SOME STEPS IN THE PAST: AN ATTEMPT AT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Mikhail Yeselson
PART I: THERE
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE GENRE
One day I had realized that all my stories were about myself, and the only way I could give them a sense and a completion was to write an autobiography.
Autobiography... What a boring genre it is! You slice your life, mark each bit with a date, line up from the Earth to the Moon, fasten the net of causes and effects, guesses and inventions, semi-truths and semi-falsehoods, then describe all of them...
Oh, no! Real life is not that. When you are young, the events of your life may be easily categorized, but, from the mature years, your former life looks like a mixed salad. There are yellow, white, green, and red vegetables, blue and red berries, circles of onion and garlic, salt, sugar and black pepper. Don't forget vinegar, mayonnaise and sour cream (if you like it). Well, it's resembling something now.
Let's lay it out on the dishes. Look, there is more green on this plate, but more red on that; all the sugar is over here and all the salt is over there; and a thin layer of black radioactive pepper covers the last plate.
Okay, it looks like a truth. One, two, three... more and more plates. My parents, my family, my work, my books, my beautiful and unhappy city. Finally, you can see a vague shadow of the plane running on the rippling surface of water.
Why don't we go ahead?
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Mikhail Yeselson, 1996