Venerable Xoratio Rey is now very ill and there is no hope he will be able to live out his dream. That is why I am certain he will not resent me discussing him at this point. We all respected his work, but most of us realized too little about Xoratio's actual labor to be able to value it in the manner it deserved. Those rare few, among whom I had great honor to be, knew that Xoratio Rey is maybe the only true artist we would ever have the fortune to meet.

Although he was born some time ago, his birth as an artist came when, as a boy of ten or twelve, he fell off a bike and broke his arm. This is an adventure he would gladly tell you about—it was the only only adventure from his life that he would tell you about, which is why those few interviews that were ever made with him are so boring. The adventure itself, however, is anything but boring.

After he broke his arm, his worried parents had taken him immediately to the local emergency room. This was Xoratio's first encounter with a strange, mysterious, terrible, beautiful and monstrous outside world. As young prince Sidharta who stole away from the palace of his birth, came to educate himself about all the pain and suffering that are life in just one night, only to become benevolent Buddha, so did young Xoratio learn, in the emergency room, that it is possible to draw life with blood on white ceramic tiles, when a young man, injured in traffic accident, bled to death in front of him.

But the peak of that enlightening episode came when the boy Xoratio visited radiology room where a doctor, clad in heavy rubber apron, undressed Xoratio to his waist, placed his hurt arm upon cold metal table, then left the room and watched Xoratio through a window, together with the boy's concerned parents. At that moment Xoratio experienced several different, powerful emotions.

First thing that was clear to him was that the pain is not really painful. Pain is nothing but a fruit of our expectations; product of our desires and a man free of any want is a man forever free of pain. He realized simultaneously that he himself is essentially alone, detached, bestowed with the part of the observer, recorder, which is in itself both punishment and reward for being special.

And death, death is always at an arm's reach, like a faithful dog, death is man's best friend, making him work, work as best as he can, and as worse as he can.

And art is a skill of transplanting life, good art produces sprouts, which are able to grow their own roots, but most of them wither and die, which is why any art mostly resembles herbarium.

Because the heart is the organ of life, but a man's heart is equally consisted of what is within him, and what is around him.

Only, years later did those emotions take shape of thoughts, but during the course of time their intensity did not subside.

He was feeling them while, after taking the X-ray, he sat in the waiting room of the surgery ward, with a piece of black foil on which there was transparent broken bone of his left arm. Few months later, Xoratio received a blow to his head, in a skirmish on the top of the school stairs, so he again ended up in radiology room, and he felt all over same wonderful emotions, which, by his own confession, sealed his faith as an artist.