Got sixty-five hits on my blog today! I am so pleased that I can find a manner in which to communicate with others in this intimate, but, kind a by definition, being that it is through the web, not intimate way. Something wonderfully paradoxical in that. Like the wonderful meditation that mi Tío Jose sent me a couple days back. Thank you, Tío! That we experience pleasure, heartbreak, depression, is certain; these emotions, all of our experiences, the births or our children, wars, hummingbirds at our back deck, but yet the lasting importance, the emotional or experiential impact of these meaningful events in our world, in the bigger, geologic time perspective, mean what? And so much gracias to you, Ms. Melissa, for your so meaningful comments. You know who you are! Thank you. Excellente! Wonderment and awe that we have these jewels of moments, shared or solo, yet they are just and only that-moments. Playing Roy Batty, the renegade replicant in Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Bladerunner, Rutger Hauer, in a partially improvised speech which apparently ended with some of the crew in tears, says in the pivotal scene, when he decides to spare the life of the cop, Harrison Ford's character, Decker, sent to kill him- "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..." In the voice over that follows, the closing moments following the denouement, the untying of the knot, if you will, in cinephile parlance, Decker goes on to ponder and question the actions of Batty, who had no reason to save the life of the man sent to 'retire' him. In Batty's head was pre-set clock that he hoped to have removed, a timer clicking down on the last moments of his life. Aware that his own ability to experience this unexplainably sublime, wondrous to behold universe of infinite possibilities and richness, he made an ultimately more than human, almost a divine, decision: any and every life that holds any and every ability to both experience and to add to the experience of this planet which we seem to exist upon, is worthwhile. More than worthwhile-indispensable, necessary. Decker comes to this conclusion, and we hear his thoughts at the same time that we think over the possibilities of an 'artificial' mind comprised of silicon neurons, synapses, coming to this more than human understanding of this universe of wonder that surrounds us: "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life - anybody's life; my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?" Hope the Bladerunner allusions, quotes, haven't thrown a curve ball your way. There is a certain poignant and precise and haunting quality of emotion that is tapped into in the film, at this late point in it, that is about where I find the little homunculus inside me right now, peeking around the drapes of the windows that are my eyes, listening at the inlets of my ears, afraid to go outside, away from the relative safety of the dark, but known, corridors and sub-basements inside my head.
I think that more than any other city I have visited, I like Burgos. Hard to explain, as much of this attraction is collected inside of me as emotional reaction, interaction, difficult to quantify or even to qualify. The obvious elements are the amazingly beautiful edifices, sculptures, colors, textures of old and new, of people laughing, of the energy that floats and coalesces in the air around me, eddies and swirls like the gentle current of a river, between the spaces of the streets, connecting, conducting the electricity of the divine from person to person, from ancient cut stone to modern storefront, flowing across space, across time. I feel this here more than I have felt it any place before. I sit here at a table in this pedestrian calle, a man playing loud Spanish guitar, throwing in a Chilean sounding pan flute, strumming, the vibrations resonating, bouncing off of, and between, the faces of the canyon formed by the buildings on both sides. It is a bit past noon and across from me stand locals, abutting tall tables in front of Cervezeria 100 Montaditos, smoking, drinking beer, connecting. That's right...cafe torrero! Or, as a good friend used to say when he saw a beer in my hand, 'Is it noon already?' The kind of thing most Americans think is somehow unacceptable, depraved, immoral. The difference between a deeply Catholic, God loving, family loving culture and a Protestant, Puritan, judgemental culture. The one I fit right into, the other really causes me to form hives and to turn down the corner of my mouth.
Burgos has the European time schedule that I already live within, but that sort of works against me in the States. Eat dinner at nine or ten o'clock. Go out for a drink with a friend after dinner. Close down businesses, shops, for three hours from two to five en la tarde. Take a load off, work to live, not live to work. Teo and I were sitting out here yesterday afternoon playing Bloodbowl, him crushing me again, God damn kids, and the manager of the hotel/bar/tapas restaurant that we are staying at comes out to watch us, to inquire about our homemade yet complicated looking set up. A large, shaved head kind of guy, looking more bouncer than manager, teeth a bit askew, gets a big childlike grin, the kind that changes the position of one's ears due to its size, asks us about our set up. We have a ten minute conversation, show him the 63 page pdf Rulebook, his eyes widening, "Oyé!" he says, 'Holy shit!' He comments on how rustic our set-up is yet how we combine the iPad for rules and T's iPhone for the dice rolling app, needing both six and eight sided dice rolls. A gentle giant he turns out to be. Not ten minutes after goes back inside, he comes back ands sets down next to each of us a chupito grande of paxerraña, the young plum liquor from el Norte de España. A regalito, a small gift, he says. Whadda ya think, does this happen much where you go to get your lunch? Yeah, not for me either back in the uptight world of the good ole US of A. In the states If one needs to pee, one knows that most businesses aren't looking on your use of their facilities with favor unless you are enriching them in a literal sense. Not so across the Atlantic here. They show you where it is, smile, 'Pues, vale," and have a good day. Enrichment comes in forms other than the literal. Humanness has value in a wider slice of the population. People, one feels, value many things more than how much more 'capital' they can accrue that day. The organization of entire sections of a city for people strolling, interacting, locking out cars, changes not only the immediately observable happenings and interactions, but also the less knowable but, in my view, the even more important energetic interactions, the tenor of the waves between and around us, that river of bathtub warm energy that connects the all of us moving between and around each other in a chaotic yet perfect dance orchestrated by no one, yet inclusive of all.
One feels not the sense of threat or the tightness of not making eye contact like one does so often in larger cities in the US. Have you ever walked the crowded streets of Manhattan? Noticed that it is better to look at your shoes than into the eyes of those brushing past you? Here that feeling is missing, well, I sure don't 'miss' it, let's just say it is absent. In its place are people, from old to young, smiling, or not, yet still with an air of approachability, ready with a, "buenos tardes," at any and every moment. It is not fatiguing to walk the street even if it is packed with people, a feeling I've experienced in busy streets at busy times in metropolitan areas in the US. Sure, I'm subjective and yes I'm on a bit of a 'this is new and great to be in Europe' high, so, yeah, I may be feeling all of this in a manner that gives all the positive things I can find more importance and more value than they may, in actuality, have. Fine. Yet I have faith in my ability to understand that which I perceive and to understand that which I prefer and my ability to discern why. It is this process, this unfolding of my understanding of my time here, of this pivotal time in my life, that I share. It may not be The Truth, but surely it is my truth. Had fun hanging out with Menno some more yesterday, even though he continued to say, two days running, that he was leaving, walking on down the trail. So that, in this way, we said goodbye about three or four times over a thirty-six hour period. We began to crack up each time we'd see him again, 'Fuckin' Menno!' He ended up staying at our hotel his last night here, the night before last, at least I think that it is his last night now, until, perhaps he shows up again in the next half hour! Hope to see him again. What's the line from the film The Way, "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!' My heel is healing. Bought a pair of, gasp!, walking shoes yesterday. Got a gel sole insert under my left heel. Taking handfuls of ibuprofen therefore placing an even heavier demand on my poor liver. Sorry 'bout that, bud, hang in there. Please! Decided to take one more day in Burgos, what will be, in the end, four nights spent here. The price is right, given that we spend about ten euros a night to sleep in a dorm style room in the small towns that we stay in and yet here we each drop twelve and a half for our own room, well, closet, with our own bathroom.
My heart, however, the small, wounded part inside, not really doing as well as my bruised heel. The feeling of being alone, looking at the clock, seeing some time between three and five in the morning on the clock, knowing that I haven't the strength either to get up now to kill the fear of the rest of the night alone, waiting for the coming light, nor to try to go back to sleep alone, my bed somehow a mile wide and so, so empty. The she that needs to occupy it knows where she should be and why she is not there. And it is in the knowing that I find my greatest pain, my greatest challenge.
I finally got the legend of the internment of the body of St. James in Santiago de Compostella. I would enjoy sharing it with you. Please allow me that, dear reader. Gary shared this with Tdog and me as we walked around last night waiting for the restaurant that he recommended that we eat at to reopen after siesta. They open for dinner at eight thirty. So, first off, and it never even occurred to me to look at the etymology of this, the name of the city that marks the end point of this twelve hundred year old pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostela, is not just a fancy sounding, aurally aesthetic phrase. The Spanish name Santiago, as strange as it seems, is translated in English as James! Shouldn't it be, like, Jaime or something? Call me Captain Cognate, but it is counter intuitive. The name of the city translates as St. James under the field of stars.
Fearing that his body would be defiled, the early apostles dug up the buried corpse of the recently headed by the Romans St. James, placed it in a boat made of stone, and sunk it. A miracle occurred and the boat, pilotless and somehow able to float, sailed itself to the western coast of Spain, where it beached and St. James' body, covered in cockle shells, washes ashore. It is found by a peasant farmer in a field, under a night sky full of stars. The scallop becoming the symbol of the peregrino. As a symbol, the many lines of the shell leading to one central point also symbolized the many different routes of the various Caminos, of the many converging upon the one. And, so, Santiago de Compostela, St. James under the field of stars.
The American statesman and then President, James Madison, en route to Paris with his two sons to attempt, on order from the US Congress, to extract funds from the French to help continue the fight against the British in 1779, was on a ship that began to take on water and landed at Finnesterre. He and his two sons did a reverse pilgrimage, fuckin' Americans!, traveling along the Camino route to Paris. His words lend more information and a certified trueness to the description of said: "I have always regretted that We could not find time to make a Pilgrimage to Saintiago de Compostella. We were informed, ... that the Original of this Shrine and Temple of St. Iago was this. A certain Shepherd saw a bright Light there in the night. Afterwards it was revealed to an Archbishop that St. James was buried there. This laid the Foundation of a Church, and they have built an Altar on the Spot where the Shepherd saw the Light. In the time of the Moors, the People made a Vow, that if the Moors should be driven from this Country, they would give a certain portion of the Income of their Lands to Saint James. The Moors were defeated and expelled and it was reported and believed, that Saint James was in the Battle and fought with a drawn Sword at the head of the Spanish Troops, on Horseback. The People, believing that they owed the Victory to the Saint, very cheerfully fulfilled their Vows by paying the Tribute. ...Upon the Supposition that this is the place of the Sepulchre of Saint James, there are great numbers of Pilgrims, who visit it, every Year, from France, Spain, Italy and other parts of Europe, many of them on foot." I picked up a pair of WALKING shoes today! Yeah! Gary, Teo, and I walked to the Basé store across the río, and I found that getting a size 47/48 (the European version of size twelve) was difficult enough. What it meant was that I had only about one tenth of the shoes to choose from. Found a pair, will let you know how it turns out. The Osho quote that starts this piece has found a place in me. In the 'infinite sky' of my being. So that it does not much matter if my moment is full of perceived loss, of perceived connection and grounding, or of boredom or of erotic love. It is but a moment, a tear in the rain, washing away, merging, not a discernible or separate element in the final analysis. Hell, who am I kidding? The moments that we remember for their power in our lives don't amount to anything at all in the 'scheme of things.' To us, sure. But what does that mean? It is like saying that to your six year old it really, really matters if their favorite TV show has ended for the season, or if their newest, best friend chose not to sit with them at lunch. Clouds passing in the sky. It does not matter, the sky remains. I am a child, blonde haired kid with a funny name. I am running with outstretched arms, hands, fingers splayed wide, the puff seed heads of the dandelions and the seeds released from the tall stalks of the hay in my father's fields riffling between my digits. The lens flare from the sun as it smites through and between the wind rippling surface of the sea of the acres of grasses. It is August and the world is mostly far away, mostly silent, the sharp notes of magpies, the shrill whistle of the red tailed hawks, a mated pair of them, circling, soaring, watching, from on high. The gurgle and rushing of the water released from the ditch as it hits the distribution box and moves it's liquid power up and down the many, many gates and furrows. Far, far away, my eyes, face turning slowly and around, hear the whistle, the calling, from my father. And faithfully, earnestly, some small regret pining inside, I turn, a new fire inside beginning, and make for home.
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Location:Calle de la Paloma,Burgos,Spain
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