Where I am originally from, a country no longer in existence, there was no distance. None. Even in open enmity, people were close enough to feel the pain they caused others. That kind of closeness amazes me. Even more amazing is that I still remember it, better perhaps than I remember anything else. I’ve left home so long ago, I speak my native tongue with a foreign accent. I speak all the languages I know with a foreign accent. The moment I open my mouth, people ask where I’m from.

From Yelena Franklin’s Piranha Times, Charlotte, North Carolina: Catawba, 2008, p. 9.

Addendum (August 14, 2008)

“When I snatch something written by someone else,” I wrote to Jelena Vajs, my childhood friend who turned into Yelena Franklin long after we had seen each other for the last time, “I appropriate it, for I do not quote anything I couldn’t have written myself. The text becomes mine, although I dutifully cite the author.” After all, I was brought up rather properly. “Mind you,” I continued, “sometimes I change a few things here and there, so as to appropriate the quote even more thoroughly. On occasion I even write everything myself, only pretending that I’ve been enthralled by something written by someone else.” Yes, dear reader, you should always be wary of my bourgeois upbringing. “At any rate,” I concluded, “let us hope that the mother of all blogs will help you sell your new book via Amazon. Fingers crossed.” Fingers crossed for my Residua, too.