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Some things are beyond repair, and that’s what tears are for.
It is when we have an explanation for everything that we begin to feel reduced, plundered. And the people of Strandja had been plundered in every way except this. No one could take this from them.
‘extraterrestrial stands for anything that doesn’t belong in the material world. Which gives us infinite possibilities. You see, the material world is a prison. We are trapped in a prison of perception.’
Perhaps the story of all our lives is the story of what is lost and how we go about looking for it.
People sentimentalise their families the way they do their national history. The truth is a lot more unpleasant. But more interesting too.
The real life of men and women is the one you don’t see.
‘The secret is to have three hearts. One for loving people. Another for loving yourself. And the third one, to love the mountains.
Agonia: from the Greek agon, contest. The origin of agony is competition, struggle. To be in agony is to measure yourself against others, a Sisyphean task. Perhaps agony is the very definition of being in the world and playing by its rules.
So this becomes a story of how the more you grab, the further it slips from you, a realistic story of everyday agonia. All the protagonists are left with less than what they had.
But that is the nature of revenge: somehow, it is always taken on the wrong people.
That we may all be robbed by devouring daemons disguised as policy and industry, that we may all walk down some road carrying in plastic bags our memories of forests and mountains, clean rivers and village lanes.
