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!