ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ravilya Fastova is a cheerful, integral, free, and at the same time, an extremely active and committed person. "Yes, I'm in a wheel-chair! So what?" seems like this is what she is saying with all her frolicsome air. She is 28. She has found her own interests, her passion by casting in her lots with the word journalist's, prose writer's, poet's. Ravilya has a "fluent pen", as they used to say in the old times, because she, as it should be, is an extremely computer-addicted person. The first book of the author it is not even the first swallow, but rather a skylark, who flies back to his native nesting-place so early that there are even the patches of snow left on the ground. This book is the most long-awaited, and at the same time, is the most unexpected one. Until the author had had a chance to hold it in her hands, until she leafed through it, made the first dedicatory inscriptions, her book did not make a move from the virtual space to the real life.
After reading the manuscript for the first time, I was mostly drawn to a five-page text in prose, which was broken into small chapters "The Place Under the Sun". This is more of a biography. The main character is Yuri Kuznetsov, a person with a disability, who was abandoned practically right after his birth, who has gone through all the ordeals associated with orphanages and long-term care institutions. He has found his own unique niche in our ill-boding, most frequently hostile world, without pushing anybody aside, but being courageous and noble. Nowadays Yuri leads an organization of young people with disabilities, making it much easier for them to "move forward together". The quotation marks here are on purpose, because it's possible to move forward in different ways sitting, and even lying in bed not being able to get up.
This is what I wrote a poem about many years ago:
" I'm sitting like as if I'm flying,
I'm silent like as if I'm crying".
And this is what I'm reading in Ravilya's poetry (this is not plagiary, no, it is just too obvious for people with similar destinies):
"This something is keeping you alive.
And you run, even if you sit still,
Not a word from your mouth, yet you cry,
Bite the bullet and look through everything.
Let me give you some more lines where they "cry out silently" about the most painful things:
If you put all the colors together,
You can get black color at last.
It somehow better than others,
And it knows all the future and past".
Or:
" It rains and rains for sixteen years,
A marathon so long "
And the conclusion about everything written by Ravilya is simple and wise: if there are such people at your side as Yuri Kuznetsov, who believe that one day everybody will understand that the Sun is for everybody, and if everybody stops pushing a neighbor aside, then there will be enough warmth for everybody.
Happy journey and bright Sun I wish to Ravilya Fastova!
Galina Hamper,
St.-Petersburg Writers'