With what I will tell you, my intention is not to entertain you but to knock on an invisible door. You may rush through that door when you see where the door is.

          Those who don't want to wake up, don't go any further!

          I have just plunged into some hidden depth of life, so my mind is full of questions and doubts that stand before my eyes like the most mysterious facts. I need help finding an answer to many of them. With that, I reached some mysterious depths of the soul that disturbed me with their vague meaning. But take it easy; I'll talk about everything in order.

          Everything seems to be completely ready to go to hell with the devil without delay. Someone turned off the lights worldwide, so the forces of darkness shamelessly tried, as would the forces of good if, by any chance, it was their time. Society is fundamentally infected with decay, so it ultimately suffocates the entire moral being of man.

          It is clear that more or less all of you are aware of how we live surrounded by ramparts of hatred and ingrained evil with an insufficiently sincere desire to reach that perfect but unattainable world, but still...

          I know many are filled to the brim with devastated pride, anger, hatred, and pain. I wonder why they say what they say or why people do what they do. What would they do with life after achieving their goals?

          I feel like someone has been staring at me all my life. Do you also feel suspicious eyes are looking at you from the darkness?

          Is there hope for this world, you, and me? Will a wind blow up from somewhere like the one that blows the fallen leaves to dispel this fog that has hung over this desolate valley of our mind?

          It would be good if we were prepared for any eventuality and did not allow ourselves to be surprised by a tsunami of joy. I wouldn't be surprised if one day we woke up marveling at the blossoming spring that drives life to pleasure. You never know!?

          They say you need to know how to live, and that's the secret of everything. You need to know. When you pee in a metal bucket, pee right in the middle because everyone will hear you that way.

          Eh, I didn't know that. I peed from the side and in private so no one could hear me.

          All happenings, events, and life itself must take place. It's just that something emerges from somewhere, something, someone sets someone and something in motion, so it grows and thrives, progresses through often painful moments towards a mostly unforeseeable end. Because if it were predictable, there is no doubt that it could be changed. And if that were possible dear God, I wonder what kind of trouble we would fall into when we are here where we are now!?

          Our environment, way of life, human community, all of this is like a living organism that changes and mutates with itself, changing us as well. We, as individuals, are most often asked for something other than direction. This system pulls us like a torrent of water, mainly carrying us with its current. Some of us are surprised by what we learn about ourselves at some point in life.

          It is terrifying to know that a stranger inside us has our arms and legs, eyes and body. Very often, that stranger dominates us and does things we don't want to be done. It is as if some dark and awful connections connect specific facts to attract our attention. I don't understand what I do sometimes, or even when I do, I hate it. There seems to be something naughty in me.  How are you doing?

          I decided to speak out loud about my misdeeds, pissing in the middle of the bucket. If I bring anyone else with me, don't blame me. And what kind of deeds of my stranger I am talking about here:

          My name is Aldo Dakovic, and I would like it if this story of mine began quietly, barely audible, and scarcely noticeable. At the same time, you would notice that the motive slowly grows and grows, which is why such a pace accelerates unstoppably and fills the pages with countless heroic deeds. But my life is not made of heroism and great events, so the story will remain plain and simple, just the way life is. In addition, I promise to avoid forced sweet words and shabby beauty because it would not be appropriate for the state of my soul.

          I am facing the painful truth about my life for the first time. And to be completely clear and precise, my life is full of pain and reality, but there was no confrontation.

          All the time, I'm dragging myself on the very edge of existence and the edge of crime, and for God's sake, sometimes even in it. When my weaknesses got the better of me, I crossed that edge and became a common criminal. I was ready to undertake any meanness or cruelty to achieve my goal. So, to know that too; I've never been a good man except maybe for a small part of my earliest youth when adults and what they showed me hadn't saddled and corrupted me yet.

          To justify my wrong actions to myself, those towards others, and those towards myself, I thought my evil could be genetic, so I was terrible because of some inherited defective gene. It was always easiest for me to believe that I suffered from some inherited disease that affected my reasoning and decision-making. I have never been guilty of that in front of myself. It was as if it was easier for me to bear the suffering that I had caused myself than to face my guilt. I did everything, even lying, so I wouldn't feel guilty. Behind every misdeed, my conscience was waiting and chasing me. Countless times I cursed being born with her. Because without a conscience, you commit crimes to your heart's content and sleep peacefully again. To make sure everything is clear, they also exist. I have seen such people with my own eyes. But let's move on.

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          I am the son of a peasant who, shortly before marrying my mother, moved to the city and worked as an assistant storekeeper of a trading company. My parents were not particularly religious, but they respected inherited customs to some extent. And I'm not even that.

          Even when I was little, everyone said I threw myself at my father's uncle. He left home and became a sailor. He loved the freedom of wandering around the world and sailing the seas. It was said that he had no equal in climbing the ropes to the high masts and furling and unfurling the white sails. He was killed by pirates somewhere among the islands near India. I was compared to him, I guess, because of the restless and free spirit to which I became a slave even as a child.

          I have always been neat and meticulous, as if I had been born into a royal family, and I am still determining where I got that from. Indeed, it was not inherited from my parents.

          I am tall and strong. Mother nature did not spare me.

          It's been more than ten years since my hair has thinned on the top of my head. Above the ears, she turned gray, and some women say it's masculine.

          My face features strong jaws and tightly pressed lips, which I can pull off with a casual smile whenever I feel like it. Those who know me at all say that I am charming.

          I find myself odd. I can lie awake in the dark for hours, looking for some fresh thought to feed my hungry mind.

          Strange! Um! I guess anyone who wants to publicly, honestly tell something about himself, his wrong sides, and what surrounds him is a bit weird. Who knows what makes a man take such a step? And I'm also strange because from the depths of myself, there constantly comes the need to be good and moral, whatever that means, and I behave mostly the opposite, looking for some abstract pleasure. One could say as a zealous employee in the program of gathering darkness. My conscience haunts me because of that, which drives me into self-loathing. If only she could somehow wash so that she could start from the beginning somewhere far from this moral pornography.

          And I can't say anything more than what I saw, learned, and realized. There is no more of that in me. And how much is sometimes very difficult to estimate. The thing is that I remember well, so my head is as complete as a state archive, but I still need to be innovative.

          But mind aside, here I want to tell you something with which I will provide myself and others, perhaps even you, with at least a slight possibility of liberation from failures, own evil, and sins. In doing so, I will also allow anyone who wants to look into my soul briefly and encourage someone to look at mine.

          And there is also the possibility, which I hope is not true, that I am not saying this but just imagining what many have always wanted. My imagination may have exceeded my reality without me realizing it. Everything can be done with vision, and nothing can be done with fiction.

          Weird, yes!

          Now you and I can see why. And that's not my only weirdness, but to avoid burdening you with everything right away, I'll talk about the rest a little later. However, it would help if you were not afraid of my strangeness because I will soon prove that you are not very different from me. The difference is, possibly, only in that you are a little wiser and keep your thoughts and reflections to yourself, while I will scatter all mine in front of me and you without the slightest compassion for myself or others so that it will be visible to all who want to see.

          I believe that we people have wrapped ourselves in black, licentious, ostentatious, lewd, and, to the core, corrupt times. That magnificent cult of honesty, morality,  justice, honor... I hope it once existed.

          All that disappeared to give way to the cult of money. How to reach it are optional. Steal, kidnap, rob, cheat, lie...

          Just imagine if happiness, satisfaction, and joy could be bought; how unfair it would be in today's times?!

          Considering this present age, I wonder whether philosophers, lawyers, historians, linguists, and others have always adjusted their research results and statements. Because if they are, I have nothing to be surprised about today.

          That's why I'm interested, even if it's too late for me, in where and how to find a way out of this darkened world. So that those people who remain are peaceful and rule themselves harmoniously, both in words and deeds. And I am interested in when and how to open schools that will provide knowledge from the still undiscovered science of human happiness. No one teaches us anything about this, as if it is self-evident, as if we are born happy. Yes, yes, to schools with the science of happiness!

          And to be clear about one more thing right away, my thoughts are only mine, and they don't have to be in line with yours. I am fully aware that many will not agree with the following ideas and those for whom these sentences will be meaningless because they see something completely different with their eyes. I am constantly trying to understand them because I have felt in my skin more than once how difficult it is to discover and adopt the truth.

          Curiosity has driven me all my life to try to find out as much as possible about anything and everything, so among other things, at one time, I read so many books that I almost don't know how many of them there are. From them, I drew information and knowledge that others have obtained. And there would be nothing strange about this if I hadn't realized something at one point that made my stomach tighten and my brain shrink as if it had spent the night in vinegar. All those great books, which I was not aware of for a long time, contradicted each other and brought me to such a state that I no longer knew what to think. I began to feel like a monument to an immodest life that keeps in its bowels. The memories of something failed, shabby, and pathetic, and then the war interrupted me.

          War, to you, is just one of the many human follies on the first page of the "Book of Follies." It has been regularly and consistently coming to the Balkans for centuries as if someone had wound some clock to wake it up. I will try as much as possible not to talk about him.

          And let me not forget to mention I have never judged other people's sins, so I will try to do so now since I have enough of my own to occupy myself with, as you will see, to my heart's content. And you, as you wish, and as you please.

          Now let me show you what kind of door I opened, what type of door I wanted to open, what kind of door I knocked on, and what type of door I now want to knock on for it to open.