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[Alexandr Korol]

to go anywhere anymore. But I never had that. And everyone didn’t understand how that was possible. And I didn’t understand myself; I just took it and said: “Yes, I’m doing whatever I want, any task. Paint a fence? Sure. Mold cubes out of clay for a month? Yes, of course.” And I never had the question: “What will this give me, how long will it take?” Or the feeling of time: “Oh, how long,” or wondering how many cubes to make. I never had these capricious questions, unlike other people. And this, imagine, was in 2010-2011, when I was 20. Early 2011, spring. And if I also turned on a movie, I watched it completely from start to finish, as if I lived in it. That is, it felt like from each movie I didn’t just get 10% of some superficial pleasure, but I was experiencing everything as if it was recorded in me as learning. It was like I was learning from the movies. Every movie I watched, I fully grasped it, figured out the logic, the essence, and the wisdom embedded in it. All the social situations that people might face — how one behaves, what happens next, and with whom. I learned through movies. And I could watch movies endlessly, one, two, three days, just the whole day. I saw how many people don’t have this persistence, how they find it hard or feel too lazy to watch a movie for a long time. Many can’t even watch half the movie. Or they watch, but are very distracted and get sidetracked by something. Same with music. I could just sit and listen to music, and disappear into every sound. And that’s it — I had no thoughts left except the music. I became the music, the musical track I was listening to. That’s how I felt my attention — like I was always within myself, fully here and now, simply existing in the present moment. That’s all. And what’s more, it was so unusual that — let me explain — when I felt this way, I had no sense of my body as separate parts. I just felt my shell, but it didn’t hurt, it was light — just like a shell of a body, that’s all.
And if I suddenly started to feel an ache in my elbow or shoulder, or my knee, or something inside, it was always because I had either thought about someone at that moment, or someone was physically near me. And I immediately said:

– Listen, does anything hurt anywhere?
– My knee hurts.
– I see. Here?
– Yes. How did you know?
– I never have any pain. Only when I’m with people who have something hurting, it starts to hurt for me too.