Ilija Đurović was born in 1990 in Podgorica, Montenegro. Đurović writes prose, poetry, plays and movie scripts. His first book of prose, They Do It so Beautifully in Those Great Romantic Novels, came out 2014 in Yellow Turtle Press, a small Montenegrin publishing house he runs. This was followed by Black Fish (2016) and the poetry book Brink (2018), which received an award at a literature festival in Belgrade. Đurović has been living in Berlin since 2013 and living as a versatile freelance author and publicist. In 2019 he was co-winner of the Montenegrin theatre award for the best contemporary drama, Sleepers. His first novel, Sampas, was shortlisted for NIN Award for Best Novel of the Year for 2021.
© Picture Mirko Radonjić
The novel Sampas is written in the form of a road novel, where through fragment of a journey we follow the tale of two young people who travel through central and southern Montenegro, where they, as the main characters, illuminate the complexities of their individual fates, but also the collective experience of the spirit of the place and the time in which the story unfolds. The different events and internal sensations of the protagonists are conditioned by the social and political realities and the atmosphere of the tale, which strengthens their desire to leave Montenegro in search of a different, better life. The milieu within which the characters in the novel seek their “sampas” (a local term symbolising freedom, but also wanderlust) is that of contemporary Montenegro, or the ex-Yugoslav context. Alongside the political references in the novel (the action takes place over an election weekend) “Sampas” also works at the level of a love story, where the couple’s relationship is explored, and thus the story becomes an exploration of the idea of that relationship, indeed of all relationships.
Excerpt
Ilija Đurović
Sampas
Treći Trg, 2021
Ada Bojana je veliki pijesak uz veliku vodu i kad zamišljam nju ne vidim nju, vidim vlažan, močvarni vazduh koji može biti bilo gdje, zbog toga je Ada voda i njeni su komarci moji i njeni i svačiji, idemo rastinjem privučeni ljuljanjem reggaea, pokušaćemo se uplažiti u ono što se roji nad pijeskom, rastafarijanci, rejveri i ostali, ajte, ajte, ne ozuvajte se, jedan od rastafarijanaca pruža nam pivo, ne pijemo pivo, pijemo rum, ima li rum, ruma nema, nije važno, s pivom u ruci idemo dalje, trijezni i nepovjerljivi, spremni da pijeskom zamažemo noseve i povjerujemo, gazimo mirno kroz rastinje nepoznatih, pred nama hoda muško tijelo i vodi nas do drugog tijela koje izgleda kao predsjedavajući šanka, rukovodilac alkohola, prvo tijelo kaže tu vas predajem, to je Pisko, pitam Piško, tijelo iza šanka kaže Pisko, sa c, pitam Pisko kao Pisco Sour, kaže tako je i iz fioke šanka izvlači na dva dijela rastavljenu srebrnu granatu šejkera, u podnožju jezika podiže se neslana voda, oko nas so i mlaka hladnoća, Pisco Sour za dvoje, prelazim pogledom preko elemenata koji će se uskoro sjediniti u unutrašnjosti kapsule, Pisko je izgledao pouzdano, ali niko nije dovoljno pouzdan dok ne napuni cijev i opali, zbog toga sam pogled skrenuo ka rulji koja je zaklonjena trskom igrala po reggeaeu, rejveri su čekali svoj red, nisam želio da Pisko osjeća pritisak, ipak pseći, njuhom i sluhom i dalje sam bio okrenut njemu, njušio sam limetu kako se cijedi, kristal šećera puca pod tučkom, pisko je izgmizao iz flaše, jaje se slomilo, led je obasjao noć i napunio čauru, Pisko je repetirao, iz slabo sklopljene granate geler alkohola pogodio me je u vrat, Pisko je pričvrstio spoj, repetirao još jednom i pronašao ritam, Pisko-samba, uhvatio sam je za ruku i zatvorio oči, u miru sam čekao Pisco Sour, samba se zaustavila, Pisko je sipao, a onda Pisko Umrije Gabo, Gabo muere, ponovio sam Gabo umrije, umrije Gabo, Pisko ostatak noći nije pisnuo, niko osim nas nije naručivao njegova pića, napravio je još nekoliko koktela bez ljubavi i povukao se u trščanu postelju, mi smo ostali za šankom, gledali smo reggae kako se gega i pravili pića, Sazerac, Gringo, El Camino, Daiquiri, bjelanci su točili sa ivica šanka dok se nismo rastočili zajedno s njima i umrli do jutra, ujutru su rojevi glavobolja zujali vazduhom, bili smo upleteni rukama i nogama, kožom, najviše mirisima, navukli smo minimum odjeće i izašli u ostatke fronta, napolju, na pijesku, u rastinju ležali su budući leševi rejvera, neki su bili goli, preko nekih je bila prebačena plahta, da smo imali vremena preko svih bismo zasuli kamenje i vlažan pijesak, lijek protiv zvijeri i komaraca, ali vremena nismo imali, ušli smo u kola i krenuli, duga, suva pravina već puna užarenih automobila sjekla je polje pred nama, utjeha Ulcinja bila je dvanaest kilometara daleko, znali smo da se nemamo čemu radovati, ali što veća udaljenost od Ade bila je već dovoljno dobra, vozili smo ka terasi hotela, pokvarenom ozvučenju iz kojeg kapaju otpaci zvukova, horizont sječe ograda sa plavim staklom, kao da mora svuda okolo nije već previše, mora dovoljno plava, soda sa limuna struže premaze pesticida i to je prvo zadovoljstvo dana, njemu se radujemo, tanki hlad čempresa, smrad sumpora, miris starih, golih žena umočenih u ljekovitu vodu miluje nas kroz otvorene prozore, još jedna krivina i parkiraćemo se u hladu terase, pokloniti se procvalom triju agava, njihovoj budućoj smrti, popeti se stepenicama do plavih stolova i plave ograde okrenute ka plavom moru, konobar prilazi sa srebrnim diskom na ruci, guta l u izvolite i spušta kafu i vodu na sto, gledamo se na trenutak pa izgovaram hvala, zvuk u njegovoj glavi ponovo se ujednačava, točkići se opet okreću, izgovara molim od slova do slova, jasno i čitavo, četvorotaktni motor svijeta nastavlja da bruji i brekće kao što je brektao do zatišja pred nepoznatim jezikom mutavih, četvoročetvrtinski takt pjesmuljka o moru nastavlja da kaplje po nama, kisjela voda lansira male, providne vatromete nad rubom čaše, žeđ polako nalazi smisao i mi sa njom uranjamo u olakšanje minerala i razmišljamo o doručku, o rejverima pokopanim u pijesku koji smo ostavili za nama, o otrovima koktela koje još nismo istisnuli iz nas i otpustili ka plavoj, mediteranskoj govnovodici, ali prije toga ćemo pojesti spržena jaja, nafilovati krvne sudove svježim holesterolom prije nego što se spustimo na stijene da okitimo lobanje i ramena oreolom sunčanice, bio joj je potreban prvi espresso, voda, hrana i još jedan espresso za prve riječi u danu, moram do toaleta značilo je da će polako ustati, namjestiti gaćice koje su se uvukle između dvije polulopte dupeta, otići sporim korakom lijevo od šanka i u mirisu asepsola mirno srati, mrzi moje misli o njenim govnima ali to me ne zaustavlja, želi da prestanem da serem i prihvatim mediteransku pjesmu kao čistu i svoju, ne uspijevam joj objasniti da spodobe stasale na sprženoj poljani, na tri rijeke razapete između planinčina i mora ne mogu biti ništa do to što jesu, spodobe iz zaleđa, da nas more nikad neće prihvatiti jer ga se plašimo, za nas je suva, pustinjskim ljetima izujedana zemlja, hladna i brza rijeka, prilagođenost pluća na disanje pokvarenog vazduha, pluća naviknuta na gutanje blatnjave smješe prašine, smoga i spržene trave, pokazali bismo se posebno dobro u dušegupki, ali ne možemo izranjati ježeve, skakati na glavu bez straha, to je protiv prirode zaleđa, iako ona želi više, želi naći u nama ono čega nema, tražimo zajedno, ponekad zajedno seremo i to je ljubavna pjesma par excellence, vraća se iz toaleta sporo, presvukla sam se, možemo dolje, otjerala je moju misao o našim govnima i vratila nas na terasu Albatrosa, spremne da se spustimo niz kozju stazu do samo za nas morem nazubljene stijene i tu plivamo goli, operemo se od proteklih noći i tuđih smrti, kako je pater familias umro može se ispričati iz mora, dok je njeno solju isprano dupe napadnuto račićima na obali, a moje potopljeno dva metra pod vodom, dostupno ribama i meduzama, umro je, naravno, sa cigaretom u ruci i to je sve što mu je bilo važno, za njim će ostati priče o ocu koji je pušio na motoru, biciklu, u bolnici, ostaće nepopušena polja duvana i žena koja će ga žaliti, dva sina koja će ga se sjećati i ništa više, proletersko dijete na svijet došlo i sa svijeta otišlo golo kao puška koja je njegovim roditeljima izborila pristojan život srednje klase, stan, kola, redovne ljetnje i zimske odmore, propuštenu mogućnost besplatnog obrazovanja i iskorištene izlete do samih rubova zemlje, ponekad i preko ruba, povratak kući sa novom modom i boljim duvanom, dovoljno za čitav život u provinciji i rušenje onoga što je od sjećanja na takav život ostalo, proletersko dijete golo kao puška koju je uspjelo da izbjegne kad je došao red na njegov rat, kad su se rubovi zemlje kojom je kao mlad putovao počeli gužvati, sužavati, da bi na kraju ostali jedva nešto veći od groba u koji su ga spustili među poznate kosti, tu bi se priča o smrti pater familijasa mogla završiti i završava se, jer je lažna, pater familias je živ i srećan se igra sa prvim i jedinim unukom, sinom njegovog prvog sina, mog brata koji živi daleko od toplog mora i zaleđa, pater familias češlja duvan i dječaku govori psovke koje još ne razumije, hvata ga za tek iždžikljalu ćunu, to je jedina slika koja je ostala u glavi nakon dva popodneva u punoj roditeljskoj kući, ali strah od smrti ostao je kao debeli mrak, nikakav pater familias, klasičan mužjak u žilavom sistemu latentnog matrijarhata, na svijet donesen da raspe sjeme i pokuša pritom da se ne oznoji previše, što bi mu skoro i pošlo za ćelavom glavom da ga prva decenija novog milenijuma nije zatekla nespremnog, na polovini životnog puta, u punoj snazi, odlučna da mu oduzme sve za šta je mislio da će mu po pravu pripadati do kraja jedinog života u koji je vjerovao, dekada koja je ćelavu glavu premazala bojama hipertenzije, zastavom pod kojom se sa rukom na suženim krvnim sudovima pjeva žuti žutuju crveni putuju, pod zastavom uvijek na pola koplja u duhu babine revolucije i prezira smrti, ruka hipertenzije na čelo je ucrtala crveni grb-upitnik na koji niko nema odgovor, ali upitnik na koji, makar spolja, crveni otac, sad već crveni đed, ne obraća pažnju, dva dana roditeljskog doma, dva dana mirisa jagoda i jagnjetine u sosu od meda dovoljno je da se nakon trećeg doručka pokupe ključevi i krene iz zaleđa ka vodi, toplom moru, zapišanom suncem koje svakog ljeta sve duže piša, ali ona ipak sjedi na oštroj stijeni i prži se albino-gušteru slična, već izranjavana sunčevim pjegama čeka nove kiklade mladeža da mirno izrone, čipka ostataka zdrave kože ponuđena nebeskom zubu da je sažvaće i ispljune u makiju, među svlakove zmija, željna tena primorske djevojčice suncu nudi neotporni, kontinentalni svlak serviran na pladnju stijenja, sa salatom od račića i morskih rajčica, usoljena i premazana uljem, meso spremno da se raspadne mlado i meko, plivača oko nas nema, stazom iznad ponekad se prevuče tijelo, muškarac uvijek upornog pogleda, oko nas u borovoj šumi hijene gule kurčeve i čekaju da ona ustane i pokaže reljef hridine na mesu, polako preskačem puževe ka komadu hlada, žuti žutuju crveni putuju, tek sa obale može se o majci, žuta mater familias, tajna želja svih nas da ona žutuje duže jer život za sjeme na svijet donijetog crvenog oca nije osposobljen za bliske smrti, majka-matematika, majka sveštenica boga Venea, avgustovskog božanstva pred kojim znojave žrtve polažu mlade mozgove, majka svih mjeseci u godini i svih godina u životu jedne porodice, tranzicione generacije socijalističke srednje klase, porodice koja samo uz pomoć matematike-majke uspijeva biti dostojanstvena olupina, nikad dokazana teorema sirotinje, majka svih naših rođendana i majskih pucanja cvjetova lipe malih i žutih kao lica Liliputanaca, majka viđeno lice boga, bol je bog majke-matice, bolom puževe kućice smrskane pod stopalom rekao sam vidiš li ih kad prođu gore ljigavi kao oguljen mango, rekla je dabogda im zmija ušara pojela kite i pljunula ih u oči, da zauvijek oslijepe i da im vječno sunce boga Prostatitisa žari kroz rupu iz koje pišaju sebi niz noge, nastavila je da žvaće smežuranu kožu zubima oguljenu sa prstiju, njena je ljubav prema svijetu magnet, jedini razlog zašto i dalje želim biti tu, otvarati roze pupoljak pičke-ljubavi, voliš li sunce, rekla je Sunce volim jedino, Sunce Sunce Sunce, ono nas grije i život daje pužu i vitkoj ribi, grožđu, kajsiji, breskvama, melanome beračima, boju travi i bubama, moždane udare trombofiličarima, puni pluća pustinji, mrvi nas kao žrvanj, oštri kljun bjeloglavog supa, grije Cres dok sup prelijeće svijet, dok jede i jebe prije nego što se vrati i zaotoči zauvijek, stari supovi vole se nad Cresom dok ne umru, dok ih ne zapljusne prejak talas i Sunce više nikad ne osuši a drugi supovi pojedu, velika nebeska sušilica, volim je i dajem joj tanku kožu, bljesnula je niskom zuba od koje meduze pod vodom oslijepe, hobotnice ispuste mastilo, ribe izgube rođena jata, njen je osmjeh jedina sreća koju je lako gledati, bez osmjeha njeno je lice lijepo, s osmjehom jedino živi, kratko i samo kad dobija ono što želi, osušićemo se i isploviti izgovorila je sunčanu rečenicu i legla na ražanj stijenja, legao sam i ja i slušali smo kako ćirikavci zelenom zrikom usisavaju Sunce (…)
Excerpt - Translation
Sampas
Ilija Đurović
Translated into English by Will Firth
Ada Bojana is a big sand by a big water, and when I imagine it I don’t see it but the dank swampy air that could be anywhere, therefore the Ada is water and its mosquitos belong to me, it and everyone, we made our way through the vegetation, drawn to the swaying reggae, we’d try to beach-bash over to the teeming on the sand, Rastas, ravers and the rest, come on, join in, don’t be shy, a Rasta offered us beer, we don’t drink beer, we drink rum, is there rum, there was no rum, no problem, we went on with a beer in hand, sober and distrusting, ready to have our noses rubbed in the sand and to believe, we calmly ploughed through the thicket of strangers, a male body walked in front of us and led us to another that looked like the president of the bar, the commander of alcohol, and the first body said I’m handing you over, this is Pisko, I asked Piss-ko and the body behind the bar said Pisco, with a C, I asked like pisco sour? he said yeah and took a two-piece silver grenade of a shaker from a drawer behind the bar, saltless water welled up at the base of my tongue, salt and tepid cool surrounded us, pisco sour for two, and my gaze wandered over the elements that would soon unite inside the capsule, Pisco looked reliable, but no one is reliable enough until they load and fire, so I turned to look at the throng obscured by reeds and dancing to the reggae, the ravers were waiting for their turn, I didn’t want Pisco to feel pressured, but still I sensed him with my ears and nose like a bloodhound, I smelled the lime being squeezed, the crystal sugar cracked beneath the pestle, pisco crept from the bottle, an egg was broken, ice lit up the night and filled the cartridge, then Pisco discharged, shrapnel from the poorly assembled alcohol shell hit me in the neck, Pisco tightened the connection, reloaded and now found the rhythm, a pisco samba, I grabbed her hand and closed my eyes, I waited in peace for the pisco sour, the samba stopped, Pisco poured, and then he said Gabo is dead, Gabo muere, I repeated Gabo is dead, Gabo is gone, Pisco didn’t say another word all night, no one apart from us ordered his drinks, he mixed a few more cocktails without devotion and withdrew to a cane bed, while we stayed at the bar watching the reggae shuffle and making drinks, Sazerac, Gringo, El Camino, Daiquiri, egg white dripped from the bar until we also dropped and were dead to the world until morning, when swarms of headache droned through the air, we were entangled with arms, legs, skin and mostly smells, we put on some basic clothing and went out to what remained of the front, out on the sand, the undergrowth was strewn with the future corpses of ravers, some naked, with a sheet thrown over them, and if we’d had time we would have covered them with stones and damp sand, good as animal and mosquito repellent, but we didn’t have time, we got into the car and took off, a long dry straight line already full of incandescent cars cut the field before us, the consolation called Ulcinj was twelve kilometres away, though we knew there was nothing for us to look forward to, but the increasing distance from the Ada was good enough, we were heading for a hotel terrace with a defective sound system oozing acoustic refuse, a fence of blue glass cutting the horizon as if there wasn’t too much sea around already, a very blue funk, and with soda stripping the pesticide coating from the lemon, which would be the first enjoyment of the day, that’s what we were looking forward to, the slim shade of cypresses, the stench of sulphur and the smell of naked old women soaking in spa water caressed us through the opened windows, one more bend and we’d park in the shade of the terrace, bow to the trio of blooming agaves, to their future death, climb the stairs to the blue tables and the blue fence facing the blue sea, the waiter now came up with a silver disc on his arm, put our coffees and water down on the table and dropped the H in here you are, we exchanged glances for a moment and I said thank you, the sound equalised once more in his head, the little wheels turned again, he pronounced you’re welcome letter for letter, clearly and fully, the four-stroke engine of the world kept on roaring and rumbling as it had done until the quiet before the unknown language of mutes, the four-four time ditty about the sea kept oozing at us, the mineral water launched small transparent fireworks above the rim of the glass, thirst gradually found meaning and we and it immersed ourselves in the relief of minerals, thinking about breakfast, the ravers buried in the sand we left behind and the cocktail poisons we hadn’t yet expressed from our bodies and expelled to the blue Mediterranean cesspool, but before that we’d eat scorched eggs, fill our blood vessels with fresh cholesterol before going down to the rocks to adorn our skulls and shoulders with the halo of sunstroke, first she needed an espresso, water, food and another espresso for the first words of the day, I have to go to the bog meant she’d slowly get up, adjust her knickers wedged between the two hemispheres of her bottom, amble over to the left of the bar and calmly shit in the cloud of disinfectant, she hates me thinking about her turds but that doesn’t stop me, she wanted me to cut the crap and accept the Mediterranean song as something pure and part of me, I couldn’t convince her that creatures who grew up on parched flats, on three rivers strung up between huge mountains and the sea, could not be anything but what they are, creatures from the hinterland, I couldn’t persuade her that the sea would never accept us because we’re afraid of it, for us it’s a dry land eaten away at by desert summers, a cold fast river, the adaptation of the lungs to breathing tainted air, lungs used to swallowing a mucky melange of dust, smog and singed grass, we’d certainly prove ourselves in a gas van, but we can’t bring up sea urchins, dive in headfirst without fear, that’s against the nature of the hinterland, although she always wants more, wants to find in us what there is not, we search together, sometimes we shit together, and that is a love song par excellence, now she came back from the toilet slowly, I got changed, we can go down, which dispelled my thoughts about our turds and returned us to the terrace of the Albatros Hotel, ready to descend the steep, narrow path to the serrated rocks the sea carved just for us, and there we swam naked, washed ourselves of the past few nights and deaths of others, how the paterfamilias died could be told from the sea while her salt-washed bottom was attacked by little crabs on the shore, and mine submerged two metres under for the fish and medusas to assail, he died with a cigarette in hand, of course, that was all that mattered to him, stories would be told about him as a father who smoked on the motorbike, on the cycle and in hospital, whole fields of tobacco would remain unsmoked and his wife would mourn for him, two sons would remember him but nothing more, he was born a proletarian child and left the world again as naked as the rifle that carved out an urbane, middle-class life for his parents, with a flat, car, regular summer and winter holidays, he missed the opportunity of a free education but used the ones for excursions to the very ends of the country, and sometimes even beyond, returning home with new fashion and better tobacco, enough for a whole life in the backwoods and the razing of what remained of the memory of that life, an infant born into poverty who managed to avoid the infantry when his war came, when the edges of the country he travelled as a youth began to crumple and contract, so that in the end there was scarcely anything left bigger than the grave they lowered him into, among familiar bones, the story about the death of the paterfamilias could end there, and it did because it was phoney, the paterfamilias is alive and happily playing with his first and only grandson, the son of his eldest son – my brother – who lives far from the warm sea and the hinterland, the paterfamilias combs tobacco and tells the boy swearwords he doesn’t yet understand, grabs him by his tiny new cock, and that was the only image left in my head after two afternoons in my parents’ full house, but the fear of death remains like a pole of darkness, he’s no paterfamilias at all but a classical male in the sinewy system of latent matriarchy, brought into the world to sow his seed while trying not to work up too much of a sweat on his bald head, and he would almost have succeeded if the first decade of the new millennium hadn’t caught him unprepared halfway along the journey to life’s end, at the height of his powers, it was determined to rob him of everything he thought he had a right to until the end of the only life he believed in, a decade that painted his bald head the colours of hypertension, a flag under which we sing yellow will mellow, red will be dead, he with his hand on constricted arteries, a flag always at half-mast in the spirit of grandmother’s revolution and contempt for death, the hand of hypertension blazoned a red question-mark on his forehead, to which no one has an answer, but a question mark to which the red father, by now a red grandfather, pays no attention, at least outwardly, two days at my parents’, two days with the smells of strawberries and lamb in honey sauce were enough for me to snatch the keys after the third breakfast and head from the hinterland for the water, the warm sea that the sun pisses in longer and longer every summer, but she goes and sits on the jagged rock and fries like an albino lizard, already wounded all over by freckles, she waits for new Cyclades of liver spots to calmly emerge, the lace of remaining healthy skin is offered up to the tooth of the sky to masticate and spit out into the scrub among the snake sloughs, she wants the complexion of a girl from the coast, so she offers the sun her unresistant continental skin served on a platter of rocks, with a salad of crabs and sea tomatoes, dressed with salt and oil, meat ready to fall apart young and tender, there were no swimmers near us, sometimes a body trudged along the path above, a man who always stared, hyenas peeled their pricks in the pinewood around us and waited for her to get up and show the relief of the rock on her flesh, I slowly hopped over snails into a patch of shade, yellow will mellow, red will be dead, the story of mother could only be told from the shore, the yellow materfamilias, the secret wish of us all that she mellow longer because the life of the red father brought into the world for his semen is not equipped for imminent death, mother mathematics, mother priestess of Sine, Cos and Tan, the August deity, before whom sweaty victims lay their young brains, the mother of all the months of the year and all the years in the life of one family, the transition generation of the socialist middle class, a family that only manages to be a dignified wreck with the aid of the mathematics mother, the never-proven theorem of poverty, the mother of all our birthdays and the bursting of linden flowers in May, small and yellow like the faces of Lilliputians, mother as the seen face of god, pain is the god of the mother-gyne, I said with the pain of a snail shell crushed underfoot do you see them when they go up as slimy as a peeled mango, and she said may an eared serpent bite off their dicks and spit them in their eyes so they go blind forever and so the eternal sun of the god Prostatitis burns through the hole they piss out of and down their legs, her teeth kept chewing the wrinkled skin pared from her fingers, her love of the world is a magnet, the only reason I still want to be here, to open the pink bud of pussy-love, do you love the sun, she said the Sun is all I love, the Sun the Sun the Sun, it warms us and gives life to the snails and slender fishes, to the grapes, apricots and peaches, gives melanomas to the pickers, colour to the grass and beetles, strokes to the thrombophiliacs, it fills the lungs of the desert, crushes us like a millstone, the sharp beak of a griffon vulture, it warms the island of Cres while the vulture flies over the world, while it feeds and fucks before returning and isling itself forever, old vultures make love over Cres until they die, until a wave too strong sweeps them away and the Sun never dries them again and other vultures eat them, I love that big drier in the sky and give it my thin skin, the row of her teeth flashed so bright as to blind the jellyfish under water, make the octopuses squirt ink and the fish lose their schools, her smile is the only happiness easy to look at, her face is beautiful without a smile, but only with that smile is it alive, briefly and just when she gets what she wants, she spoke the sunny words we’ll dry off and sail on and lay down on the roasting spit of the rocks, I lay down too, and we listened to the crickets absorbing the Sun with their green chirps (…)