Solitude shows us what we should be-society shows us what we are. Lord Cecil
Forgive my helter skelter numbering of the days and the distances. Here things are difficult for me to track, the days sliding the one into and through the other, the distances hard to find accurately. Between usually writing of any given day two plus days after it has passed, and the fact that most days I can find only about ninety minutes to write, when I clearly need more like two or three hours, it is hard to crank out pieces that are interesting and of any quality. Yet I try, viewing my writing as practice, as exercise, really only rechecking them one time for editing purposes as opposed to revision. In this way the overall structure of the entries, the balance and weight given to the serious aspects that I choose to include, usually being what I see, a bit of history, internal emotional states or notes, anecdotes, humor, is not really getting reviewed in any meta-writing way.
So, dear reader, where have we left off? León, probalmente. So, yes, León. A great city. The old quarter is really so special. Alive. Vibrant. Full of color, of people laughing. Fulfilling. And here, then, is where our story once again begins. The first morning that we spend in León, Teo is still sleeping at ten-thirty when I get out of my bath. Okay, he has gone back to sleep after doing his news reading, email checking, Face timing Veronica, etc. I go out, find a warmish spot in the sun, the wind and air temp about forty degrees, by a fuente in front of Gaudí's magnificent Casa de Botines, complete with St. George slaying the dragon over the main entrance, and write. Then I get two bocadillos, and some sweets, two truffles and two pieces of a rice pudding sort of cake layered over a thin slice of yellow cake, bringing them back to T for our breakfast and lunch. He is pleased; we both have had almost no sweets in our time in Europe. After eating we go to the shoe store for WALKING shoes for Tdog, try to get his feet right.
We hit this one expensive store, T remembers another one nearby, where we finally find a couple pairs out of the thousands, that will fit his large ass feet. Nike. Finally. He does not like Nike, but he likes these well enough. The man waiting on us is small, five foot six, maybe, gay, wearing a black, over sized suit coat, more like what Napoleon would wear than what one would wear out, but nice, in sort of a 'whatever you Americans are into,' sort of way.
Then to a market to buy overpriced, but really good cecina de buey (cured, dark, almost black, cured, thinly sliced ox), local queso de oveja, remarkably covered in tightly packed rosemary instead of wax, bananas, tomato, an onion, and an apple, and go home to put it up for our next day, and to decide what next to do. We parted company with Menno when we hit the city. He deciding between a cheaper municipal albergue that may have the cute, dark haired, big eyed Austrian gal that we met in Mansilla, and a private hostal or hotel, going his own way. Good enough. The way it has gone, we figure, we'll see him again. The Way of St. James seems to work this way.
We go out, Bloodbowl board and pieces in hand, to look for a place to sit, with wi-fi, and to play. After an interminable bit of walking, a find an establishment that seems just right. I ask if I can buy a botella de tinto, and the guy asks his boss if it is okay, then pulls one out, uncorks it, at which point the owner, perhaps his father, comes to where we are, and angrily says it will cost more and that we must drink it there. Fine. Whatever. They give us the wi-fi code, and we set up our game.
We play, get through most of the first half, when the place closes, at four-thirty, for siesta. We move down the block, to the Victoria Café to resume our contest. Upstairs, where we sit, it is littered with couches, love seats, coffee tables between them. It turns out that besides us two the place fills up with couples. It is a necking spot. We have drinks, a Jameson's on the rocks for T, and a beer for me. I lead at the half, 2-0. My Wood Elves, The Lothlorien Leapers, against his Vampire team, the Saint Slayers. We go out and look for a place to score some dinner, and run into, yeah, you guessed it, in this city of 130,000, fucking Menno. He is out with two new friends from the albergue, a Spanish woman and a German national. We head to a bar a few blocks away, order croquetas, wine, huevos rotas con picadillo, jamón de serrano. We hang with them for a bit and then, T and I, head out once again into that dark night.
We find an empty place, run by a middle eastern man, that serves hamburguesas and durum, think soft pita wraps, chicken and veggies, with a plate of fries to split. We talk and eat. Teo has a brain on him and it doesn't all go as well for me as I am used to. A tough customer, the boy takes no shit, calls me on mine, but we talk the Bible, what Americans use to justify their incessant wars, etc. We connect. For a father it is heaven.
Returning to our Hotel Guzmán el Bueno, the night desk guy is watching fútbol, draws T's attention. We chat him up, they talk serious fútbol. T and I decide to go grab a sweet roll, buy one for the night desk guy, bring it to him as a thank you for being friendly, for making us feel at home, welcome. We go to our room, save the sweet rolls for breakfast with bananas, I get in the tub, write and put up a post, T talks up Veronica, goes to sleep.
Now less than three hundred kilometers from our goal. Still about one hundred and eighty miles. Quite a lot, yet it seems handleable when one considers that we have already put away about five hundred klicks, three hundred miles. Will leave this albergue within twenty minutes and chop off another slice of the Way. Should be in Astorga either late today or tomorrow. Then we start the rolling hills of Galicia.
Yes, tired. As though the last ten years has just caught me, as though I have been running from it, staying one step ahead, and now, this slow process of walking has allowed it to overtake me, to overwhelm me. The weight of all of it is Iike some enormous, viscous fluid poured over and around me, a liquid metal, cooled against my skin, immobilizing me, pulling me to the ground. It surprises me how fatiguing it is to wear this, to be inside of this block of carbonite, frozen in place.
There are, despite my many rants and complaints of emotional low-ness, some bright spots. Being with Teo. Walking the Camino-two thirds of the way through now. New friends, Gary, Menno, Julia. Been emailing back and forth with the latter, am very pleased to be still in contact with her. Sent her a fairly over the top communique a few days back, did not figure she would still want to chat with me anymore-hey, like I told her, I am not the guy to be a spectator in my own life. She being a beautiful, lively, engaging woman-guess I needed to express that I felt those things. I mean it is not like a long distance 'thing,' it is just a fun friendship, a meaningful way for me, at this rather hollow emotional juncture in my life, to find someone real to interact with, and in a way that always leaves some opening for a potential future, you know? Just enough of a maybe as to titilate and to excite, something other than the crappy feelings of being screwed over by my best friend, you get what I mean, right?. The rest, well those of you who know me get this, is fine enough for me to take to the bank inside the corners of my brain!
Thinking about all the ways my life may go. Really like Spain a lot, thinking about perhaps even living here at some point in my future. First is the UAE, a good paying job, maybe two years. Want, need, to put myself in a better financial position for the next decade or two of my life. Want to be able to be in a better position to aide my two amazing sons to create for theirselves a life that they deserve to have. They are such good guys, sweet, treat others well, polite, boiling over with life energy, not too chained down.
I like Spain. No, I really, really like Spain. Think that Madrid would be my choice. Love my Uncle there. Have made a few friends, Gonzalo, Ignacio, Victoria. Find the mix of modern, bad ass, and ancient, the cobblestone and the terribly old, the glow of the sodium lights reflecting off of the myriad surfaces too enticing. Hey, for me much more about life is tied up in the lighting, that's right, I said, in the lighting, than others seem to think. When T and I go looking for a spot to hang, a bar, a restaurant, he knows that bright white, especially fluorescent, lights are deal breakers. Hell, I travel with red plastic sheets to place over the small lights in any room I stay in. Menno looked at me as if I were crazy, and had he known me better he could have already known that this was true, when I started rejecting establishments based on the lighting. Sorry Charlie, that is how this boy rolls.
I guess that I just figure that I am tired of living in a country whose policies, both domestic and abroad, do not fit me. A Christian nation who loves nothing better than to bomb other peoples back 'into the Stone Age,' just sticks entirely in my craw. Sorry to those of you who dig this concept, but Christian or not, I just can not abide paying for it any longer. The only Westernized country, not to mention the wealthiest one, that can not get legislation through to make healthcare something other than a for profit enterprise. Really? Come on people, a Christian nation that gives billions of dollars each year to corporations, seven TRILLION (yeah, not billions look it up, folks) to banks, billions to farmers to not grow crops, can not figure out a way to do what all the other, poorer countries are doing? We, inadequately in my opinion, already have 'socialized' medical coverage for our elderly and our veterans, right? I mean do you also disapprove of our 'socialized' police and K through 12 education system (I do not mean how effective they are, but the concept that they are obviously, certainly by definition, socialist)?
No, enough for me. I am a spiritual being on a human journey and, luckily, I am aware of this. No. No more. I'll do my time, I'll play the game, just long enough to find a different game to play. We need to take care of each other, not stash away enough cash to get the next, bigger house, the next, cooler car or electronic device. This system may work for you, and God bless you for that, but it does not for me. My conscience dictates that I walk the talk-spouting charity and good will while leaving our own citizens high and dry and sending drones into countries we are not at war with and killing persons who have not had access to due process or habeus corpus smacks of banditry and lawlessness to me. Stating as justification for these actions that we are at war and therefore can bypass pretty much all conventions, codes, even our own Bill of Rights here with our own citizens sort of loses steam when you realize that we have declared war on a noun, right? On 'terror.' Please tell me that that is a joke. I want no part of it.
Sitting here, feeling okay about things. About my just finished relationship, my just ended, most recent marriage, wondering where, like a lap when you stand up, does it go? Okay just the same. Fuck it all, yah? Next to a wood stove in bum fuck Spain, 12:21 in the morning, the others asleep. Once again. The Night Country, as Loren Eisley puts it, the strange hours. And what am I thinking? How can I know until I speak it....
I am thinking of my childhood. I am a thin, small, blond haired, blue eyed boy of six. My mother has dressed my two older brothers and I in matching clothes, red patent leather, gold buckled shoes, shorts, wool button up vests, and we wait expectantly in the front room of our two story, low income, government townhouse for our father and step-mother's arrival. It is late May, and our summer spent with my father and step-mother is about to begin. Our suitcases are packed, yet we check them anyway. My mother has prepared the meal that we have come to associate with this twice yearly transition to stay with our father on 'the farm--' English muffins, butter, cherry preserves, orange juice.
As my father will not come to our door, he will only drive and stop on the road, West Washington, that runs between our place and Brittingham Park, we must be alert for his arrival. Which we are, heightened by the adrenalin spike of leaving our mother and our peer group two times each year to drive the thirty six hours straight from our school year home here in Madison, Wisconsin, to the very center of Washington State. I am small in every way. Inside I am not even the waif that my skinny exterior represents. I am scared. Without my older brothers I would not be able to get by. This much, to me, is clear. And in this time there exists, mostly, just us three. My mother is a good woman. And she tries hard to provide for us what no man will help her in doing. She works hard to rear us in a proper manner amidst this most improper setting.
Our home is placed in the middle of a small ghetto of low income housing, almost entirely black, rough, a place where Babis are found in the trash can dead, where one friend shoots and kills another with a twenty two caliber rifle. Remember the police that day, one white cop there with another white cop, after asking what happened, "One injun shot another injun." Remember how we saw them as belonging to some other group, 'them,, as our friends within the confines of Bayview, as 'us.' Yet the butter melts finely, slowly on the pocked surface of the warm English muffin, pooling in the small wells, moving aside easily as the dark red jam, full of almost candied cherries is pushed across its surface with a butter knife. Still the VW bus has not arrived, but it will soon. And my mother, my beautiful, adoring mother, her heart asunder almost, upon her sleeve, tells us again and again how she loves us.
Then the beige 1970 bus stops at the curb, some twenty five meters distance, and my father, full bearded, does not come to the door. It is we instead, spritely and so young, who must bridge this disjointed gap between our two parents, their ability to commune ruined, wrecked, smashed asunder when we three were cast between them, so many broken toys amidst their broken play. We are again thrown between the loss of our mother's warm love, her toothed, wide smile, the connection of playmates, our daily lives, and the too large, animated, sureness of our father, the other life that we lived for four months each year on the farm that he and our step-mother ran, our country selves, tucked neatly away twice annually to return to he life of city rats that we had learned to become. It is morning again, still dark, first light. It is cold now, the season having turned over, winter crowding out the fall. We see the television, no sound, in the bar. See people digging their cars out of the snow. I do not pay attention, busy doing other things, figure it must be a blizzard in New England, or perhaps a shot of Norway. Teo taps me on the arm, "Look, Boss." Points at the screen. "That's Santiago." Yeah. Santiago de Compostella, where we are walking to. We ran into an Australian yesterday, discussed the weather prospects, condition of our feet. He, like us, prefers walking or running shoes, but, of course, has boots in his pack for wet and snow. We do not. He laughed, remarked that what we have on are "like socks" when it comes to repelling, or should I say, soaking up, moisture and cold.
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