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First canvas of the 16. Who am I in the vast universe of cultures, tribes, races? Is my birth year the beginning? Doctors cut my neck deep, dragging me out of my unconscious mother’s body. I screamed into the dark Siberian December night bleeding. That year Yuri Gagarin went to the darkest outer space while I was trapped in the darkest inner space of the womb. Why, since I remember myself, I wanted to be a cosmonaut? Why didn’t I became one? Did I know that J.D. Salinger was on a cover of the Times magazine that year for writing a book about me in a faraway land that eventually became mine? Why nothing significant happened in San Francisco that year, the city that become my favorite address to have? How did I survive as a rebellion growing up in the country that could not send me any farther north?

Lubov Art-Ovtchinikova

lubovart@gmail.com