Page 299

[Alexandr Korol]

drop it, because they no longer felt that false impulse that was driving their actions. And I saw that without those impulses — whether negative or positive — people are simply unable to carry out any actions at all. And when people asked me how I managed to do anything, I explained that I didn’t have those mood swings — none of those fluctuations — just warmth in the soul, heat in the chest, and insane clarity. And whatever I choose, I just sit down and do it. And everyone asks:

— How is that possible?
— I feel you, I understand that it’s different for you. But the essence is, if I sit down now to paint a picture or write a book, I can do it for five hours straight without being distracted by anything. Not even a single thought about something unrelated will appear.

And everyone is in shock — “how can that be?” — because when a person with that noisy mind sits down to write a painting or a book, as I often wrote in my draft notebooks, the mind is the enemy of everything — that noisy, restless mind — the person sits down, you see, and in the first hour they start thinking about some idea or something else, or about what they’re going to do tomorrow. And they try to force themselves to write the painting or the book, but it’s hard for them to concentrate. Then they manage to concentrate for a moment, and again something distracts them — and it’s like they aren’t even capable of sitting still. He wants to go to the bathroom, or get some water, or check his phone — but he’ll still find some reason to move. For example, I think it’s very important that when we sit down at the table — say, for dinner with others, whether they’re guests at my place or I’m a guest at theirs — if we’ve sat down to eat, then we shouldn’t get up from the table until we’ve finished the meal. And there are people who... well, that’s a sign of their restless mind. They’re like that in life too. A person always finds a reason — they think it’s about the reason itself, but in reality, it’s something they construct psychologically. It’s a disorder of the mind. They find a reason, but in fact there’s no real reason. A person might get up five times from the table supposedly because of something: as if they need a different mug, or want to switch forks, or grab a napkin — but really,