Camino Entry 41

Today's street view:  http://goo.gl/maps/VSddq

This is the bar where I asked directions by scribbling Spanish phrases in my notebook.  Damn oath of silence . . . they sent me down the road to your right.

Entry 41, January 4^th, 2012

¿Como voy a San Martino del Camino?

No puedo hablar hoy.

¿Carratera?

The above are my side of a conversation with a bartender in a little town outside San Martin del Camino, asking for directions. I'll get to that in a minute.

The Albergue in San Martino del Camino.  A chilly evening with no heat . . .

A few notes about the cathedral before I forget (I went back this morning before leaving León). There are a series of sculptures on the front, including a set of demon heads devouring the damned whole and spitting them out into vats of boiling oil. Yikes!

Also, the cathedral has two huge Gothic bell towers in the style of Notre Dame, but they are disconnected from the central nave, allowing far more internal surface area to be stained glass. An ingenious move.

Also, the count's palace (designed by Gaudí) is a subtle, restrained masterpiece. The windows increase in size as you move down the building, and the stone changes colors whenever the windows change size. It is a very small change, though – from light gray to dark gray at the bottom. Much different from his crazy stuff in Barcelona, and yet I can still see his touch. The way Gaudí paints with the colors of stone really captures the eye.

It took most of the morning to leave León. The usual slog through cheap housing, the industy and warehouses, and finally through freeway interchanges and all the in-between forgotten places. Places where damaged lawn chairs come to die, and where the municipal authority stores spare manhole covers. I took the alternate path, which was a good choice as it quickly left the freeway and made it into very quiet country. It was a good complement to today's oath of silence.

I kept the oath (so far, at least). A few observations:

I was happy all day. I don't know why, but the one who does not speak is loving and content. I wanted to smile at everyone and tell them with my eyes how genuinely I appreciated it when they helped me. In fact, my eyes have never felt quiet so expressive and twinkling. Even when I thought of people that made me angry it brought a smile to my face.

People treated me differently. A little bit like the slow cousin – even my compatriots on the road who know me very well. When you don't talk, people forget that you still understand. Also, they started to try to communicate with me non-verbally as well, even though I was certainly not deaf. I wonder if we have a subconscious urge to adopt the mannerisms of those we communicate with to facilitate communication?

I got lost at one point. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to be lost when you've taken an oath of silence? Hence my conversation with the bartender earlier.

It would be interesting to take one of these oaths for a longer period. I wonder what sort of music a person who never spoke would make?

Ernesto said something the other day that really hit home. I had just told him the story about _____, and mentioned that I was thinking of looking her up when I got home.

“Why?” he said. “What are you trying to accomplish with that?”

Why am I indeed . . . one of the reasons that I came on the camino was that is was the only thing that interested me more than her. Now I am full of ideas, all of them more important than her, and she is suddenly less attractive.

Is this finally what I meant when I said that I could only contact her again when I didn't care about contacting her anymore? It doesn't feel like I expected, but it is good to be free.

To be honest, I will probably throw something her way when I get back, but I am not going to put much into it. There is more important work to be done!

Expenses, Day 41

Breakfast + lunch pastry: 10.00

Albergue Municipal San Martino del Camino: 4.00

Dinner: 8.00

Total: 22.00

Trip Total: 942.64

Song: “Nosotros”

Leaving a city (where I considered sleeping when I was lost) on the alternate path, I saw a shepherd with his sheep. This has always been a good sign on the camino – one with mixed meanings. It is a good sign, because it means that I am going the right way, but it is also sobering because it usually means that I am about to be challenged. Sure enough, I soon became unsure as to if I was heading the right way – the same demon arose to do battle that I defeated on San Juan de la Peña. I defeated him again, and after asking directions I found I was heading exactly the right way. I saw another shepherd there. Santiago smiles.

Camino Entry 40

Today's google map (check it out, the cathedral is gorgeous): http://goo.gl/maps/IihLG

Entry 40, Januray 3^rd, 2012

A short day today, only 12km to León. The municipal albergue here is huge – 140 beds. Since we were early, we took some time to walk to the city. They were just opening the cathedral as we walked up.

I came on the camino for transformative experiences. Stepping into the cathedral in León was one of them. I don't know what it was, but I could feel the stones in my foundation shift. I've been searching for “What next?” in my life, and now I know. Whatever I do next, it must be fighting the good fight. That is the answer.

How? I don't know. But I have another piece of the puzzle. Just like last time, on the Ebro plain when I said, “I don't have anything figured out, and it pisses me off!” the realization seems very simple and obvious, but it is only in making it that everything seems that way. I suspect most important realizations are like that – so obvious that afterward you cannot imagine not knowing what you've learned.

I felt the desire to pray, but there was nowhere to sit and I was too scared to draw attention to myself. Instead I found myself repeating in my head, “I don't know what you are, but I am on my knees in front of you.”

Which is strange, as I usually shy away from the harsh, obedience-demanding vision of God. Am I too afraid to consider the possibility? Or maybe faith is what remains when fear has left the body – if I am no longer afraid of what will happen to me in life, I have surrendered my will and desire to control what is to . . . something? Something else?

My whole life I have had a powerful aversion to overt obedience – not in the small sense, but in the large sense. As I grow, I am getting less afraid and more capable of acting on that aversion (fear used to keep me in line). Perhaps it is time to question that obedience?

Two stories come to mind. The first is Coelho raising the cross when Petreus orders him to. That chapter of “The Alchemist” is titled merely “obedience,” and ends with the cross up and very little discussion. I am unsure what lesson to take from it.

The other story is the moment in Siddhartha after he leaves the Buddha . . . Siddhartha decides to make a study of himself with no more teachers. This feels like the path I want to follow. Where is the obedience there?

Anyway. I finally continued around the inside of the cathedral. It was beautiful in the late afternoon light – an orange glow suffused the warm stone. Similar in design, layout, and style to Notre Dame, it is lighter and in my mind preferable. More than half of the surface area is glass – gothic architecture truly is all about light! I love it.

It was looking at the stories in the stained glass windows that gave me the clue to decipher the onrush of feeling that I had felt. I belong in this company – the people trying to figure “it” out. The tales of blood and sweat and adventures and holy men . . . stories of distant lands and kings and the quest. I am one of them deep in my soul and I know the true nature of the stories they tell. I am a warrior of the light and I must fight the good fight. That is the second step of clarity.

How? I don't know, but that's okay. Coming to peace with the slow progress of the camino and coming to peace with the fact that no, I don't have anything figured out, are linked somehow and may even be one and the same. The world is different now than it was then. I do not know the way . . . but as the drunk Catalan man in Abrera said, there is no camino but the one we walk, right?

Obedience to the path that we walk? Is that what this means? Obedience to the self? Not to some faceless deity, but to something greater – the self? I don't know.

I don't know why I like cathedrals so much. I went to mass after my moment and the only thing that it told me was that it is certainly not the Catholic faith that anchors my love of churches. Somehow I feel that Christ thought the resurrection would have been a bigger deal than his crucifixion . . . I mean, everybody dies, right? Very few come back to life. And eating his flesh and drinking his blood? What creepy symbolism. It is like the buildings existed beforehand and the church found them and took them over.

And I wouldn't call myself Christian, because that would require conversion. What is there to convert? I am already whole and always have been. I do not have the power to change parts of myself at will, and so certainly no one else does. Especially not by dunking me in a river.

One could argue that by repeated habit, we can change ourselves. Ah, but who holds us to that habit? A part of ourselves that already exists.

I feel like I have a church in my heart. I can almost feel it standing strong inside. A simple, tall, stone room, worn smooth and warm. My memories form stories in the stained glass. I kneel in the center. But I know that the windows, roof, and walls could be torn away and the strong center would remain. Wash away the foundations, leave me falling through space with no body, and I still remain, a burning flame in the center. A single candle in a church; it is me.

The church I see in my mind is the cathedral in León.

Oath of silence tomorrow. Lots to think about.

Chan Hee is listening to Sonny Rollins on her iPhone. Holy shit I love bebop.