kalinin1158

I was born in the frozen land of ballerinas, nuclear bombs and insidiously long lines. My Russian-Greek family was atheist, but what they lacked in religion they made up for with good old-fashioned bourgeois morality. This is the part where I discover my rebellious nature and a taste for adventure and chaos.

When asked why I immigrated to the States, I rarely know how to respond. I could say that I fled to the States because it's a paragon of freedom, a beacon of democracy, or so it seemed in 2001, pre-September period. I could say that as a little Russian girl in Siberia I dreamt of rising to the heights of the American lower middle class...But to answer with total honesty, I would have to go all the way back to the year 1981, when I was purged from my mother's luxurious womb into a cold, brightly-lit world filled with hospital smell. That moment, I believe, was the origin of my general discontent that led me to change nationalities, residences, majors, names, hair colors - anything that could create an illusion of a fresh start and the new me.

For some reason I was always fascinated with the written word. I know everyone says that but...I started reading at age 5, when I've learnt the alphabet from the newspapers by asking "What's this letter?" a lot. Hooray to fine Soviet journalism! Reading led me to writing. Writing led me to editing. And to Hubpages. And to more reading. This is a short version of everything. More to follow.