"To be successful...." Thus started my speech.

have no freaking idea what "success" is. The only thing I've ever succeeded at was failure...oh, and motivational speaking. Sure, I could get an audience all fired up,

But then they'd trash the place. I had difficulties booking venues for my motivational talk: 'Be the BEST. Buy more STUFF. Have more SEX.' So I wrote a best selling book 'The 24 ha

ppiest People Alive!' It was utter poppycock, but...nobody cared to check if the personalities I illuminated even existed (which they didn't) but everyone so wanted to believe...

For example, Fyodor Menchnikov von Borschtenzloty, the inventor of a method to prepare alcoholic beverages in hard time by distilling glue through a breadloaf.

These are the things a gulag is good for. The frost bite on my fingers were my calendar now. Judging by my blackened ring finger, it had been 13 years. Even here, the older you get

the more becomes clear. I would sip my gulag "fish broth" and ponder the marks of the Novgorod birch bark I was arrested for. One of Arkadiy's chest tatts burned my mind even more:

Vladimir Gorodov visited and put a salve on my chest, which cured me of any more need for self-bifurcation. My chest hair grew back as tree branches my shirt couldn't cover up.

From these branches grew peaches that I gave to the starving children of the neighborhood. Vladimir Gorodov offered to put salve on my back, but I declined his offer. There were

no better times worth living in. The peaches were ripe, the children were happy, and Vlad had a full pouch of salve. We all walked away happy that day.