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[Alexandr Korol]

But if, you see, I had not planned to paint any picture, and I arrive now, imagine, in another apartment, but at the same time I bring with me a canvas with an easel, put it in the living room of an apartment in which I had not even spent a night yet, it was my first day there, I sit at the table working on the ninth volume, and suddenly, because something was on the windowsill and the sun was shining, a shadow fell beautifully and unusually on my canvas, on which there was already something painted, which was standing on the easel, and this shadow turned into the shape of an angel with wings. And at that moment, you see, I was making the ninth volume, and I saw it, and before the sun went down, though I had not arranged it all, it all coincided by chance, and I captured this chance. And I traced it with a pencil, to paint it later, or even at that moment I painted it in. And I got such a shadow of an angel on my old painting with wings, with curly hair. Just such a shadow fell onto my painting. And you see, how by chance, but as if not by chance at all. And the essence is that this theme of chance lies in the fact that when a person himself tries to control everything and do it, then yes, he really does it precisely, excellently, beautifully, but that is his code, meaning it is not yet the divine code. It is not yet the divine code. He may have a perfectly developed approach of precision, which a person applies when he tries now to make a dish in a restaurant exactly according to the recipe, this many grams of this, that. He does everything, but he does it, you know, as they say, without soul. But on the other hand, what is soul? Mood? No. It is about something else, that if you are a closed person without faith in God, and when you are making me, for example, a soup, a salad, preparing a dish, and you are working in a restaurant, you are making these dishes for me now, and you do everything by the recipe, trying very hard — you are good, you are a responsible person, you do everything to the letter, measuring, weighing everything that needs to be added, put in, and in the right sequence. But the essence is that you are doing it like a robot. And the dishes you make by recipe will be correct according to the recipe, and the taste will be as it should, but it will feel as if something is missing — not in the material, flavorful sense, but on the subtle level, you know, as if bland. As if that golden, unique ingredient that needs to be added, that fountain of sensation, is missing. The soul is missing.