Salvaged!

I am on the mend. My head is screwed on straight, my heart is beating with without the hiccups of homesickness and pessimism, and I cut off my foot with a swiss army knife and bought a new one, and it works quite well. Just joking.
As I was writing my last update, I think the cosmos was looking over my shoulder, laughing at my sense of doom, planning an about-face. I met my guardian angel as soon as I turned away from the computer screen. A boisterous Brazillian,flute playing 45 year old federal employee named Walter.He gets to knows everyone, has walked the Camino three different times,has a heart of gold and a very wicked sense of humor, speaks enough languages and laughs often enough that every pilgrim calls him "My friend Walter". He was also crippled with leg problems and we made a tenative pact to hitch hike out of town at dawn the next morning. Somehow, by the next morning, he had found us a ride to Leon in an Italian luxury car with two jolly Spaniards.By that night, I had seen the most awe inspiring kaleidescope of a church, sang on the street corner with an Italian named Claudio, watched my first Formula One car race with a bar full of men, and experienced an afternoon of culinary delights(mountains of octopus, platters of cheese, bottles of rioja and rosé, and then Hierbas, a deliciously dangerous neon green liquor). After lunch, bottles strewn the table, guitars were being passed around the resteraunt, songs were sung in Italian, Spanish, Portegese, and English. The waitress and her parents who owned the resteraunt sat with us, sang with us. I expected the sky to be dark when we finally exited the resteraunt into the canyon-like streets, but it was only afternoon. This is why the Spanish take a siesta....I think they live two days worth in every 24 hours. That afternoon, I watched football(soccer), went to mass,and repeated the drinking and singing until 2 in the morning, and then limped home, still singing. It was then that we parted from the men who had given us a ride. I believe it was the most fulfilling result of hitch hiking this world has ever seen,for all parties involved. And, for me, the world outside the Camino was stretching open. What a warm welcome.
Generosity flowed. The waitress took Walter and I to an osteopath, took us to a pharmacy, bought our drugs, and then took us to the Cathedral. We were on a mission. The very groovy doc had told us of a secret. Inside the spectacular Leon cathedral was the cure to our ills. We had to walk counterclockwise around the church,against the flow of people. There is an old tomb with a hole knocked in the side. According to the doc, people who stick their heads in the hole and say their three most heart felt wishes outloud will have one of them come true. I won´t say what the wishes were, but to be in the most beautiful church I have ever seen while the evening vespers were being sung in latin, bent over with my ass in the air and my head in the musty incense scented dark of a 800 year old stone tomb made me laugh hard enough that I didn´t care about my wishes any more.
The next day I said a sad goodbye to Walter and went to Santiago de Compostela by train.It was really strange to arrive in that town not by foot. To suddenly have lost the pilgrim identity, the loose comradarey of stinky tired people,was a shock. I celebrated my newfound tourist status by shaving my legs and with an overpriced tourist dinner.That town gave me a new definition of the word "monumental". There are not really streets, just narrow spaces between gloriously decorated, enormous buildings. The highlight of the next day came when thought I was ready for bed. I was watching the moonrise over the wildly carved moss-covered stone spires of the Cathedral, when I saw a familiar face! Walter, the bossanova singing, pep-talk giving, shit-talking angel! We waltzed around town, suddenly feeling like we owned the place,so happy to have a friend again.
The next day we went to Finesterre, the end of the earth. Where monsters once grumbled beyond the horizon, waiting for ships to sail off the the disk shaped earth into their snapping celestial jaws. I stayed for 3 days alone.Rain fell in silver torrents from the sky, pirate faced fishermen mended opalescent nets on castle walls, a rainbow of tiny boats filled the port. I ate seafood paella about 30 feet from the oceans edge, drew pictures,slept alot, and imitated Friedrich´s painting"Monk By the Sea" . My last real "pilgrim" interaction saved my foot from the blade of my swissarmy knife, and my mind from the bog of eternal gloom. A guy watched me walk across a cafe and said "You have a very accute case of...." Some long word, the medical term for what most people call a collapsed arch. So no wonder walking half the way across this country hurt so frickin´bad! This foot and hand doctor(a profession one would want to keep a secret while walking the camino) said I would get better, and I had had survived one of the most painful foot ailments short of broken bones. I am now is Madrid, but there is too much to be said without the filter of retrospection. I promise stories of scantilly clad drag queens, leather bound lovelies, and all kinds of urban mania!

Crippled on the Camino

Yeah. I do not know what happened. One day I was waltzing along, cheering for my healing blisters and strong legs. The next day, I could barely walk. Porcupines of pain were brawling up into my torso. And it keeps getting worse.I know some people do this pilgrimmage for penitence....I didn´t realize I had this kind of karma coming to me. I must have run over a nun with a dump truck in my past life. It is kind of scary to be walking alone and come over a crest of this almost flat land, and to see the horizon so far away. Just the path, and pain, and no village in sight. But, I am tough, and have made it to where I am, which is more a mind-set than a geographic location. I have decided to let go of the mania with which people approach Santiago. I need to take a break, be a normal tourist for a bit, and maybe continue walking in a little while. I might get X-rayed (although I have realized I have a pretty acute phobia of hospitals after those 4 days in the Nicaraguan military hospital). I think the best medicine will be rest, and some space from this overzealous stream of pilgrims. I am so tired of advice about how to continue walking. I have yet to hear someone say the smart thing, which is "Take a break!" So, I am exiting the flow of bodies towards Santiago, and leaving part of Spain untraversed. I plan on going to Leon. Thrilling to me, there is a huge festival today in honor of Farming Tools and Heavy Machinery. I am in heaven just looking, and I am dreaming of hitching a ride on a bulldozer or a steamroller.....oh,how I drool over industry. Ok, enough for now. There are packs of drunk pilgrims, slobbering and staring at my back, waiting to use this computer. Amor-Nina

Cheers from the Oceans of Green

The lack of a book is slowly driving me nuts. Three days ago I finished a 1000 page brick and am lonely for literary companionship. The book ¨Shantaram¨was an autobiography of an Australian excaped convict living in Bombay. One of the things I liked the best that I learned about Indian culture was that they name days and groups of people and periods of time. Anything that they plan on commemorating through story telling or celebrating gets a name. They do not have to saÿ "Remember that one time I got attacked by two thousand slugs?" They can just say "On The Night of The Slugs" and everyone knows what they are talking about. Anyways, I have been walking along, giving titles to things. Let´s see,so far I have The Nights of Snoring, self expanatory. And The Night of The Ear Infection, also needs no further, painful explanation. I met The Fountain of Youth Men--four middle aged pilgrims who were convinced that I was the fountain of youth, and who all wanted pictures of themselves with me, in front of the church,eating dinner, drinking coffee, smoking cigaettes, you get the idea.
There was also The Night of Mount Everest.I had known this Canadian named Mary for two days. During dinner one night, the police came with a message from the embassy, saying that she needed to call home. Her husband who had been climbing Everest had died. I had never seen someone go through something like that.I helped her pack her bag and get to the waiting police car, and it was like she was dying and coming back to life with every breath. All she would say was "I really loved him". The next few days as I walked alone, all I could think about is love and life and death. It seems the smartest thing we can do is love really hard, really honestly. The recipient of our love has part of our heart, and we have part of theirs, and it transcends death and distance. Love is a curse if we do not make it worth it.
I stayed in The Worst Pensíon Ever. That is what it was called in my guide book, and that is what it was. There were holes in the floor, mice, and drunk men rattling my plywood door during the night, and a 13 year old running the place. I was just dying to see how bad it could get. It gets bad.
This whole journey has several names. The Plague of Blisters. The Time of Coffee and Cream. I vascilate between loving the porcelain cups and saucers of Europe, and longing for the quitessential American bottomless cup, but I often feel that I walk from one cup of coffee to the next. The best name is The Spring of Many Smiles (it even sounds good in Spanish--La Primavera de Muchas Sonrisas). It is really extraordinary the hospitality of the people along the Camino. I am taking part of a millenium old tradition. I am one of hundreds of thousands of people to walk this road in the last few years. These old ladies sweeping their front steps see hundreds of people like me hobble past, the farmers see lines of backpack laden people swarm past their fields every season, the bartenders have served innumerable beers to stinky pilgrims, yet they all smile and wish me a Buen Camino.
I really am having a damn good time. The fields that stretch away from the path are outlandishly green. I always think that this intensity of green can not last, like a peacock spreading his tail, or a kind-of-pretty woman using makeup to make herself dazzling. But every day, the expanses of land, whether hilly or flat, are rippling in viridian fecundity. I have no idea what this crop is, but it is like walking through days of emeralds. The towns I walk through are incredible. If it were not for the Pilgrimmage, they would have ceased to exsist hundreds of years ago. And in many of these villages I can not tell the difference. Nothing has changed in centuries--no stone walls have been straightened, no paint touched up on wooden shudders, no signs erected to let you know the difference between a bakery, a bar, or a private home. I know that it is my urban American self on vacation, but it is so darn quaint, so extraordinary to pass through these villages on foot, so rich in the wabisabi aesthetic(a japanese word introduced to me by Tim Davis, meaning Lovely Decay).
I am lonely a bit. There are few english or spanish speakers with whom I can converse. There are alot of Germans. Germans seem to only talk to other Germans. Oh, another title: The Disturbing Habit of Overweight German Men to Walk Around in Their Itty Bitty Undershorts. Maybe that is why they stick to themselves. We all look at them with fear and revulsion. When people find out that I am from New Mexico, I often get a funny reaction:"Oh! That is why you speak such great spanish, and why you are so tan, and why you are so muscular!" So, all you New Mexico dwellers, work on your bilingualism, lay out and get buff! We have an international reputation to uphold!
Time passes slowly, at the pace of one foot placed in front of another.Afternoons, I do yoga and drink wine and write in my journal and limp around towns in strange outfits. It is a pretty great life, the best and cheapest I can imagine for a solo journey in an expensive foreign land. I have walked one third the way from France to the west coast of Spain. The main marks of that feat are the blisters on my feet and the calm in my mind. Even the most sporty of pilgrim, the speediest kilometer counter, must know themselves better by the end of this. Enough for now, dear fan club. Nos vemos, cariños!