Page 118

[Alexandr Korol]

And always, whenever they saw some odd-looking person on the street, someone dressed very strangely, very unusual, my material friends would laugh, point their fingers, and say, “Probably one of your readers walking by.” That’s the impression and opinion those material friends had. Why? I’ll explain why. Because the readers who were the first ones — just like me — we didn’t want money at all, and we didn’t even understand what it was. And we didn’t understand what “fashionable” meant. We were very kind, naive, like children. We didn’t even understand what jeans were the right ones to wear — what difference does it make? Whatever you put on, that’s what you wear, and that’s all. And so I looked ridiculous, and my readers looked ridiculous. And all my material friends would always criticize me, saying, “You embarrass us, go change your clothes.” I kept falling under that influence and tried, little by little, to change how I dressed. And the readers also looked odd, which I later wrote about in my books, saying: “Guys, you have magical, golden, divine hearts, you are very deep and magical people, and I only want to protect you, but somehow — I don’t know why — these material people seem as if they will soon throw stones at us if we don’t change our clothes now.” That is, they would never accept us; we could never be accepted by society, because there’s this rule there, this system of evaluation — like, you have to wear a certain kind of T-shirt, for example. And I described all this, and I myself changed how I dressed, and so did the readers. And on one hand, it was nice — suddenly we stopped being treated as odd ones out, it was as if the world of people accepted us. But in reality, we ended up in the world of people, thinking it was wonderful, and we all reached toward them. And I’ll be honest — I genuinely longed for the world of people, I didn’t want to remain that magical odd one out, the white crow that I was. I wanted the world of those fashionable, cool people. I didn’t know that they were sinful, soulless, envious, shameless. I didn’t know. I thought they were good people — only also fashionable, beautiful, everything seemed to work out for them, everyone talked about them. And you wanted to go there, you, my reader, wanted it too, and I wanted it, and we ended up there. And, let me joke a little now — we got the full dose of it, and, let’s just say, I’ve had more than enough. I hope you’ve had your fill too, yes? That you understood that world of unhappy people,