I’m Off Again to the Camino in Spain

I haven’t blogged here for over a year, which is apparent if you check the dates. There’s been much water under the bridge, too much to account for in any detail right now.  But so far 2011 included delicious new friendships; the deaths of two people important to me; a rekindled interest in the work of Abraham-Hicks; continual letting-go of stuff in an effort to sell my house; and plodding progress with Peregrino Kids, the working title for the children’s book I’m writing.

Now, after a debate with myself regarding whether to blog again about my upcoming trip to Spain, I’ve decided I would, as much so I have a record myself as so others can read what I’m doing.

In a few days I’m off to the Camino de Santiago de Compostela again: traveling alone this time for the first twelve days, then jumping in with a tour group that’s really a fund-raiser for a documentary movie on the Camino.

What’s my intention this second trip? Why am I again walking the Camino, or at least parts of it? This time, I have at least one very specific purpose.

In the last couple days I’ve been rereading the first ten chapters of my children’s book (for 8 – 12 year olds) about the Camino. Reading along, I felt quite discouraged and judgmental and bored with it for awhile—though I do think it picks up and becomes engaging after about fifty pages. So now I know I have a huge rewrite ahead and the last third of the book to draft for the first time.

Thus my inner work on the Camino will be to become open to and allow inspiration, enthusiasm, and plot ideas to show up. I want renewed awareness of the spirit of adventure and the spirit of the Camino. I want renewed trust in and respect for myself as a writer. I desperately want to feel/allow/permit my characters to show up with their authentic personalities without manipulating or contriving them. I want to allow my unconscious to toss up shining, twisting, and turning adventures, so that each chapter delights, arouses interest, and builds momentum. And I want to enjoy all the process and take copious notes and pictures.

Oh, this business of composing fiction is a long and arduous camino in itself. And yet I know the fun of it, and that’s what I want to experience! So I’m off again, intending to stay tuned to the adventures and discoveries of Jimmy (10) and Lizzy (12) and their home-schooling mother on the marvelous and ancient Route of St. James.

Viva Guatemala—A Great Place to Learn Spanish

I went to Guatemala in July and August 2010 to learn a bit more Spanish, to take an adventure trip with three old friends from Philadelphia days, and to celebrate my 65th birthday.

Mission accomplished! With much fun.

If you look up ‘color’ in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Guatemala. Everything there is color, intense color.

Bright colored flower

(Well, almost everything. The exit from airport and the drive out of the capital, Guatemala City, is undisguised industrial urban gray, with occasional bursts of commercial signage to which I was immediately drawn as I tried to decode the words and see if there were any I recognized.)

Once in the countryside, oh, emerald green is everywhere. It’s the rainy season. Gorgeous foliage—trees, vines, ferns, gardens, plowed field, flowers, coffee finkas—especially stunning to me since I was coming from the Southern California semi-desert. In fact, the name Guatemala is a Spanish corruption of ‘Quauhtlemallan,’ which means Land of Many Trees.

Then I came to the ancient ruined-and-then-revived city of Antigua. Some say it was the first capital of Guatemala, but according to my language teacher, it was the third capital (Ixinche, destroyed by the Spanish under the cruel Alvarado in 1524; Cuidad Vieja, inundated in 1541; then Antigua, destroyed by earthquake in 1773; then finally Guate—as the locals call Guatemala City).

TMI—too much information?  Well, I often think of the only thing I remember from a college education course: “knowledge breeds interest and interest breeds knowledge.” That was certainly my experience with Guatemala, as I had NO interest in its history prior to my trip. Now my interest level is up to Modest.

Here’s one historic tidbit I found astonishing: For a time, all of Central America from southern Mexico to Panama was known as Guatemala, and Antigua was its capital. Today that area includes six countries—Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.  Who knew?

The language school my friends and I attended in Antigua is Escuela de Español San José el Viejo. One of the premier schools in that town, which has many. The site shares a wall with the ancient ruin of the church of San José el Viejo.

San Jose el Viejo Spanish School with Ruins Behind

One of the things I found intriguing, in Guatemala as well as in Spain, is that often the facade of an institution or store that faces or sits directly on the street is nondescript, even ugly. No pretty window displays or attractive logos.

But once you open the door and step over the sill, you walk into paradise: gardens, shaded tables, tile floors and walls, pretty displays, flower pots, paintings—civility, order, beauty, wealth.

We had scheduled two weeks for Spanish language lessons, six hours a day, with one-to-one teachers. From 8:00 am to 4:00 pm (with a two hour break for lunch) we sat with our teachers in small open carrels, each outfitted with a table and two chairs and a whiteboard. Occasionally mosquitoes buzzed about, and my teacher and I smashed them against the wall, keeping score who smashed the most in a day. That sounds terrible, but it wasn’t. It added levity to the lessons.

A carrel for Spanish lessons

My teacher was 38-year-old Julio, a good-looking-man-about-town, father of three daughters who lived with their mother in Guatemala City. Julio lived with his mother in a poorer part of Antigua, in a tiny cement-block house on a narrow street. He was religious, attending the Church of Ebenezer several times a week. He rode a bike to work, and a bus to the city to visit his family. Employment is hard to obtain in Guatemala now, and due to the global economy, the beautiful school wasn’t getting the number of students this year as it had previously, so he seemed grateful to have a student.

Our four teachers taught different things to each of us, depending on our level of language and interests, though there did seem to be a rough curriculum they followed.  We’d compare what we learned each day, as reinforcement and a way to pick up additional info. Julio started off each morning with me with conversation in Spanish–what I did the day before, what he did, what I saw and ate, what he ate at home. He’d write new words on the board and I’d copy into my notebook the terms. I especially liked learning commonly used idioms: “Si hay lluvia no, yo…”  (If it doesn’t rain, I’ll…); “tal vez” (perhaps); “igualmente” (same to you–as when someone says they’re pleased to meet you); and my favorite, “¡Yo olvido!” (I forgot). When I did remember something he taught the day before, he enthusiastically used “¡Dame los cinco! (Gimme five!)

With My Teacher Julio

The accommodations at the San Jose el Viejo school were magnificent. Three of us shared the Castle Room, the prettiest room I’ve ever slept in. One wall was huge windows with a view of Vulcan Agua; the first several days cloud cover was so heavy we hardly believed there was a volcano behind them. Then a sunny day revealed it. Oh, oh. Two other walls had tall french doors which opened onto small balconies. A breeze blew almost continuously; a unique window-within-a-door feature allowed us to view rain torrents without ever getting wet.

Volcano Agua from Our Window

In Antigua and probably in any Guatemalan town with tourists, the street peddlers are ubiquitous. Generally they are women dressed in indigenous clothing, with an armful of necklaces balancing a huge stack of brightly colored fabrics–scarves, table covers, placemats, small purses, spreads, and so forth.  Their wares are gorgeous: brilliant red, vermillion, gold, mustard, indigo, shocking blue often woven with a zigzag pattern easily recognizable as Guatemalan.

If I even glance at the women, they hold up a piece and say, If you buy it now, I give you good price.

No, gracias no, I say. They speak to me in broken English while I speak to them in crippled Spanish.

How much you want to pay? is the next question.

No, no gracias. No quiero. I don’t want it.

Very beautiful. I give you good price. What you want to pay?

Then I say an absurdly low price: 50 quetzales.

She looks appalled. No, no, 200 quetzales. It’s handmade in my village.

And then we’re off in the negotiations for what I didn’t want in the first place.

Depending on my fortitude, I may or may not end up with a purchase. The same dialogue could take place in a small booth in the mercado, with often identical of products. The pierce-your-eyes-with-color products are everywhere and choosing becomes very difficult.

Here’s a picture of a vendor selling güipils (prounounced wee-peels), the traditional heavily embroidered blouse that indigenous women wear.

Woman in Mercado Selling Guipils

In Antigua one can walk just about anywhere. It’s a very small town, filled with ruins of Spanish-conquistidor-built churches, restaurants, stores, offices. The streets are cobbled, with very narrow sidewalks, and obnoxiously smelly diesel-fueled cars passing frequently. But there’s no horn honking (it’s outlawed, I believe), a sweet relief in such a city.

My traveling companions were food-ies, interested in exotic, expensive, often European, cuisine, so with them I visited the interiors of Antigua’s finest restaurants. No doubt the ex-presidents of many countries had eaten in the same ones we did. This culinary interest of my friends led to endless conversations about which restaurant to sample next and whether it would rain before we walked to it. One member of our group was vegetarian, so we’d read posted menus carefully before entering to make sure she would also be able to eat. Had I been traveling alone or with others on a similar budget, I would have had rice and beans and tortillas much more frequently. And I would have liked that just fine, too. To tell the truth, after eating out twice a day for several weeks, even the most beautiful restaurants become tiresome and one wishes for a hot plate on which to cook one’s own simple food.

Speaking of food, the Guatemalan avocados deserve special mention. It was the season for them; they grow prolifically on huge trees, almost wild. One of our favorite restaurants was Panza Verde, in a hotel of the same name, with French chefs, museum-level artifacts in its lobby, and evening concerts: it’s name means ‘green stomach.’ In honor of the ubiquitous, soft, delicious fruit.

Besides wonderful restaurants, in Antigua, one can also see plenty of third-world poverty.  Julio took me and Len and his teacher on a walking trip to a very small school, really more like a day-care center, staffed by two poorly paid teachers and some volunteers. It was a place for the children of the mercado (public market) workers, the men and women who cook the street food, vend home-farm-grown vegetables or firewood or cast-off clothing from the US, or try to attract buyers of homemade good. There seems to be no government paid provision for educating these children (they work in the market in the afternoons), so socially conscious people do what they can. Julio was a friend of one of the teachers and he produced a list of things the school needed; we stopped along our route to buy them to present as a visitors’ gift: powdered milk, a jar of nutritional supplement, toilet paper, pencils and writing paper, dish soap–such basics.

Children at Nino Obrero

But of course, Guatemala also has its politically committed individuals and institutions, determined to preserve and pass on to future generations the treasures of their ancient Mayan past—the musical instruments, the folk art, the old ways of doing things. We saw an excellent music museum attached to a working coffee finka. Generally, the indigenous people are private; they wear their beautiful clothing proudly and often do not like to be photographed. (It works to purchase something, then ask the indigenously dressed vendor if you may take a photo. Usually they are agreeable then.)

Woman Shopowner with Children

After our two weeks in school in Antigua, we took a two-hour van ride to Panajachel, a small busy town on the banks of Lake Atitlan—the most beautiful lake in the world, according to Aldous Huxley, because it is surrounded by pristine volcanic mountains.  The tourist industry has made the most of this town–it’s filled with small hotels and restaurants; its main street is wall-to-wall shops. Took-tooks, brightly painted motorized three-wheeled vehicles, buzz about; they’re cheap and safe, it appears, if you don’t mind feeling you’ll be overturned when they round a corner.

One of the best things for me on this trip was being included in various invitations because my traveling companions knew native Guatemalans: Paula’s daughter-in-law grew up there and her grandchildren visit for the summer; Hannah was long involved in adoptions there and knew lawyers and orphanage staff. I felt privileged and grateful to have several meals in homes, to get to see how people decorate their space and serve food. Most of the middle-class families have household help—young women to buy and cook the food and to clean. It would be almost impossible to function otherwise.

In Panajachel, we rented a small two-bedroom house in a resort community right on the lake; what a beautiful place to relax, to watch the sunset, to have privacy and even an evening pot-luck party. Shared among several people, it was certainly affordable.

And twice we visited other lakeside villages: Santa Catarina, known for its blue fabrics, and San Juan la Laguna, known for its progressive community organizations, artists, and women’s weaving cooperative. In the latter town, a guide met our boat and took us to a presentation in the home of the woman who revived the ancient way to dye and weave native cotton–which she learned from her grandmother and passed on to her children.

This was fascinating, and obviously a frequently told story, as her little workshop home and her visual aids were ready whenever a viewer arrived. Here are pictures of the natural materials used to dye and make color-fast the thread. I couldn’t resist buying a beautiful heavy shawl.

Natural Products Used for Dye--San Juan la Laguna

Our time was up after the week in Panajachel. We took a van to the airport about three hours away, traversing a highway with many landslides, for the rainfall that week had been frequently furious.  But in Guatemala, the locals know how to deal with that. With both hand tools and bulldozers, they clear obstructions. Traffic must go through; people’s livelihood depend in transport.

Would I go back to Guatemala? Probably. Now I’d like to see the Aztec pyramids in the North and more of the ruins. It would be fun to live with a family next time for the genuinely Spanish-language immersion experience. And I’d take more money, buy more fabrics, and carry my purse more carefully.

Oh, did I tell you about the pickpocket experience? Or my birthday party?

So many stories, so little time….  Viva Guatemala!

Esther at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Zaphkiel, Archangel to Those Born June 11–July 22

My birthday was a few days ago, July 19. I asked a Spanish friend to translate for me the information on Archangel Zaphkiel (the archangel for people born between June 11 and July 22) that I found on a small laminated card at a Knights-Templar-associated place when I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain last fall.

The card describes Zaphkiel’s domain, gifts and powers, and how to pray or intercede through him.

It has a mottled light-green background with the picture of an angel with flowing dark hair and large white wings, dressed in a long light-orange robe. The archangel looks distinctly feminine, but the nouns and pronouns usually used for it are masculine. Actually, I believe archangels are considered genderless.

Cristina, my friend who translated the card, said the written style is quite medieval and old-fashioned, and it was challenging to put the concepts into contemporary language.

From a quick google search, I found that Zaphkiel is often regarded as the angel of understanding and contemplation. One source associated him/her with Noah, because Noah saved the family; another associated him/her with the planet Saturn.

Here’s the translation from the card; I’ve italicized it all:

ZAPHKIEL
Archangel to people born between June 11 and July 22

Prince of the Thrones
Choir of the Ruling Guardian Angels from June 11 to July 22.
To receive their help, we can pray to the Archangel Zaphkiel at any time.

Gifts and Powers that Zaphkiel Gives

Zaphkiel is God’s Vision or God’s Eye.

Zaphkiel is the Angel of contemplation and revelation.

Zaphkiel does not make any decision for us but directs us onto possible paths, giving us their meanings.

Zaphkiel is also the Angel of mother’s caring and devotion for her children.

Zaphkiel, Archangel Prince and rector of the Thrones, brings with them the illumination that allows one to perceive and overcome life’s tests.

Zaphiel can intervene in any area where you need help such as: Love, Money, Health, Spirituality, and Work. Also, if you want, Zaphkiel can assist a loved one or a relative.

You need to call Zaphkiel often in order to receive assistance. Do not forget to express your gratitude to God, the creator of the Universe.

Prayer to Archangel Kaphkiel

Archangel Zaphkiel, Prince of the Thrones, give me a mission because I want to participate in God’s Work. I am willing to work and will do my best to understand. I want to use all my talents and abilities
in service to the World. I want to give myself spiritually, mentally and physically to the Creation.
With your help I can fulfill my wish to contribute to humanity’s well being.

For me, it’s most interesting that the archangel that governs my birthdate is associated with mothering, children, the family. My main interest right now is in parenting education and family literacy, as evidenced two books I’ve produced in the past few years, the Way to Go! Family Learning Journal (2006) and Plus It! How to Easily Turn Everyday Activities into Learning Adventures for Kids (2009). Hmm.

Dear reader, feel free to comment and write your thoughts about all this, especially if you also connect to the wondrous Archangel Zaphkiel.  Aren’t we fortunate!

Muhammad Yunus: Social Business, Social Action

This morning I finished reading Muhammad Yunus’s book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

He’s in my Top Five most influential people of the last half of the twentieth century. (By the way, who are your top five?)

Professor Yunus and the bank he started, Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 because they brought at least 70 million families out of poverty in Bangladesh.

Yunus is an amazing practical visionary: a humble, but well-educated man, like Gandhi, whose leadership has change the world through small steps bravely taken, reasonably assessed, and then brilliantly implemented—toward a huge goal: ending poverty as we know it on planet Earth.

The book most-readably details the realizations he had in the 1970s, when as an economist he observed that there existed a huge population of people who were outside the boundaries of what was considered normal economic activity: poor women in their homes in small villages, the urban poor, beggars.

He, a Muslim man, began studying the lives of these poor women, especially, asking questions, and discovering that no matter how hard they worked, they were outside the financial system and thus could never leverage their labor and ideas sufficiently to get out of poverty.

To make a 30-year long story short: he started a microloan bank for villager. He turned the rules upside down: he loaned money without asking for collateral; he loaned to the illiterate; he loaned almost exclusively to women, and in very small amounts; he insisted on repayment and worked with them to assist that happening; he helped them form support groups; he established certain principles that borrowers had to adapts (like growing vegetables, keeping their housing repaired, sending their children to school…).

And all the while, he developed and tested a new economic theory, built not on profit-making but on people’s innate desire to do good, to help: he’s called it social business.

A social business is a full-fledged entrepreneurial business, absolutely designed to make money. However, investors do not get the profits: after they are repaid their investment, the profits are plowed back into the company to continue doing good. It’s a non-loss, non-dividend arrangement for investors.

Yunus is a trained scholar, an active researcher, an eloquent speaker, an excellent thinker and clear writer, an inventor, a theoretician, a father, a man who has held fast to an extraordinary impossible vision to the point where it has been created.

In the final chapter of Creating a World Without Poverty, he pushes the envelope even more. He itemizes his dream for 2050, for what he thinks is possible if we collectively develop the will to create it. I read his vision-list with my mouth open and my stomach in knots. It’s impossible: no poor people anywhere; no passports; one global currency; state-of-the-art technology available universally; no use for paper so no trees wasted; simultaneous language translation for everyone; sun, water, and wind as the main sources of power, and much more. No way, I thought.

But he wants the rest of us to develop such vision lists. He just doesn’t take “impossible!” for an answer.

He sees his vision manifesting through individuals taking action. He recommends forming “social action forums” that could be as small as three people, focused on a single local concern, like how they can help one dropout get back into school. Or these social action forums could be large enough to form true social businesses.

He’s developed a website to start to coordinate these social action forums: http://yunusuni.com/id2.html.  It seems to be kind of rough still, but definitely there.

So in the end it gets down to us, to me. Hmm. That’s totally scary. But…

I’d like to form a social action forum around parenting education and family literacy. I’ve actually been working on that issue for some time now, and you can see one of the ways I think could help address it at the website of my new book: http://plusitbook.com.

Anyone interested in further talk about this?

10/28/09 Concluding My Camino Story (for Now)

The last week of our Camino took us into the city of Santiago de Compostela, of course, and to the famous, wondrous Cathedral. I felt numb and a bit dumb; perhaps we all did.

I’m writing this in retrospect eight months later and it’s going to be brief. I need to complete this sporadic blog account; I am sorry, truly, that my discipline lapsed; I apologize to anyone who was gracious enough to follow this blog, and I apologize to myself, even. But sometimes the commitment to document interferes with the moment of experience, and simply experiencing without comment becomes the more satisfying choice.  And then there’s also the tangle of emotions and reflections that call for poetry at the end of a significant experience.  But what if one’s not a poet?

In Santiago, we stayed two nights in an albergue on the outskirts of the city because others were filled.  We learned how to read the map and take the bus into the old city. We went to the pilgrim office to present our credentials and get our compostelas (the certificate that you walked at least the last 100 km of the pilgrimage).

We attended pilgrim mass with its gorgeous display of priests in bright red robes reading in various languages. I went around the altar area to join the line that takes one up a narrow staircase to the backside of the gold statue of St. James as it looks out on the audience. I rested my forehead on Santiago’s shoulder, thanked him for his blessings, and gave the guardian priest a coin for a picture card. I would return another day when I felt more in touch with devotion, with appreciation, with mystery, I decided.

And then Marla, Ginny, and I decided to take the bus through the mountains to Finisterre, to what used to be known as the end of the world, the western-most point of the European continent. It’s where many pilgrims ended their trek, where it was once customary to burn your pilgrim clothes.

And there, another miracle: we found German Dr. Hannah, and then Danish Niels. It almost makes me weep to remember. Dr. Hannah, 77, said she had been coming down to the bus stop morning and evening for several days to look for us; she knew we’d show up.  And Niels, well, he just somehow kept appearing before us.

What kind of karma pulls us all like magnets to find one another for a last goodbye?

Then after a night and a day, it’s back to Santiago. Another several hours at the cathedral; a quest to find good paella; final pictures. Our trio is splitting up. Ginny returns to London; Marla, to Sevilla; and I, well, I decide to go back on the Camino. I feel I have unfinished business. I take an overnight bus back to Pamplona.

And it was in those few days alone, after seeing Santiago, that I had my sweetest experiences. For example, I spent the night at the albergue at the Eunate Iglesia: there were just three of us—one German woman, a Frenchman, and me. We did late-night singing and prayers in our own languages in the tiny round sanctuary. I felt I was back perhaps eight centuries. I could hardly believe the grace that permitted me that experience.

The following day, I climbed a mountain off the trail to a deserted abbey, and saw the most beautiful sculpture of the whole trip—a wind-worn stone with the Virgin in ecstasy.

A day later, in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, I stayed at an albergue that contained many pieces of art that depicted that great saint, the engineer of the Camino.

Why didn’t I buy a figurine of him? Little did I know that I’d have an experience with him on the road to San Juan de Ortega. (And I won’t write of that at this time—it’s too fragile, precious, inexplicable.)

Then I found Tosantos, where I chanced upon the opportunity to tour the beautiful cave hermitage of Our Lady of the Rock built into the mountainside; and Ages; and Atapuerca, one of the most significant archeological sites in Europe.

Finally, I ended my Camino in Burgos. I’d walked every step of the route. I felt complete.  And the capper was with a sweet, strange, magical, mystical encounter with another pilgrim/disciple of Santo Domingo in a restaurant in that warren of streets that surrounds the magnificent cathedral.

Blown way, I took a bus about midnight to Barcelona.

And there, the miracles continued. It is a great blessing and privilege to be a peregrina on the Way of St. James!

10/14/08 Pulpo, Suffering, and Fabric

(Note: This is posted on 6/27/09 because I just retrieved it from old “sent” files.)

Today we are in Melide, about 50 km from Santiago.  We seem to be slowing down and hanging out more in the towns now that we´re close enough to know we´ll actually get there, and we have no set deadline.

Melide is at center of the octopus industry. Walking into town today we passed a restaurant where a man was snipping the octopus legs into bite-sized bits, and then adding something to it, and it all looked quite fascinating. The famous dish is called pulpo. Think we´ll go back there for dinner.

We settled into our albergue early here in Melide, which meant we each get lower berths in the bunk beds. Yeah! Showered, washed clothes, and I did some blister puncturing with a needle, as I have a place between two toes that´s blistered and very sore.  Sure hope it clears up by tomorrow!

I´ve continued feeling quite grumpy in the past few days, which I don´t like much, but that´s the way it is.

I´ve been thinking about two things lately.  One is, What does St. James represent to me, since I´ve chosen to walk on his path for six weeks? and the other is about suffering, the value of it, why people/we engage in it.

We´ve met a number of people who are suffering.  One German man, whom we encountered into at an albergue and bar, had a huge bleeding bump on his head, facial cuts, and a bandaged hand.  He had fallen on the flat road, and his backpack knocked his head further into the road.  He did go to a doctor and got bandaged, but he refused to slow down much.  Marla had some arnica in her bag and gave that to him, though we doubt he used it.

The next morning, some of his German friends who were concerned and trying to persuade him to at least put his backpack on a taxi, went to the albergue to meet him. They discovered he´d left, disregarding all suggestions.  We saw him briefly toward the end of the day in a different town, with his pack, looking somewhat better but still very bruised.  (By the way, I heard he was some kind of highly regarded sociologist or something like that.)

This kind of stubbornness– going on when in pain, when others advise rest– it´s a characteristic we see a lot on the Camino, and I identify with it too.  Is this about doing penance?  Are we Camino pilgrims really just modern versions of those old pilgrims who walked for long amounts of time thru great dangers to get to Santiago for expiation of guilt.  Hmm.  I wouldn´t have thought so before I did this, but it´s worth considering.

I´ve suggested today to Marla that after we get to Santiago, we go solo for a while.  Ginny will be going back to England from there, but we have some extra days. I´m not sure how I want to spend those days, but I´d like the freedom to change my mind whenever I felt like it, and be able to go and do when I want. Several wonderful ideas occur to me like a trip to Barcelona, or going back to France, or walking another three days along the coast, or something else entirely.

P.S.: One of the things I did yesterday in Palas de Rei made me very happy.
Before I came to Spain I´d wanted to get some local fabrics while I was here.  To my surprise, there don´t seem to be any distinctive local fabrics.  The people, even the peasants, wear factory-produced, store-bought clothes, just like we do in the States.

But I’ve seen that workmen–the plumbers, electricians, farmers, all those types–wearing work pants of a beautiful intense heavy blue fabric.  So I decided to buy some.

Well that wasn´t so easy to find in my limited Spanish. I was sent to several different streets and stores to no avail.  Then finally I chanced upon a helter-skelter store that had children’s clothing in the window.  I went in there to ask for their suggestion as to where I could buy azul pantalon de hombres por trabajo (my way of explaining what I wanted).

Would you believe the woman dug through a box on a shelf and pulled some out!  Better yet, she also pulled out several long blue jackets they wear, kind of like doctor jackets.  And I bought two of those!  There´s lots of fabric in them, and I want to make something with it: maybe placemats, or small pillows or something.  It´s an extraordinary color.

They are quite heavy. I mailed them this morning to Bernadette.  It cost almost as much to mail them as to buy them in the first place.  But I’m thrilled with my purchase!

10/12/08 My Third Fall–in Manure

(Note: This is posted on 6/27/09 because I just retrieved it from old “sent” files.)

In Portomarin
It´s early morning and there´s a sign in the albergue that says, “It is forbidden turn on lights (stet) and make noise before 7 a.m.” So I´m doing this as quietly as possible.  Had to kick the computer metaphorically to get it started, however.

Well, I had my third fall the other day.  It was on the way to the monastery in Samos (what an amazing HUGE structure nestled in a beautiful valley, with only 15 monks now, how do they keep it up?). I was walking with the 77-year old German doctor, Hannah, and Marla (whose feet, by the way, are much better now–another miracle). Ginny had had wine for lunch and overdosed on high-wattage painkillers, so she went by taxi to Samos.

We were taking a longer route thru wooded areas, past streams, thru villages, rather than staying with the main paved road.  You have to understand that we´re in Galicia now.  This countryside is quite different.  Gorgeous, hilly (actually mountainous), lots of trees, pastures, stone walls, gardens, fields of corn.  I´d been wondering for about the last 300 miles before this where all the cows were, because the Spanish eat a lot of milk products, and I hadn’t seen much livestock since the Pyreenes. Well, the cows are all here in Galicia, and all on the same little winding roads that we pilgrims walk.

So on this particular afternoon, swinging along merrily, going down a steep cemented road where many cows had walked before me, I found myself flat on my back, with my rear in a pile of dung. It was a really hard fall! Really hurt!

I had brief visions of having to be carried out on a stretcher, but I just lay there in the manure for what seemed like minutes, then turned on my side and crawled up.

There was a cold stream nearby. Marla suggested I take off my clothes and go sit in it to cool my backside, but that didn´t seen too feasible, so I just washed my hands in it (which fortunately weren´t badly hurt because the dung protected them). Dr. Hannah just looked on.

I gave myself a couple doses of flower-essence Emergency Trama Solution from Perelandra. I totally believe it restores one’s body electrical system after a trauma. I rested near a wall, wiggled my butt and back a bit, and we all set off again.

I thought I might not be able to walk or carry a pack for a couple days, but voila, another miracle.  The next day I was totally able to walk and tote my bag.  You know, all up and down the Camino, at every little church where they say mass several times a day, they pray for us pilgrims.  That helps!

10/11/09 Grumpy Days and Good Wine

(Note: This is posted on 6/27/09 because I just retrieved it from old “sent” files.)
I´ve had some great white wine to drink tonight with my menu del peregrino (pilgrim´s meal) so I don’t think I´ll attempt to write a blog entry.  It´s a shame because this is a good computer with a decent keyboard– but maybe I can get on it again tomorrow morning early.  Maybe they´ll let us stay beyond 8 am because it´s Sunday tomorrow.  Albergues can be very strict.  We´ll see.  We passed the 100 km left to Santiago mark today.

I hear the economy is terrible, but haven´t seen real American news for about six weeks now, though the Europeans are VERY interested in the elections.

Still having a great time, though I´ve been grumpy for several days.  Figure that´s all just part of my Camino.

10/4/08 Eccentric on the Road

(Note: This is posted on 6/27/09 because I just retrieved it from old “sent” files.)

Last night at the albergue at Rabanal, a man pulled up in the most unusual contraption I´ve seen so far. It was the back wheel of a bicycle heavily ladened with bags and stuff, and the handle bars of a bike, but he´d rigged it so he could stand in front of the bars and pull it all, like a rickshaw.  It looked very heavy. The image of Christ dragging the cross comes to mind. He goes about 5 km per hour, he said. He must stay on paved roads; I don’t see how he could navigate the narrow mountain paths we take.

When I asked if I could take a picture of him, he said I could for a donation.  I agreed, and he told me he gives the donation money to help young people who want to walk the Camino.

I asked him for his story.  He´s from Belgium, named Bernard, about 50-ish.  He said (this is my abbreviated version—he railed on and on at several points) he had a very authoritarian father who wanted him to become a doctor, which he did not want to be.  At some point the father forced or fought with him, ripping down a curtain Bernard had constructed in the bedroom as a theater curtain for plays which he directed with his brothers and sisters.

At that point Bernard had a breakdown.  I don´t know how long he was mentally ill (my word, not his).  But he said he´d never grown up.  Then in the conversation, Bernard went on a rif about Noah and his sons and Joshua and the Canaanites.  He talked about the horrors of the church, of making little children feel like they´d committed original sin.  I had to cut him off: he was clearly a sensitive, kind, unusual and still very angry person.

He posed for me in the dawn dark, then climbed into his harness and struggled off, accompanied by a young Hungarian man he´d met a few days ago.

Our Camino companions are so beautiful, so rare!

10/4/08 At the Foot of La Cruz de Ferro

(Note: This is posted on 6/27/09 because I just retrieved it from old “sent” files.)

A quick update from a cafe:

Ginny from England joined us in Astorga two days ago. It is wonderful to have her along! She came by train from Bilbao, having flown there from London.

(On Oct 1, Fabienne left in Astorga to return to work in Switzerland, and I certainly miss her, so it’s lovely to have Ginny as a replacement, though I know you can’t replace people.)

Gin’s a sport. Walking just fine, although we’ve done relatively short distances. We´re having a grand time making up songs.  Have created two so far: one to the tune of Solidarity Forever, the other to a simple tune I made up.  They help us move along joyfully.

Marla has been having serious pain in her feet.  We left her in Rabanal, where there is an British-run albergue, this morning so she can take an auto or bus, or perhaps she´ll spend a few days of R and R there, and then meet us later.

Rabanal is a gorgeous spot with a wonderful Benedictine Monastery where they have chanting-singing services about four times a day in a tiny church.  O so lovely.

Very soon we´ll be at a famous cross La Cruz de Ferro where one leaves stones in memory of others.  I´m at a cafe in Foncebadon, just before the cross, right now.  On the way here, we had a little conversation with a sweet young man from Mexico and an older man from Brazil.

As we let them pass because they are walking a bit faster than we are, they waved and said they´d meet us again soon.  I said, “We´ll meet you at the foot of the cross.” And then I found myself sobbing, as it sounded like something my father would have said.  It just brought up memories of his voice.

I am going to put a stone for Daddy (who died about 2 years ago) at the base of La Cruz de Ferro, and also a stone for my son-in-law´s father, Ralph, who committed suicide a few years ago, right about this time of year.  I´ve carried these little white marble stones all the way from my garden in Pomona, California.

I bless their souls.