I occasionally glance at Borislav Tsekov's texts - to a large extent this is inevitable, since we are neighbors in columns in "Trud". He is an interesting author, worth reading; he is obsessed with big topics, recently he has been mainly concerned with the excesses of "neoliberal frenzy"; these days he presented his new book "The Trump Doctrine: Triumph and Everyday Life".
The title of his latest text - "Assassinations Against the Bulgarian Dream" - it really shocked me, I admit.
In my modest correspondence for many years I have been picking at the vicissitudes of the Bulgarian Fate - and I cannot explain how I missed such atrocities - and against something that certainly no longer exists.
It doesn't matter, the text in question prompted me to think - the author has done his job.
And left me to pick at myself - more and more sad and more and more lonely in my reflections on our Bulgarian Fate...
Let's start first with the easy question - DO OUR POLITICIANS AT ALL UNDERSTAND THE WORD "DREAM", how do they translate it - since it does not exist at all in their crude language?
These chatterboxes are not afraid to calmly and persuasively demonstrate the barbaric failures and the Scottish noise that we are forced to accept as "speech" in quite a few speeches even from the parliamentary rostrum - and as if on purpose from there.
This is their revenge for our pickiness, they hate us - among other things, because of our respect for language...
So, CAN POLITICIANS WHO ARE KNOWN ONLY FOR THEIR SERVILITY DREAM AT ALL?
I must say that I am puzzled even by the expectation that politicians from the last "democratic" decades are able to articulate and formulate, even in the most banal way, anything - let alone a dream.
It takes a special sensitivity to dream, that is - to foresee the future, to taste in advance both the good and the evil that it brings you. This is a rare gift with which few are rewarded - mostly because of their efforts to overcome the oppressive unresponsiveness of Life.
However, most of the Lords of Transition are unable to read even the most elementary signs that Life throws at them from time to time. This is his Charity, which crushes us even more.
For our politicians, everything, even Time, is some kind of foolishness - and they imagine, are even convinced, that they can bargain with it and outwit it.
Dreaming requires a different attitude, a different spiritual structure. They will be completely helpless if they have to convince us very succinctly, with just a few phrases, that we have achieved the "Bulgarian dream", it is tied to us in a handkerchief, we can use it as we see fit...
NATO, the European Union, Schengen, the euro - are these the pillars of our Dream - or are they just a part of it, do they put an end to dreaming, if not - WHAT IS NEXT, WHAT ELSE DO WE HAVE TO DREAM ABOUT?
Is our eternal prayer - for a "pure and holy republic" and "to be equal with other European nations" - has long since lost its sacredness and the power that we imagine it possesses, without being fully aware of what it exactly represents?
And who, in fact, should hear it?
And perhaps it has already been heard - but we are not entitled to know this?
Well, if we are not entitled to this truth, like many others - then at least let us ask ourselves: have we been equal to other European nations, since when - in what sense, in what respect?
For what merits?
Only for the time that the older generations today still control to some extent with their memory, were spoken and BECAME "MANDATORY" A LOT OF DREAMS, SOME OF WHICH HAVE TURNED OUT TO BE DEFECTIVE, AND OTHERS - PURE LIES.
After all, who is sure that he has achieved the "dream"?
It seems that we have been - and will be - mainly to know the limits to which we can tolerate Evil.
Joy is excluded from our code. Surely for many of us it seems like something unnecessary, not particularly inventive or downright infantile. Cunning Peter is downright boring - even Saint Peter is funnier than him.
The later characters, closer to our times, are also dull, unable to cheer up or at least wake anyone up - some Pijo and Penda or that dull-witted Vute, who walked and thought and finally realized that he was only walking and not thinking at all, although there is no evidence that he ever thought.
Are such brainless creatures supposed to be our heroes?
Probably, at some point the remarkable fiction writer Yordan Valchev also came to terms with this fact and, because he was an even more remarkable patriot, he began to convince me - it was in the early 1970s - that all those magnificent masalas about Chapaev and Petka, about the loud Chukcha and the even louder Russians, and especially the masterpieces of Radio Yerevan, were composed here and then sent illegally - across the Black Sea to Odessa, and finally to the generally stupid Soviet brains.
Now I remember something that would make dear Bate Dancho laugh: the export of our jokes was part of barter - we, in turn, received secret instructions on how to most safely get to the shining communism.
Yes, yes - they asked Radio Yerevan if communism could be built in Switzerland. The radio was silent and calculated more than usual and finally said: Maybe, but a language for Switzerland...
What dreams will you nurture and do you need them at all, when you are more inclined than anything else to protect yourself from the present with the true lessons of the Past?
And to trust in initially weathered suggestions, most of them related to folklore - but we had to bow to the folk genius, no matter how talentless his ideas were sometimes - this was the other shameful disease that we had caught and had no intention of curing, and there was no "Wassermann" about her...
I deeply doubt that the average Bulgarian is even capable of dreaming anymore, and even if he is, he is unlikely to be inclined to do so.
His skeptical mind, forever loaded with disagreements and refutations, will not like the idea of indulging in orchestrated dreams - very often annoyingly ridiculous - together with an unknown number of other naive people.
And this is one of the reasons, perhaps the most important, that Bulgarians view politics as some kind of sit-down, unnecessary to anyone.
The politics here, as if by necessity incomprehensible, in recent years has begun to look downright crazy, and our people have long been aware of this.
The gypsy-bashing will continue for some time, during election time, but they will soon get bored - it's no fun to collect money of fools.
"Who are the braziers now?" - they will ask you if they trust you.
And they can drive you crazy if they start listing "their" people - in addition to prime ministers, there are all kinds of celebrities on this list and it is better not to argue, but to accept that this is also part of the achieved Bulgarian Dream...
Along with the gypsies, I thought of the movie "Are There Happy Gypsies" - he reminded me to ask, ARE THERE ANY BULGARIANS MADE HAPPY BY THE DREAMS OF THEIR POLITICIANS?
Or are they doing everything possible to slander something that should pass for the Bulgarian Dream.
Okay - let's continue to brag about that "Every slave is welcome...."- but after we dream up something real for the Bulgarian slaves too.
FOR THOSE OF OUR INHABITANTS WHO HAVE LONG FELT LIKE REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.