The Rain in Spain

The Rain in Spain

"We are not human beings on a spiritual path, we are spiritual beings on a human path." Anon.

"My body feels used and abused like an eighteen year old porn star." Teo says this to me as we sit in a small tapas bar in Puente de la Reina, 700 kilometers or so from our destination. The first three days of walking the Camino have come to an end, except that our feet and ankles may not quite have figured that out yet!

Before leaving downtown Pamplona this morning, we needed to complete two tasks; mail some seven pounds of excess weight home, and change dollars to Euros. Seems easy enough, right? Well, not so much. We left the Pensione with electronic map in hand, sighted in on the post office (correos as they are called) some scant three or four blocks away. Skipping all of the details I can say briefly that it took four sets of asking directions until, nautilus shell like, we finally found the correos, and forty five minutes and thirty five Euros later, we sent off the extra poundage that our bodies had convinced us we needed to do. The bank was easier. $440.00 = 300.00 Euros. The same exchange at the airport would have set me back $509.00.

Today also featured our first rain, beginning in the morning as a sprinkle, what the Hopi and Navajo refer to as a female rain.Took about four kilometers, bit under an hour, to get to the western suburb, past the University of Navarre, a place called Cizur Menor. About this time the sprinkle cranked up to a bit of a light rain, still soft, not stormy, but we got out some wet gear, over pants, gaiters, jackets and put them on. As we progressed we would be rising in elevation for the first to thirds of the day's walk. Along the way the wind increased and increased until it was blowing in our faces, bringing the now fairly steady rain closer to horizontal, feeling at moments like small, stinging pellets. My guess is that the wind was blowing a fairly steady twelve to fifteen, gusting up to thirty-five.

As we moved through the wind, a force not unlike a hand on each shoulder pushing directly back against us, our path shifted o the right, causing the gusts to tear at us from the left quarter, moving us, as we struggled into the hill, to the far right side of the path. The wind chill kept dropping and we kept getting wetter, a particularly nasty combination, especially when contrasted with the previous days in country-70s, low 80s, sunny, a tad humid but overall like glorious late spring or early summer.

Ironically today was the first day that I played any music on my iPad to listen to while walking. Billy Joel, both The Stranger and 52nd Street. If the speaker is on the top (inside) of my pack, turned up all the way, it's surprisingly loud-meaning not so much, but, for a tablet, not bad. When it is calm out and you are walking not near a road or a creek or a small town, it is very quiet except for the sound of your shoes on the surface of the path; the irony is that this day was the first day I put on tunes and also the only day we have had of loud ass weather, wind gusts that blocked out the sound of the music so that it would go from plenty loud to not in any way detectable.

Listening to The Stranger brought back so many great memories.

Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It's alright, you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize... (España) waits for you?

And you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through (oooh)
Why don't you realize... (España) waits for you?

Seemed aptly pertinent. Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while...yeah. And then there's last night. Face Timing with my girl, hearing some especially BAD NEWS. Damn. Take the phone off the hook is what's now going on. Disappointment by the truck load. And now, on my spiritual path, working so hard to be a spiritual being on a human path and all I can say is that humans fucking suck in their selfishness, fear, in their selfish ness and damage. How they reach out o fill the giant voids that lay within them, trying o plug the holes that the wind blows through, hiding their true selves from the demons stalking them at night, hiding just beyond the reach of the lights from their homes.

Yeah, I'll take the phone off. I'll shut down the wi-fi. I'll run screaming into the hills with my arms raised above my head shrieking. All the while I'll be asking, 'Why?,' and I'll doubt my own faith, my own understanding of what it means to be ahimsa in a human relationship, forget that I am a spiritual being on a human path.

"To attain knowledge, add things every day.
To attain wisdom, remove things every day."
Lao-tzu

I'm a knowledgeable guy. Time to aim for wisdom. After a time, knowledge fails, and what is left often does not make sense of what I see before me. What was it that Rumi said? "Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment." Dear lord, I am ready to be bewildered. Bewilder me.

By the end of our trek we had reached Puente La Reina, as well as a stop to the rain, and a $5.00 Euro a night (per person) albergue. The crowd was a bit rowdy, partying downstairs in many languages, primarily in Spanish, French, and German, until maybe midnight or one. The crowd had a bit of a seedy feel, like fifty five year old, longish, grey haired french guys that you wouldn't want your daughter around. We stayed in a two bunked room with a fifty-ish year old asian couple, the kind who uses both chairs and all of the free space to lay out or hang up their belongings before anyone else even gets into the room.

We two went out through the small Basque town, political slogans stating militantly the desire for Basque control of Basque country, and found a small place for a great meal. Tapas, Jamon de Serrano (think a plate of prosciutto), bacalao (halibut like fish) baked with veggies, and a thin steak of veal with pomme frittes. And the ever available bottle of  cheap tinto. It was sumptuous and plenty filling, but in that not-going-to-leave-you-stuffed way.

I don't know. Here I am, struggling with my faith in myself, in my best friend back home, in my future, in God. I am working so very hard to make sense of things, to find my way forward. So damned appreciative, and I tell him most every day, for the presence of my boy. Why can't others, specifically one other, my other half, be as stand up, as real, as mature as the twenty year old man by my side?