Alexandr Korol

about how no one sees or hears me, how I watch movies about angels or some kind of otherworldly beings, or about those people who are always portrayed a certain way — detached, loners, observing the world from the outside as if they are not part of the human world. And I think, what is this? Who am I? It turns out I was born this way — or maybe not born at all. Maybe I actually died somewhere, and here I am already dead. But then I start to realize that what I used to call something melancholic, something vague, what I once named the “nameless frequency,” was in fact some kind of otherworldly realm. And I was always happy whenever someone suddenly noticed my book or me, and I would say to them:

– Can you see me?
– Yes.
– But people don’t see me.
– What do you mean?
– I mean that they don’t see me.

And you know what’s even more interesting? All these people who started seeing me throughout my life — I had this little phrase I came up with, that they were entering the “corridor,” because I felt like I was living in some otherworldly place, which I called the “corridor.” I also used to call it the world of some kind of angels. And when a person is fully immersed in their social-material life, living as if in a dream, on autopilot — working, handling their responsibilities — they don’t notice it. But when their world collapses, or when they experience some critical event, like almost dying in a car accident, nearly crashing while driving, something shifts. On that day or the next, they suddenly start to realize that they have changed — they begin observing life from the outside, they notice my book, they start reading, they write to me on social media with philosophical questions. That’s how it used to be. And when I was little, I would say:

– I don’t know how it happened.
– You see the world exactly like I do now. I’ve just started looking at it this way. – And before, you didn’t?
– No.