly heard about. So I read into their statements to discern how are they approaching an issue.

I look for respect, not polarisation, for giving a voice to the other, diversity, autonomy. Hoping for a difference.

It is not about where do you go, it’s about how.

Originally written on Twitter

For people who ask how do I feel. And probably some answers for those who wonder how it is to be Russian now.

As a context:  My family is in Russia and in the Netherlands. My Russian-speaking (online) social networks include Ukrainians and Russians with dear ones in the conflict zone.

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Unsubscribing from Ukrainian journalists. Even when they are relatively neutral and not calling every death a genocide I can not deal with their emotions of hate and anger directed at Russians. I also asked a Ukrainian in the book club chat to think about what Russians feel when she shares her happiness of the Ukrainian military killing Russians.

Those emotions are very legitimate, but I can not share them. I’m not Ukrainian, it’s not my people and my land.

My people are on the other side, causing all that horrible mess and living through the reverberations of that.

But I can’t side with the Russian military or those who support them either. With 20+ years abroad I also can not fully share the emotions of others in Russia.

I deal with my own emotions.

Grasping for air at the sight of loss and tragedy while reading rational analysis of geopolitical or military strategies of different sides.

Seeing how orchestrated narratives pull everyone in the conflict in a way that brings only escalation.

Thinking of everyone facing choices to stay or leave, having to choose between their values, their people, or their safety.

Sharing the fate of being Russian, the guilt of being related to it, and the unfairness of being held guilty for what is not my fault.

Being overwhelmed by all this.

When I have enough balance and strength left, I hold the space for the emotions of people around me, Russians, Ukrainians, or else. This space shrinks every time hate and anger are directed to the other side. I am not a saint and need to stay sane for those I care for the most.

I am not writing here while writing elsewhere. Twitter, FB, LJ. Where the audience is or, at least, a chance of feedback. The events and the sense-making of them unfold so fast and the future is so uncertain that it is not the time to make choices of digital spaces to invest into. So far I just go with the flow and write where it feels like writing.

That’s said – there are threads on Twitter that should be blogposts in a parallel universe. And there are people with whom this blog still lives as an RSS feed and who sometimes reach via other channels to ask how it is going. And who knows, maybe this blog will be my digital retirement home in the old days, once life slows down enough for a renovation.

So I am going to engage in a practice of reposting here stuff I’d like to keep. With backdates and all that “not to be done”.  I’ll see what happens.

Translated from a FB post in Russian

Every time I do a test before kizomba I get into an inner fight. One part of me hopes that the test comes negative and I would be able to dance with all others, who come there without the test because they made a socially acceptable choice. Another part would be happy to see it positive, so for the coming 6-9-12 months, I could live without planning according to the rules that are less and less grounded in epidemiological reality.

However, it is the hardest not for that part of me that dances, travels, and decides whether to invest in a museum card given that every museum visit requires a test. It is another one, deeper inside, that can’t take this much divide, polarisation, and manipulations of data, interpretations, and narratives leading to those. And it could not be easily helped by that side of me that is mature and resilient – the one of “Your epoch is not for trying. It’s for living and for dying.“, “do what you should, and come what may”, and “this too shall pass”.

In this context, a negative test result is definitely better. Because kizomba is about practicing relaxed concentration, about connection, here and now, about learning to see and grow interaction instead of fighting and polarisation.

Translated from a FB post in Russian

While we were dancing kizomba, one teenager was coming back by train from a sleepover party across the country and two girls were cooking dinner.

An opportunity to dance without worrying about the kids and with dinner being cooked appeared way earlier than today. But today it manifested itself particularly strongly.

And, given that only diehards continue dancing after two covid years our practice includes such implicit nuances that it resembles meditation more than anything else.

Translated from a FB post in Russian

Today I have three times five years of motherhood. And a day, most of which we have spent with two of us, unhurried and warm, without adventures, plans, and expectations. Almost as that day fifteen years ago, when we were recovering from 46 hours of a marathon before he was born.

Being unhurried gives me time to feel how his growth slowly and inevitably transforms the relationship between us. And the time for adventures will come anyway.

Next to all other issues on getting back to writing, I struggle with cross-platform issues. Some things I write where it is prompted and a reply is likely to be seen – on Twitter or in FB comments. Others go into their habitual places, with an audience in mind and access in place – posts on FB and LJ are such. Some texts I cross-post between spaces – some of FB stuff goes here (in English), others go to LJ (in Russian). Twitter is more complicated – I use it as a back-office tool for annotated readings and short thoughts, but often don’t get into synthesizing it into bigger texts. That “lack of convergence” is also platform-dependent. FB is horrible with linking, visuals, tools for emphasis and structure, as well as overall censorship.

And, of course, this blog is a neglected space, like a house that used to be full of life, but is now abandoned and dated. Here there is freedom and track record, but hardly any readership, feedback, easy-to-manage ways to post in two languages and with different access rights.

At the moment I have no idea how to put it all in a system that works, but it is something that is on my priority list for 2022.

Originally posted as a Twitter thread  (see  also comments on FB)

I keep on thinking about parallels between the invisibility of informal learning in education and training and the invisibility of natural immunity in Covid discourse. Focusing on what one can control and measure is very human, but also very short-sighted.

Learning and immunity are natural intrinsic processes that are crafted by centuries of evolution and could be very powerful. Both are complex, not understood fully by science, and context-dependent, so “one size fits all” expert solutions are not likely to work for everyone.

Formal learning and vaccine immunity have their merits, but could not be the only ingredient for a sustainable solution. We learn how to recognize, align and create conditions for informal learning to achieve shared goals and we should do the same for natural immunity.

It has been brewing for a long time but got its last drop from the essay by @KimPigSquash discussing her own choices in respect to immunity as immunocompromised and insights coming from natural immunity testing and research in Canada.