I remember this happened often. And if suddenly there was a person who did see me, that was how it began with the first readers, with the first books — that if someone happened to see me, when I had just appeared with my first book, if someone happened to see me and could read the book, I would say:
— You are magical.
— What?
— You are not ordinary. All those people, the ones who live in society — they don’t see me and will never read the book, for them it is shameful. But you see me and you are speaking with me. Thank you.
And the person looks at me and says:
— Are you mad or something?
— No. Didn’t you ever notice? Didn’t you notice that you’re different, not like everyone else? As if all the people out there are on autopilot, like zombies, and you’re the one who isn’t asleep, who looks at all this and sees it.
— Well, yes, that’s true.
— So it’s the same with me. I just started writing about it, to figure out who I am and what’s happening to me.
— Cool. And then what?
And I would begin telling him all of this, you see? And for you to understand, there were many such conversations when I first appeared. And that was when a lot of readers appeared too, when I started posting all of this in social networks, my first chapters — specifically these magical ones — from all over the world. And what was most interesting was that I always had a friend or two who came from the world of kind and bright people, and also a friend or two from the world of the dark. Well, that’s how I called them — by “dark” I really just meant these material people. And the material friends would always laugh at my readers, they didn’t respect them. And laugh in what sense? They would say:
— Oh, a nutcase, must definitely be your reader.
— And why did you think that?