Four Hundred Word Autobiography

I have known my life since the beginning. I knew the circus that set up in the field across from the house in which I grew up. A nighttime deluge of colors and lights, sounds and smells though gaudy and forced during the day. I have known people who were the same.

I’ve been a rustler and a card shark. I’ve created old shops that would not be out of place on a Dickensian street. I’ve been a flapper with a flask tucked into my rolled stocking and I’ve danced with Al Capone. I’ve been in lovely pine-paneled studies with fires crackling on the hearths and the lingering smells of tobacco and leather in the air. I’ve been courted and wooed. I’ve seen fall colors on East Coast weekends. I’ve developed a new rose. I’ve trod the boards as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I’ve opened old trunks in dusty attics and found both treasures and empty spaces with only the lingering hint of perfume left behind.

I have no favorite day in my life, no day I would live over again. The best day of my life is today with tomorrow the runner-up. I rarely look back for memories wander too far from where I want to be. The rough edges of old recollections have been smoothed though the sharpest peaks still jut through, inhospitable islands or gorgeous snow-covered peaks.

I’ve learned few lessons except for the importance of allowing neither mistake nor ego to get in my way. I’ve seen good and bad examples and not always taken either to heart. I’ve been frightened by the nonsensical, taken figurative blows for a friend and competed with Shaharazade in spinning tales to stay alive.

I know others would make little sense of the world I see through my eyes, but this is the tale of my life not theirs. For me, whatever I’ve imagined, I’ve also done. Life, as defined by the one I’m living, is clouded by memory and cheered by visions, prodded by goals and dreams and illuminated by the flickering light of an old movie palace projector. I am a queen, a slave, a teacher, a student, a mountain, a gully, sunshine and shadows, gently falling rain and fierce blizzards. I can swing on a trapeze above the crowd and wave or hide from everything. I am the unreliable narrator of my life.