Crystal Symphony Entry 15

I’ve really fallen off of the blog bandwagon lately.  I have no excuse other than the half-finished entry about Istanbul (first of two parts!) sitting stubbornly on my desktop, refusing to complete itself.  While I wait for that pot to come to boil, I’m going to write about today and my visit to the monastery-mountain of Montserrat.

View of Santa Cova from the cable car.

I’ve been to Montserrat twice before; once while working on the Grandeur, and once while on the Camino.  You can find the first visit here:

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2011/08/entry-131-august-2-nd-2011-1203am-gmt-2.html 

And my second visit here:

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2012/02/camino-entry-4.html

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2012/02/camino-entry-5.html

The Crystal Symphony is headed West again from Istanbul and with most of the day off today in Barcelona I decided to pay a third visit to the monastery.  It seemed only fitting – on my first visit, I had a powerful experience that led me to the Camino, and the second visit was the first major milestone on my road to Santiago.  A third, concluding visit was in order.

The train ride from Plaza Espanya takes about an hour.  It is amazing to me that I can cover that distance by train in only an hour when last time it took four days to walk.  Cataluña is either in the very end of spring or the very beginning of summer – either way, the thick, verdant green foliage is fresh and fragrant with the muscular power of summertime.  It’s going to be hot here, and soon.

The first view of the mountain was impressive, as always.  Tourists had their cameras out (that is, the tourists who didn’t have their bags lifted on the third stop . . . it was quick and surgical, I didn’t even notice the thieves until afterwards) and were snapping shots through the train windows, craning their necks at the peaks above and clicking their tongues in frustration when we went through tunnels.  Luckily, the cable car ride up the side of the mountain is a much better photo opportunity, and I was not disappointed with the flurry of shutters filling the tiny cabin as we sped through midair.

The chapel of Santa Cova was my goal.  This is apart from the main monastery and is built against the cliff at the spot where an image of the Virgin Mary was supposedly found over a thousand years ago.  It is a powerful place, one that inspires people to prayer, and even though I didn’t find what I was looking for last time I visited, it is still an important place in my personal history.

This time I had the chapel to myself.  Everything was just as it was the first time I visited – the grotto with its simple stone altar, the two rows of simple wicker furniture, the rack of candles burning softly in the back of the room.  It was quiet, quiet, quiet!  So quiet that I could hear the candles burning.  There have been very few times in my life where I’ve felt the need to pray, but something about the chapel of Santa Cova usually brings it out in me and this time was no exception.

The first time that I visited, I was just beginning to wake up and I prayed for the strength to act despite fear.  The second time, I was footsore and discourage, and I did my best to renew that wish.  This time, though, I sat there in that silent chapel, listening to the candles burn behind me, and had no idea what to ask for.

I got bored.  My mind wandered; it was stuck at a brick wall and so it went sideways.  I started thinking about all the places I’d seen since the first time I visited – the beautiful people I’d met, the weird things that had happened on the strange road to Santiago . . . I thought of the red brown dust of Cataluña, the relentless wind on the meseta, and the strange Basque language called Euskara.  I thought of the complex, captivating scent of Buenos Aires.  I thought of the sound of a carnival drum line starting up in Rio de Janeiro.  I heard the first call to worship in Istanbul echoing from the minarets around me.

And that’s when I realized it.  I had not come here to ask for anything, but rather to say thank you.  I said it, and then I said it again out loud.  I wanted to laugh, it was so simple.  That’s what prayer is; not asking, but giving.

There is a small room off the main chapel where people leave gifts, tokens to the goddess (er, the Virgin Mary . . . I’m reading too much Joseph Campbell lately and all the traditions are starting to blur together) in thanks for boons received.  I still had the last seashell from Finisterra . . . it had been tucked away in a tiny plastic bag along with my tuxedo studs, packed in my luggage when I left home again in February.  I didn’t know why I had brought it along until earlier that morning, getting dressed in the pitch blackness to the snores of my roommate.  The shell was an offering, a gift from the end of the world given to that which sent me there in the first place.  I left it with a string of other camino shells in the chapel – apparently I am not the first one to have had this experience.

Now I can finally come home.  This is an idea that will be developed more fully when I finally get around to posting those camino entries from Finisterra, but suffice it to say that I reached the end of the world only to find that the way back from a pilgrimage is just as important as the way there.  That’s why things felt so wrong when I arrived in Michigan in January – it wasn’t time to be home yet.  The way back had to be considered.

And with this visit to Santa Cova, I have found what I was looking for.  Now I can come home.  This journey, started March before last and almost three times as long as originally planned, is coming to an end.

Also, I finally got some pictures of a portion of the camino that I walked!  It was good to see the signs again.



A paving stone with the camino symbol, just outside the monastery.  This is one of the signs I followed on Day 6 of the camino.



A sign for the GR6, the trail I followed to Montserrat from Barcelona.  I passed this sign on Day 4 of the camino.



A sign I found in the cable car parking lot for an alternate path along the camino.  I did not take this path, but this is an excellent example of one of the ubiquitous yellow arrows.



Crystal Symphony Entry 11

Cadiz is a port city located in Spain just west of the strait of Gibraltar on the Atlantic ocean. The city sits on a narrow spit of land and protects a large harbor.  It is a vital strategic point for the passage of trade through the strait (second only to nearby Gibraltar) and has been settled continuously for the past several thousand years. The succession of ownership follows a predictable trend -- first, the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Castillians, and finally modern-day Spain.

The city was walled for much of its history, and the old sections of town sit behind the remnants of those walls. A series of pentagonal batteries protect the various approaches to the city, including one that is located at the end of a very long causeway out in the shallows. Columbus sailed from here twice for the New World, on his second and fourth voyages, and it is likely that these walls were the last he saw of the mainland before heading South to the Canary islands.  Cadiz was also one of the few Spanish cities to hold out against the French conquest during the Napoleonic wars, and has been the birthplace of several popular revolts (one of them to restore the constitution of 1812). 

The old city is a maze of narrow streets, beautiful architecture, and carefully-sculpted parks. The parks are laid out in geometric patterns -- the Moorish influence can be seen in the blue tile and diamond patterning, while the Christian influence can be seen right alongside with the images of the Virgin Mary and widespread use of crosses on just about everything. The huge trees lining these parks are said to have been brought from the New World and planted here -- they are massive, with branches like the limbs of dinosaurs stretching out overhead. Cadiz is one of those social tidewaters, a place where the world's great cultures have each ebbed and flowed, leaving a complicated, layered remnant behind.

It is good to be back in continental Spain once again. I had not realized how much Spain feels like home until I had a warm chocolate Napolitana in my hands (a kind of fluffy pastry with chocolate in the center, not unlike the French pan au chocolat). A long walk along the ocean was just the thing I needed to settle my head today. I'm looking forward to Malaga tomorrow, and then Barcelona most of all.

It is a holy week this week (the build up to Easter), and so the square in front of the cathedral was being prepared for a procession. I saw marching bands warming up and lots of people in strange pointy hats, but due to a rehearsal I had to get back to the ship before they got started. The route was like a parade route, with boxes, television cameras, and barricades everywhere -- to get inside the cathedral was impossible. Many businesses were closed.

The thieves, though, are always working. I learned about a new scam today -- the hard way, of course, as this is how one usually learns about scams -- but it was a cheap enough lesson and provided me with some entertainment as well. On my way back to the ship, a deaf man burst from a side alley and confronted me with a petition to open a center for the deaf. I tried to explain that I wasn't from the area, but as he was deaf he couldn't understand what I was saying . . . I signed the petition and donated a Euro. About ten seconds after he left I realized that the petition had been in English . . . oops. It isn't particularly likely that a petition to open a center for the deaf in Spain is going to be written in English, after all.

The man was still in sight -- I wasn't about to confront him over a single Euro, but I did follow just to see what the deal was. He met again with his partner, who had a big stack of forms, and dropped off the money. I watched them work; it was a fairly professional operation. The second guy kept the money and watched for police, while the front man worked the tourists for cash. A quick whistle and they'd pack up shop; I had to move fast to keep up with them. The real tip off was when I saw the "deaf" man I'd given the donation to talking on his cell phone . . . the half hour of entertainment I got by following and watching them work was definitely worth the Euro I lost. Thieves have got to eat too, after all . . .