Autobiographical

Wrote Nikolai Gogol: "God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dream and reality." And in the humble attempt to build some kind of bridge across this unhappy chasm between dream and reality I have decided to write an autobiography, starting below:

I came out of the womb fully formed, which is to say my body left one world, that of my mother, and entered another, that of the world, all in one piece. I didn't come out in separate unfortunate fragments, arms here, legs there. This you might argue is all a bit superfluous: why would anyone be under the impression I did come out in separate disconnected bundles, and even if just such a reader does exist, nodding in satisfaction at such clarifications, then mightn't one perhaps be better off without such a reader; or even if one doesn't object on principle to all manner of readers, still these kind of strange, unhealthy inclinations shouldn't be pandered to and even nourished. And I think, now that the thought has been expressed, these would be my own feelings also. Though, ironically, very likely such a reader may be entirely hypothetical and not actual at all, thus depriving me of the one reader for whom the initial substance of this piece might have actually held some appeal.

This is all a bit disheartening. We've spent the opening section of the story of my life, which should have laid the solid and dignified foundations stones, as it were, upon which the greater whole would firmly rest, getting things off on the right kind of path, with the sole accomplishment to our credit that my body left the womb and entered the world not in separate bits. I don't think this kind of thing is going to do much in the way of lessening discord between dream and reality. And so I think I better pause and take stock.