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Since I was able to put letters together, making words of them, reading was one of my favorite hobbies. I was as hungry for every written word as a vacuum cleaner for the dust on its way. All kinds of newspapers, magazines, books were to me like windows. I opened them to see and understand the world. The unquenchable sponge of my brain was absorbing everything that would have helped me to force my way through the jungle of life. The history, geography, science, art, literature, Sienkiewicz, Tolstoy, Remarque, Hemingway and many, many other subjects and authors were my inseparable friends. Thanks to them I could travel in the past and to the future. Thanks to them I could cry and laugh, explore the space and plunge into the abyss of the oceans, climb the mountains and wander across the lands. Thanks to them I felt as if I were in a huge ballroom, full of light, shining brightly and cheerfully. And I was passionately dancing in time with the music of luminous sparkles.
But suddenly everything plunged into darkness. Standing in the middle of the room, in dead silence which painfully burst my ears, I was helplessly spreading my arms, looking for the way out. "You are in America! You are in America!" I heard a voice from somewhere in the dark. And listening to that voice, suddenly I realized that I was no longer traveling in my dreams. I realized that the dream had come true. I was in the country that I heard and read a lot about. I was in the country where everything could happen. But what I didn't realize was that instead of going forward I would be going back.
First of all there was a language barrier. Although I WANTED to say something and I HAD something to say, nobody WANTED to listen to me. Facial expressions, waving hands, stammering, sweat - all those methods of communication deterred the most courageous victims of my efforts to be eloquent. People who I used to meet at the parties had been showing an interest in a stranger only for the first five minutes of the meeting. "Where are you from?" and "How long have you been here?" were the only questions that I was asked and the only questions that were supposed to break the ice. But then I was left alone. Very often, what was the most intimidating to me, I heard: "Don't talk to him! He doesn't understand!" Those who were expressing that kind of opinion seemed to be very intelligent, but they didn't make any efforts to understand that I understood, but it was hard for me to express myself in a foreign language.
Holding myself aloof, I enviously watched the rest of the company talking, joking, laughing, and having a good time. It was frustrating and forced me to undertake serious steps to prepare myself to climb a social ladder.
From the previous experience I knew that reading would be helpful and again I turned my interest towards the old friends. Wherever I went and wherever I looked they encouragingly smiled to me with their beautiful and colorful covers.
It took a few weeks for me to "fag out" the first mass of letters, words and sentences, but as the proverb says "The end crowns the work!" I got through that mass and I was very happy. What's more I understood what I had read about. The only problem was that if I tried to tell the story even to myself, I wasn't able to use the same expressions the author had used. "The farther in the deeper” says another proverb and I was sure that sooner or later I should increase my vocabulary and at last I would be able to say what I WANTED and I HAD to say, whether it would be something about the history, geography, art, science or literature.
Until now I am dancing in the dark. I am dancing a strange dance: one step forward and two steps back. But my eyes are getting accustomed to that darkness and it seems that in the distance I can see the light. It is still faint, but I can see it. Desperately gamboling, I am moving toward that shining point, hoping that it will illuminate in full and I would be able to dance in time with the music of thousands of sparkles again.
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