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Already from the beginning this memoir is heartbreaking… you see, you open the book and the dedication is “In memory of G.Y.S. with love: he, the other part of myself.” And well, you think, this is maybe the story of someone who loved G.Y.S. and then he lost him, and in the following pages you will read about is falling and raising? But then you turn one page and you read: “Who am I? I am G.Y.S., a profoundly deaf man. I have blue eyes and red hair, which I wear long. I am gay and Russian, and was born in 1978 in the Ukraine, but I moved myself to Germany when I was fourteen.” So yes, this is G.Y.S.’s story, and G.Y.S. is dead, at 31 years old.G.Y.S. is not Red Haircrow, cause Haircrow is alive; but what we are reading are G.Y.S.’s words and thoughts, so G.Y.S. was, IS, real. The dedication said, with love, the other part of myself, so this is a tale of love. But it’s not a tale of death. In the word of G.Y.S. there is everything of him, who he was, a sex worker, who he became, an husband, but nothing about how he died. At that age, and considering the past experiences, you can probably guess, but again, this is not about how he died, this is about how, and why, he lived. You enter in G.Y.S.’s mind, and heart, and you will likely be deeply sad at the end, cause you know this strong voice is no more.
To external eyes, G.Y.S. was “different”, he was deaf, he was gay, he was a stranger in a stranger country. Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World allows you to enter G.Y.S.’s perspective, and understand that he was no influenced by others, if the world wanted to tag him, they could do, but G.Y.S. was well aware of himself, as it was his partner. An example, he was married to a man, so people tagged him as gay, but his husband was bisexual; he didn’t fight the tagging, since, basically, to him didn’t matter, he was what he was, he loved who he loved. Man, woman, didn’t matter.
The writing style, even in rendering the English of a “stranger”, is perfect, so perfect that I wondered how much is of G.Y.S and how much is of Red Haircrow. The line between fiction and non fiction is blurred, making this a complex, but so good reading. The from the author section on Amazon, perfectly sum up the why you have to read this: "After acute grief had passed, though it still can strike, it took me some time, months and into years to finally decide to collect his writings together to share with the world. He was so courageous and beautiful, strong and vulnerable at the same time. He was the kind of person you might never remark on if you see them walk pass you on the street, yet there was so many amazing things inside him, and a blazing intellectual that so many dismissed or never realized.
He lived most of his life in or near Berlin in Germany. Whether by train, bus or foot sometimes when I am wandering through the countryside or city, through the many parks or shopping arcades filled with people and I happen to see a tall, slim person with long reddish hair: I have a little pain inside me. It stops me in place because I think of him. If the person is moving away from me, sometimes I wish it were him somehow, still alive, still touchable in the physical sense. I want to imagine he is alive and loved by someone even if it is not myself, he, my special phantom of the city. It is hard to accept sometimes that so vibrant a soul is now gone from this world, but I believe I will see him again one day."
Amazon Kindle: Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World
Publisher: Flying With Red Haircrow (May 10, 2012)
Updates: http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rs
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Date: 2013-08-26 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-26 04:38 pm (UTC)