'Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment.' Rumi I have grown a healthy sized pain in the bottom of my left heel. A bone bruise? Perhaps a sore tendon attachment on the outside, bottom of my mechanically repaired left ankle. The result of a bicycle accident back in 1995, I have four one inch screws attaching a four inch strip of metal to the outside of my ankle, which broke in half when I fell off of my bike. It has gotten sore, probably because the shoes that I have chosen to wear on the Camino are, in actuality, bicycle shoes. How's that for wondrous irony? At any rate, I have a plan, other than the current one, which is based on wearing four pairs of socks to cushion my heel, because, as it turns out, bicycle shoes are not made with any cushioning to soften the impact of actually placing them on the ground with any kind of regularity! Okay, should have seen that one coming...! Sell my cleverness indeed!
We began the day in our usual manner. I get up about a half hour before he does, when his alarm goes off, about seven-thirty or so. I take a shower usually, or, like this morning, praise God, a bath. I soak, read, finish writing my blog entry for the day, shave, brush my teeth, etc., and then return to our room. T is looking at his iPhone, maybe Face timing Veronica, catching her before she goes to sleep on her side of the Earth he is in bed, on his back. I say, 'How's it goin', T?' He says, 'Pretty good.' Then we spend the next forty-five minutes rising, packing, etc., head outside where I finish my instant coffee, have a smoke or two, post my blog (if we have wifi). Then we saddle up n hit the trail.
After about an hour of limping along on my bruised left heel, I asked T if he maybe would give me some time to grieve, walk ahead, meet up just before the next town, ......, eight plus kilometers down the line. Being the guy that he is, he, of course, assented. It was a John Denver kind of day, so I put my library of John Denver albums on, pushed in my headphones, walked, got in touch with the maudlin, sepia toned lyrics of a man who, cliché though he may be, knew how to yank some heart strings. I cried, did some letting go, missed my best friend, wondered what may happen to me in my new future, wallowed a bit, a lot, in the kind of self pity that I have more or less mastered.
When we walked, okay, when Teo walked and I limped into Villafranca de Montes de Oca yesterday (I mean, really, what is it with these people? Why can't they have a regular, American sounding name for their towns?), we decided to grab a bite to eat and then, afterwards, to decide whether or not to continue on. Up to this point we have only stopped to eat lunch in a sit down establishment once since coming to Spain. Figured it was allowable. So we walked into the Hotel de San Antone Abád, hoping for a refreshing, rejuvenating (okay, that may be just me on that one, seeing as how Teo is already, uh, juvenated), repast, a rest for my foot, a bit of all around respite. Since we had spent only about $8.00 Euros apiece each of the past two days, ten dollars American, for room, board, entertainment (all right, fine. The last one here is just me too), figured we could afford it.
The place is really nice. Three stars nice. We sat down, saw the two cute, young Japanese girls both named Chan, but with the Christian names of Regina (really, seriously? Who names themselves that? I mean If it's given by your folks, I get it. But as a consenting adult who would possibly name themselves something that sounds precariously close to the same word we use in the west to refer to a sexual organ? 'Hello, my name is Enis...!) and Stella.
We got wifi, and that in and of itself meant that even if the food pretty much sucked, you know, 'It's twice the price, but at least the portions are half as big!'), we could at least get back to the internet, after two plus days of only finding it in public plazas along the route. We met the owner, a small man, dark haired, deep Castellano voice, somewhat commanding, used to being in charge kind of guy, who shook our hands, sat us at a table under a well illuminated, glasses paneled ceiling, with four tables, a desk, and a bar. We ordered a bocadillo de loma de cerdo, a plato de huevos fritos y chorizo, and a cerveza grande por mi. It was really good, refreshing. So was the food!
As we finished our meal, two gentlemen that we had met briefly outside of last night's donativo this morning, Gary and Sasha, stopped in to repeat our process, beers and all. They sat with us, and, as they say, that has made all the difference. Gary is a seventy-one year old from LA, gregarious, tall, white haired, traveling for two days now with Sasha, a Swiss national of about thirty-three, short, curly black hair, glasses, thin, funny, zany as all get out. Example-Gary chokes briefly, getting some of his chorizo into his windpipe, the server comes over, asks if he is okay, Gary reassures her that he is, and as she is leaving our table, Sasha says, 'It's okay,' in his clipped, tinny English, ' I'm okay, really.'
We had an awesome time hanging with these guys. Took our beers out into the sunny, albeit with a cold west wind, afternoon, telling stories, guffawing, getting to know one another. Sasha has been walking since somewhere up in Germany, two and a half months now. Gary since St. Jean. Gary, an electrical engineer, worked on guidance and control systems for Lockheed, before they were Lockheed-Martin, Polaris missile stuff, now a contractor building houses for thirty some years.
As I pay to leave! the owner approaches me! gives me salutations and what not in Spanish, hugs me, then as we release the hug, he suddenly, using both hands, grabs both of my breasts, squeezes them and, looking into my startled eyes, releases. He has a funny look on his face as this happens, as certainly ai have also. His is sort of a blank look, maybe just looking for my reaction, which is to sort of pull back a bit, shake my head, say, 'Okaaaayyy....' We leave, my brain a bit addled,and I tell T the story...sort of like, 'Bet we could get a free room here...at least I could.' Yikes!
We all of us decided to spend the night here, even though it was then the shortest day that T and I had walked, maybe twelve kilometers in all. We know that we can make it into Burgos in two days time, regardless of today's total. So after this brief interlude, Teo and I haul our bags about two blocks away, grab a double room for thirty Euros, where I take a shower, actually a bath (!), T goes out in search of wifi, does his stuff, and we meet these two guys at about seven back up at the San Antone Abàd for a pilgrim's meal..k
We are sat down at a pleasant table, wine red tablecloth, chat and laugh, order our primero, and our segundos, pour wine from the two bottles of tinto that come with our meals, and say a cheers to 'wayward travelers.' All of us order the chickpeas for our starter, and it comes in three parts. First a soup with small macaroni in it, with a basket of chewy, perfect pan. I gotta say it was good. The conversation was brilliant, Sasha playing the mischievous imp, Gary the straight guy, though kidder and generous laugher. Teo fully engaged, talking fast, laying out the correct comments at the correct time.
When ordering, Sasha beckons the server close, points to the chickpeas on the menu, which both she and the owner had highly recommended, to the German language section of the menu, and explains to her that 'kirschererben' (which is the translation printed for chickpea), then tells her, "Yeah, in German this means, uh...funny food. You know, funny, like,you eat and then 'hah, hah, hah!'" She sort of looks at him, looks back at the menu, leans closer, an inquisitive look on her face. "you know, like...like clown food? In German," points to the word that they chose for chickpea, "'kirscenebren' means clown food!" He looks at her, a wild grin on his face, waiting for her to klick in with him on this. She seems to not exactly get the meaning.
After we finish the soup, we are brought wide bowls with chickpeas cooked in a broth, but served without it, a very mild sauerkraut, and boiled potato. It too is good. Simple, flavorful, good. Then a large plate piled with four kinds of meats is placed between us: chorizo (not to be confused with the sausage of the same name from Mexico, this is closer to, but not, pepperoni); morcillo; chunks of jamón; and pieces of cooked, boiled, beef, kind of like boiled pot roast, cooled, cut up, and served thus. We refilled our glasses, grabbed more bread, and powered on.
We ordered different segundos,Teo and I getting the female shark, which was cooked delicately, meaning not too much. The meal was one of the better pilgrim's meals that we've had. Talk comes around to why we are walking the Camino.
For Sasha it is a combination of wanting a travel vacation that is affordable and interactive with people, with a culture, and that with millions of people having walked this path, there is an energy, a spiritual, communal energy along this physical route that he can tap into. Did you know that during the Middle Ages over a half a million pilgrims walked the Way each year? These persons, by the way, did not fly or take a bus back to their point of origin, they turned around and they walked back home. There are also many crosses along the side of the Camino to perigrinos that died along the way-something which apparently still happens once or twine a year. Sasha ponders the concept that for Catholics there is this 'way,' for Muslims there is their 'way,' the Haj, In the East they have their 'way'-but, and he does not know what this may be, there must be one way that exists for all people. He wants to find this.
Gary has known of the Camino for some thirty years. Earlier this year he received a message from God, he is a practicing Lutheran, informing him not only that will he walk the Camino, but that he will do it this year. Short and simple. Jeez, if only I was a believer. How much simpler things could be!
For Tdog it is that he knew I was going, that it sounded like a good way to see the world, that it's better than being in classes at Central, that he is in no hurry to finish his schooling.
And for me? Well, I explained being in Ellensburg for the last fourteen years to raise my two sons. Talked about having wanted to be in other countries, to see the world for my whole life. About how there are so many changes in my life, needing the time to think. And I also, like Sasha, wanted to more intimately interact with the people, the history, the culture and language of a different part of this planet. A second level capillary interaction, as I have formed the phrase before-first level being what one does when they fly their family to Cancún, for example, stay in the White person hotel, use the White person beach, practice the Spanish they learned back in high school on the guy at the front desk and the taxi driver on the way to a nice restaurant that they found in their Michelin guide.
At this juncture in my life, forty-eight years old, looking at a career change, kids graduated, marriage number two making the giant sucking sound of a toilet being flushed, needing, perhaps, to figure out what I want to do when, or if, I grow up, I think I need a bit of an internal make over. Need to sell my cleverness, my life long reliance on the power of my intellectual mind, on solving and configuring my view of myself and the world around me, and slide on into a more comfortable relationship with bewilderment, with the newness and open minded thinking of a child, look at this matrix of color, emotion, movement, sunlight, sound that we call the world around us, and stop trying to control and manipulate it. Allow myself the opportunity to have a 'do over,' to restart, to hit the reset button, pull off the veil of certainty, of formed opinion, of hardness and rigidity in my clever, already figured it all out way of seeing.
Maybe in this way I can cut away the Gordian knot that my insides have become, tethered and manacled to each and every point of certainty that I have decided upon. Free the hot air balloon of my inner child, allow it, allow me, to rise up again, to soar with the currents of the wind over and above the small minded obstacles that I have placed in my own way, floating so high that each of the otherwise large obstacles becomes, from this vantage point, wee, tiny specks far below. To have a perspective higher up above all that. To more effectively feel the warm rays of the sun on my cheek, to mingle and play with the stars and the clouds and the birds of the air.
Solvitur ambulanto? It was an approach promoted by the "wandering scholars" of medieval Europe. An ancient approach to enlightenment. It means: It is solved by walking. (Thanks, Sam!)
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