Spent the night at a really charming, small albergue in an equally small town, Agés. The Innkeeper, a very amiable, humorous fellow of about forty-six, received us warmly, his wife bringing us small tazitos (glasses) of broth as we walked in, cold and wet, meaning us, not the broth. Hit the spot. We had a bite with Gary to tide us over until dinner time. The corner tiendita/bar is like from a movie set, chalet style exposed, ebony dark timbers shined from centuries of wear separated by stuccoed, white, hand troweled walls. Teo and I chose empanadas de jamón y queso, y uno de altún (tuna with a tomato based, pasty sauce), bananas, peanuts, while Gary got his favorite, gluten free meal, which he sometimes eats two times or more per day, tortilla, fresh squeezed jugo de narania, and coffee.
The three of us, having bonded quite a bit over the some three hours that he walked with us today, a full ninety minutes more with me, as he overtook me during my silent, solo, grieving time. Ironically, Gary has told us at least two times that he needs to spend more time walking in silence, a trick that I can see that he has about as much luck with, when near others, as I do. My long lost short-story-long twin? He mentioned that while attending retreats with his church it is not uncommon for attendees to hang a sign around their neck that reads, "silence."
He is a good guy. Teo and I both like him a lot. In many ways he reminds me of a good friend that I began hanging out with in undergraduate at Tulane University in the 1980s, Curtis Holder. Really bright. Kind of guy who casually drops that he it is funny that as an electrical engineer, he should score in the 99th percentile in English/verbal skills and only in the 98th percentile in math/science. Kind of square, but in a warm, self deprecating, smiling kind of way. His talking with my son about the really fast, heavy duty performance, power automobiles that he has owned over the years, talking downforce, 800 plus hybrid flywheel horsepower, in line this and drag race that-Tdog was sold.
The limiting factor in our speed and distance today was me. My left heel/outer ankle has become more than a bit tender, a bone bruise or a deep connective tissue inflammation is my best guess. But the pain that shoots up each time I place my body and pack weight on it, you know, the fifteen thousand times a day that I have occasion to step on it, don't feel so good. Aside from the pain itself, the worst aspect of getting an injury in any part of your body below your waist, when trekking, anyhow, is that the other parts of your lower extremities that need to work either more or differently to compensate or accommodate for the injured part get hella fatigued. It's most probably something like the difference between lifting free weights or the same amount of poundage on a machine, right? The 120 lbs. on a machine is just up and down in a controlled track; the 120 on a barbell feels like 145. So it is walking with a left heel that feels like you are stepping onto a piece of an old nail sticking an inch and a half up through the bottom of your foot, tightening the rest of your body with each step.
We all three signed up for, meaning paid the Innkeeper $10 Euros to reserve a spot for, our cena perigrino at 8:00. A really nice ensalda, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, but good, crisp veggies, with oil and vinegar, was served with a small plate of patatas bravas, and pan, and small earthen pitchers of tinto. Two sat across a table from me, next to a pleasant enough man, a native Spaniard, named Juan Carlos. Gary sat on my left, directly across from T.
Two new entries into our Camino contact list came to dinner this eve. Two really real, good people in my book, the sort of characters that I am counting on seeing again this trip, sat at the only other table to get dinner. Neil from Ireland, and Kayla, from the Seattle area, by way of Germany the past few years. He has been living in the far east the better part of six years, clean, and sober, a former journalist who covered the music scene for a newspaper or two back in the day a bit. He is forty-two, clean shaven head, entirely, wearing a dark grass green, loosely fitting, popped up in the top, Keebler elf looking took, infectious but calm smile. Kayla really solid seeming, great smile, pretty, shoulder length blonde brown, kinkyish hair pulled into a loosely gathered pony tail.
For our second course we had house made paella. Yes! The rice yellow in color, mixed with peppers, onions, carrot, sautéed with pieces of beef, chicken-as many servings as you pleased to ask for. When Teo said, 'yes, please, a little bit more,' in Spanish of course, to his offer to bring more paella, he made an entertainment event in that small room with the six of us, by bringing a small tea cup saucer with about a teaspoon of the paella served with a teeny, silver fork. 'Un poco mas, yes? (A little more! yes?) then, as we all laughed our butts off, pulling the plate of the flavorful rice dish out from behind his back and setting it in front of T. The gentleman did this on more than two occasions.
Had great conversations during dinner. Even struck up some good interactions entirely in Spanish with Juan Carlos. He is only going to Burgos also. Work calls. Does it one stretch at a time as when he can peel himself away from his life and work. He talked futbol with T, life stresses and jobs with me. Neil and Kayla more than held up their end of things. They have hooked in recently on the trail and seem to have a really healthy, considerate, friendly relationship with each other. They seem to suit each other well.
The five of us, all the dinner guests but Juan Carlos that is, slept in the room upstairs that held five bunk beds. It was the best group, dorm style sleeping energy that I have yet experienced. Hard to explain why, I guess. For one because I feel like I already knew all of them,had shared a couple plus hours conversing, that we all clicked, that no one acted weird, snored too loud, rushed to get up early and get out in the morning. Everyone was really considerate, awfully friendly, a sense of warmth almost family permeating the relatively small room. Sounds corny to say, but it was sort of a Walton's Family Christmas kind of feel. You know, "Goodnight, Teo. Goodnight Gary....!"
As we walked on the last three or four miles of the sixteen or so miles that we walked today, I was doing a fair amount of 'trying not to be cranky.' I probably said too many times how I didn't manage my food intake well, a banana, coffee and a small piece of sweetbread for breakfast, and two pieces of bread with butter and jam for lunch, so that, as we stride along the lovely, sunlit park astride the south bank of the Arlanzón River to get to the older section of Burgos before crossing over to wander and explore and to look for lodging, Teo turns to me, says, "I should probably just stop and force you to eat something so that you'll stop complaining." Grrrr...hate it when he's right about something like that...I mean, darn it, I'm the wiser, more mature one, the parent, right?
So, yeah, he pulled out a trail bar, ripped off half, gave it to me, we washed it down with some water, moved on. Could feel the fuel and water bring me back to life a bit, the rush of energy when the tank is low, the blood sugar faltering. A smile returns with this and with the crossing of the Puente San Pablo, and the fine statue of El Cid planted smack dab in the middle of the round about next to it. Thus we enter the grand old city of Burgos, with its world famous 13th century Cathedrál de Santa Maria, a spectacle of the most absurdly ornate and dreamlike order. As someone who does not go into all the churches, see all the rated tour guide suggestions, this one is truly mind blowing. One looks long at the finery of the stone work, I mean these stonemasons did things, made shapes with this stone that you couldn't make carving a block of cheese with a set of razor knives. It's hard to fathom. A structure that would be believable, but unrealistic, if it had been drawn into a graphic novel, but to see it in real life is to know the sublime.
Walking across the Plaza Mayor we hear off to our right, maybe twenty meters away, 'TEO!!" Turn to see Menno's golden smile, blue, blue eyes beaming, his arms open, walking towards us. "Menno!' Teo says to me, "Fucking Menno!" We hug, introduce him and Gary, go to find a spot to sit down and have a beer at an outside table a block from the cathedral.
Burgos is not just some town. For those of you who, like me before I arrived here, know naught about this historic and much heralded urban center, strap on your seat belts and let me give you a tour. Sitting at 860 meters above sea level, containing almost two hundred thousand persons, Burgos has played the pivotal role in many periods of Spain's long development. First off, it is the capital city of the Communidad de Castille y León. There are several possible origins for the name of the cit, but the leading contender is this one-When the city was founded, the inhabitants of the surrounding country moved into the fortified village, whose Visigothic name of Burgos signified consolidated walled villages (Gothic baurgs). Not but ten miles or so from this charming, bustling city are the remains of humans dating back to almost one million years ago. Check it. Homo Antecessor.
The high tide of the Moorish invasion of the Peninsula occupied almost all of Castile in the 8th century, though only for a brief period. Alfonso III, the Great, King of León reconquered it about the middle of the 9th century, and built several castles for the defence of Christendom, which was then extended through the reconquest of lost territory. The region came to be known as Castile (Latin castella), i.e. "land of castles".
We hang with Gary and Menno for a few hours at small tables set in the middle of the broad area between the businesses, technically, I guess, a calle, a street, but not used by cars, like most of the streets in this part of the city. Small Policia or service cars will on occasion move by on the wide open, stone, almost tile looking, surface, much of it, in large, maybe one meter by one meter squares.
Menno wants to score some hash, tried, stereotypically enough, asking the only West African guy we passed on the way to where we now relax. No luck. He made a conscious choice upon leaving Leiden, in the Netherlands, to come on this journey, not to bring any THC products, to give it a rest. So we asked him what happened, why did he change his mind? He has really good English, and yet his response seemed, well, typically, as they say in Spanish, oscuro. What I did catch was that he had had a conversation with some gal that had to do with "keeping appointments with yourself." I don't know, maybe he missed the appointment, like he showed up twenty minutes too late and he was already gone by then?
Anyhow, that is not even the beginning of the funny part on this caper. Sitting twenty feet, less, away, is a group of two guys and a gal. They appear to be around twenty, a good looking guy, dark hair with trimmed, say five day, shaved beard, a glorious smile. Other guy in a red windbreaker, black hair gelled so that it is very neat on the sides and then rises up into a bit of a pompadour on top. Whereas the first guy is heavier, not fat, the second is rail thin, squirrely looking, mischievous. The gal, lotsa eye liner, black, ringing her eyes, pretty in a girl sort of way, all three laughing, teasing each other, jabbering in Spanish.
Still on the prowl, Menno says, "Maybe I should go ask these guys if they have any hash?" Tdog and I sort of casually look, assess, say, "Hey, dude, go for it. If they don't know, they look the age to know where it is." Fuckin' Menno! We teach him a couple words of Spanish, and he pretty much has down, "Tienes Hash?" And goes over and politely asks them. They sort of pause, like, did they hear this guy right, we hear the word "marijuana," they rotate their head so look at us, sort of nod their heads sharply, begin to grin and sort of guffaw with each other, high five. They called a friend who came with some pretty high grade reefer, I mean that's what Menno had to say about it, about fifteen minutes later. Fuckin' Menno!
Gary finds the hotel that all of us but Menno, who had just found his sixty-five Euro a night luxury spot, I mean luxurious for a perigrino, earlier in the day, end up checking into. It's not but fifty feet from where we have been sitting, having beers for two hours in the open plaza type of avenida. Menno is gonna download a movie on his iPhone, stay in for the evening, we tell Gary we'll hook up with him in some three hours or so for dinner, head on up, find our room, as long as the bunk bed, maybe eight inches spare between the head and the foot of the bed and the walls, and well under three feet between the free edge and the remaining wall. The bathroom at the, um, can I say 'far end' of the room and still be considered to be practicing solid English rules for usage?
About two days ago Teo and I had another of our sporadically spread out conversations about why it is that we didn't being a deck of cards, a small game, something to pass idle time. Looked at a comic book/game/model store in Logroño, had not in any way found a solution. Then I had a lightning bolt from on high, a revelation. 'Hey, T, don' cha think we could download a pdf of the rules for Bloodbowl, get all the team stats we need, n put together a pitch and all from found materials? You know, La Liga Europeo 2012 de Bloodbowl?" And, WHAM, just like that we had a mission.
Okay, so what the bleep is Bloodbowl? I know, I know. But it ain't really like that. Think football Americano but swap in teams of Orcs, Lizardmen (fast and agile creatures they turn out to be!), Khemri (mummies, skeletons, tomb guardians), dwarves, dark elves, chaos warriors, a total of twenty-one species. As a team plays matches, the players accumulate points individually based on their performance, scoring, injuring others, catching passes, etc., and are then awarded extra skills that you can choose from a really long list, to customize and increase your players, and hence your own, abilities to compete more effectively.
At any rate, we, meaning Teo, found cardboard in a recycling container, and we used my beard clipping scissors and some pens to make the pitch, the small templates needed for scattering the balls, team stat sheets, and the players themselves. I have created so far a Khemri team and a Hafling team, Teo Chaos Warrior and Dark Elves teams. Well,I'll keep you updated as La Liga Europa 2013 commences and progresses.
Teo was the kind of adolescent that didn't party with his friends, didn't date, mostly played Warhammer 40k with friends, Axis and Allies with me and my friends, more of a home body, really. Then at about seventeen, a senior in high school, he took off socially. So we have a connection going back forever in this arena, board games, in the area of socializing and connecting with one another via a game of strategy. This is satisfying in ways that are really something difficult to express even if you have a child, impossible if you do not. That opportunity to laugh, to not have any stress other than bad dice rolls, to smile and groan and commiserate while entertaining each other and bonding. At forty-eight years of age, afraid of moving on past the life I have known for twenty years as a caretaker and guardian of these two men who now appreciate and enjoy you but who don't much spend time with you or need you anymore, this time spent with this ultimately sweet, strong, terrifically bright guy, my son, is a time that pleases me so, causes me to get all goofy eyed and sniffly just to think on, to be able to participate in. Like a really good book, or a really good pizza, I am moving through it with my eye on how much is left, should I savor it or pile on through, how will I replace it when it is gone, will I ever find one this good again. Do I just flow into it and do it, or do I attempt to slow it down, make it last? Suck on the hard candy or bite into it and ingest it all at once?
Well, thank you my darling boy, the precious, precious being that I have been, am now, blessed to be able to share consciousness, share emotions, share this damn amazing walk across the better part of the Iberian Peninsula with you. I always knew that I wanted to parent children I never ever had an inkling of how sublimely joyful it would be. How could I have known. To see my own self, my own genes, splitting, growing, manifesting this angel out of the air around me, growing taller, talking, sharing his love and his wonderment in the universe around us with me. If you hear me bitching, whining, as I am wont to do, please, please remind me that I have this marvelous being, this bit of God, as my son and that I should thank my lucky ass stars and shut the fuck up! Now, onto Part Two of last night's tale, onto the part where this bit of God goes out with new found friends and gets hammered!
As Gary, Tdog, and I begin to look for a place to get some grub, just leaving our place, moving, in fact past the place where we were seated earlier while Menno scored, who should we encounter but those very same fellas and their gal friend. A raucous group, loud, playful, they engage us, laughing, grinning at us, introduce themselves. The larger young man, twenty-four as it turns out, is Elias (a-lay-us, in Spanish); the slighter guy, another imp we meet on this magical mystery tour, is Joel (yoel), he is twenty-one; the attractive young lass, at seventeen, is Iriana. With them as well is Brian (I know, right? He's got to get what I get when I tell people that my name is Pedro!), the friend that brought the weed. He is slightly more of the quiet, serious type, but like the others a real darling.
Well they tell us that they can show us a good place to eat, that paella is really more of a mid-day meal, that tapas and patatas bravas are more like evening, get a few beers, see the night kind of food. As they are a bit rowdy, more Teo's age than mine, dissing each other about this or that, grabbing their crotches as they make a point or two about whose hometown is the best, Gary peels off shortly after a round of cañas and some patatas bravas. They are really a funny, close knit group, and they really want Teo and I to accompany them to a bar run by a friend of Elias', then to go to a heavy metal bar. Another gal, a seventeen year old named Laura joins us, and she is a really good English speaker, self taught. As a teacher of ESL I am always fascinated with, no, not seventeen year old girls, but with persons who speak English with almost no discernible trace of a non-native accent. Laura never lived in an English speaking country, which is always my first question with these kind of folks. She also speaks French and Italian and has begun to study, all on her own, Russian.
Yes, we go to the next bar with them, the only other one that I end up going to them with. A woman of about forty is running the bar. It's a small place, maybe twenty by twenty five feet in size. She has blue eye shadow encircling her eyes, black, heavy eye liner all the way around them as well, jet black, dyed hair falling straight down past her shoulders. We get a round of medios, in size between a caña and a grande. I pull out a card to pay and she waves me off, as in, 'your money's no good here.' We spend about an hour to an hour and a half here, alternating between smoking and drinking outside, hugging the building because of the rain coming down, and being inside. The mood is festive, new friends, much laughter and high fiving, teasing, inviting of one another to come visit our family homes. Elias served in the military. Joel telling me that the south of Spain, el Sur, is where all the good ESL jobs are, because the southerners don't try to learn it, aren't schooled in it, need and want the help with it. He tells me that when he wins la lottería, he will be coming to Ellensburg to hang with us.
Joel is the kind of guy that, upon spying attractive women passing by with their umbrellas, walks to them doing the apparently universal deal of walking backwards while trying to woo a member of the opposite sex. "Cafe torrero?" He says to the ladies, using his hand to sign 'turn a circle and come hang out with is.' They don't stop. He is the kind of guy who is completely not discouraged. It is the action itself that gives him and all of us the high, not the outcome.
Joel is the the kind of guy who stands close, continually tapping your arm to either get your attention or to make a point, especially if you happen to be paying attention to the others who may be trying to talk to you also, the kind of guy that you want to be your deal closer in any business arrangement. Exceptionally likeable in my opinion. He and Elias explain the concept of cafe torrero to me. ''Eh...you know, like uno o dos en la tarde, y you decide is time for," big grins, hands both held in front as though grabbing two glasses. Looks at me, checks for understanding, brings one then the other hand to his mouth, tilts his head back as though downing two drinks, grins, slaps me on the arm, "Cafe torrero! Cafe torrero!" We all laugh hard, Elias making the drinking gesture with the pinky out, thumb out pouring into his mouth, both hands, one then the other, one then the other, grinning. High fives, "Cafe torero!"
I respond, "Si el sctividad que se llama cafe torrero, entonces, yo soy un matador!" (If the activity is cafe torero, then I am a matador!). More guffawing, stomach holding, squinty eye smiling at one another, high fives, abrazos (hugs), all around. Ole! These guys cracked me up. They have this thing that they do, to signify a really funny event; they turn their hand into a karate chop position and then they move it in and out of their abdomen, alternating palm up with palm down as they also alternate between saying "Hee hee," with, " Haw haw." About two of each. "Hee hee, haw haw, hee hee, haw haw." Love that shit.
I hung out for another couple of rounds, including one of chupitos, or shots, of I'm not sure what. Hey, when in Burgos...! Peeled away as they were all heading for more bars, stumbled around on my gimpy left foot, found a place to grab a plate or battered, fried anchovas, small flat fish about three inches long, one and a half wide, quarter to three eighths inches in dimension, and a ración de morcillo, pan, a glass of tinto. Found a place that serves soft serve ice cream, ate off to the side of the plaza, watching and absorbing the infectious gaiety of the Spaniards walking energetically by in pairs and small groups, the night time energy picking up still at midnight when I retired to our room to write and check emails.
On the way back I stumbled through the ......doorway....and onto a most beautiful, orderly, well lit shared public area, a pedestrian mall unlike one I've seen. Magnificent. Really. Here it is called the Paseo de Espolón. A maybe sixty meter wide avenida por solo peotónes. Sitting here again now as I put these thoughts on (e)paper. Three strips it is made of: one that runs next to the businesses; one between rows of clipped, shaped Spanish maples, with fuentes, benches; the other the walk next to the rio, with a grand view of the other side, maybe one hundred meters away. No automobiles. simplemente los peotónes, walking, talking, gathering, enjoying the evening, the soft night lighting of the yellow street lights catching hints of the humidity in the air, bubbles of light emanating, like small galaxies newly discovered, refracting, distributing, growing.
T came in sometime after I went to bed. Said something about deciding to go home after a few more bars, including the heavy metal one spoken of before. The gang was fixing to go home, round up more cash, hit it some more. T said he really didn't want to go, have someone decide to just crash, be stuck in the burbs at two in the am looking for a route back. That he had had great fun, exchanged Facebook and email addresses, made grand assertions about further time spent together, got to practice his Spanish, found friends. Said it was the first time since he got to Europe some five to six weeks previously, that he had gone out and partied with same age peers. The next day he was telling me about their night out. Cracking me up. I guess Joel had taken a box of napkins from the place, the dispenser from he table, and was "taking photos" of them and strangers, asking them to pose for a picture, then holding the dispenser up as though it were a real camera, "1, 2, 3!" yanking the napkin out laterally as though it was a Polaroid, waving it back and forth, blowing on it, all for the appropriate amount of time, and then, more or less straight faced, handing the 'photo' to the persons.
Listening to the drippy drop spatters of rain outside, through the mostly closed window of this teeny weeny sleep chamber, more the couchette, curtained sleep compartment of a train, than a room, in our hotel a block from the Cathedrál. And there isn't always access to water in the bathroom either. On the other hand, we do have a really ideal location, and the shower, even if it only has water at random intervals, is bitchin' cool; best of all it costs us twenty-five Euros per night for the both of us! Yeah, that leaves many Euros left over in the travel budget for tinto, tapas, cervezas, croquetas, patatas bravas, and, did I say cervezas?
Tdog passed out shortly ago, us both fine tuning a new team for our Bloodbowl competition, hoping to make enough for a league before too long. Doing some writing, a red headlamp light shining down, the strap wedged between a slat and the bottom of T's mattress but twenty four inches above my head.
Learning to see my way through the middle of the night emptiness, the austerity of not having a certain, always interested partner who, even if you don't contact, just knowing that if you did that they would be there, that they would pickup the phone, come pick you up, or hold you when you need to be held. Can't really replace that. But time and energy shoved around into the right places, the right uses-that combination can accelerate the otherwise glacially slow incremental advance of grief and of deep loss. So strange to be in this crucible again, this place of doing by undoing, this place of pounding, re shaping, tempering, of trying to mix and assimilate and find the best new way.
Sitting outside of an Irish styled pub now, The Book, a rather outlandish fusion of Irish pub with tapas and tinto, outside having a smoke. Nothing Compares toYou on the stereo, feeling melancholic again. Shoot, it don't really go away, like trying to drown some creature by dunking it under water, only to have it, thrashing and fighting for its right to live, breaking the surface and sucking in another breath, forcing me to continue the macabre activity of attempting to extinguish it, not liking to kill in general, not wanting especially to cause, let alone see, the end of this once magnificent, golden in the late afternoon sunlight, woven intimately into my existence being. The type of activity that, by achieving your goal, you also achieve a pyrrhic, hollow victory that, in the end, may damage you more. The handcuff tying you to the about to explode car, the hacksaw only allowing you enough time to cut through your twist and not the metal links on the cuffs.
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