Glen Smith's Diary (Page 49)

//Panel 1//
Elizabeth's Narration:
A village of eternal life…a village of eternal life…
//Panel 3//
Elizabeth's Narration:
What on Earth…could this be? How strange. But…why?
Those pages, opened again and again—the yellowed pages of a diary from thirty-odd years ago
//Panel 4//
Elizabeth's Narration:
My father reading it again and again, for thirty years.
//Panel 5//
Elizabeth's Narration:
What was on his mind…
//Panel 6//
Elizabeth's Narration:
What was on his mind…

So...her dad apparently is, or was, obsessed with this "village of blooming roses." In truth, it is speculation that he returned to the diary over and over for thirty years—Elizabeth had never seen him actually reading it, after all. So is it really Glen Smith's active obsession, or his daughter's assumption that any diary kept for so long would be referred back to, over and over? We never find out more information that could have been given to us, like veiled references that he may have dropped to his family during all that time, for example. Elizabeth is completely surprised, and taken aback, by the diary's discovery. And the things written within were clearly incidents locked in his head, and in his diary.

Even assuming that Glen Smith had reread the diary many times over the years, would that have been an attempt to keep telling himself that this had really happened—or to reassure himself that it never happened? There is much that is tantalizing to consider, but barely hinted at here.

"What was on his mind…" was another tricky line. It literally means, "Thinking what…" However, "What was he thinking?" definitely has a strong negative meaning in English, so I had to consider a lot of different approaches, and this one seemed most apt.