Category: travel

After the Pilgrimage, We Enter the Garden of Earthly Delights

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 Diary entry, Madrid, International Pride Weekend, 2017


Tourist lunch at three o’clock on the terrace, 
but I’m not alone—a Russian to my right 
speaks to me in Spanish–Rusia es un infierno, 
allá a no se puede ser gay. He tells me of sinister ears
that listen for echoes of forbidden love, 
their switchblades ready to shiv a body. 
But all of this is far away. Today, we pilgrims dine 
on scallops in their shells, watercress salad, 
and peach gazpacho as the sky parades 
across the Gran Vía, an awning of cobalt blue 
over buildings white as wedding cake, cornices creamy as    flan. 
Love’s on all the billboards and gold armored 
Super Woman straddles the bus stop, 
so much iridescence, I forget my fractured foot. 
We mambo through rainbows laced along the Retiro
and two-step into the Garden of Earthly Delights,
where swallows burst through pink eggshells
and Adam plops down as though stupefied on the grass.
God, dressed in red velvet robes, stares at us 
as he holds Eve’s wrist and takes her pulse. 
We shed our clothes— drag queens expose 
their statuesque torsos, and I reveal my pale potbelly, 
my breasts like empty soup bowls. Here, 
shame has drifted out to sea in a soap bubble.
Naked together, we are whippoorwills circling fountains 
frothing with limonada, sangría, tinto de verano.
We are owls with pineapples on our heads, 
symbolizing nothing, fizzing with delight.

                                          ––Christine Swint

In honor of Pride Month, I’m posting this poem that I wrote a few years ago after returning from my second camino in Spain.

The poem is based on real life events in Madrid, and also the painting by Hieronymus Bosch, a tryptic that encompasses heaven, hell, and earthly paradise.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, housed in the Prado, Madrid

If I can ever get myself to focus and complete this project, the plan is to place this poem at the end of my manuscript about the camino. It’s shaping up to be a nice size for a chapbook, about 28 pages of poems written in the epistolary style and consisting of letters, messages, notes, and diary entries.

I love the poems in this manuscript, and I really need to finish the project and bring it to fruition. It’s more fun to keep making new poems, but it’s not fair to the work to keep it squirreled away in drawers and on my laptop.

I hope you like this poem. It’s central message is to live with delight and for shame to “drift out to sea in a soap bubble.”

Be proud of your way of loving. No one can tell you how or who to love. And know that if you’re reading this poem and identify as LGBTQIA, which is probably most of the entire world, I am sending you love through this poem!

Madrid, Orgullo 2017

The Three Souls Tarot Prompt from POPcraft

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Tarot Card Spread from a prompt at Pretty Owl Poetry

Pretty Owl Poetry is calling for submissions of poetry prompts based on the Tarot. I decided to write a poem based on their prompt, but going forward, I might try my hand at an original prompt.

[The Camino Spills Across the Highlands]

The Camino spills across the highland
after crossing Basque Country mountains.
Poppies constellate gilded barley fields,
blood-red blossoms fibrillating like hearts
against the sky. So close to the sun here.
The astonishment of flower-comets
wilts with the heat, the weight of all the miles,
if I can remember the way home, no map
but the riddles spelled in the stars.

Process:

I didn’t look up the traditional meaning behind the cards, but tried to intuit the actions in each one and told a little story that the cards reflected to me.

I’m in the middle of writing a collection of poems about a pilgrimage I took to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, so when I saw the Page of Pentacles, my mind went to the moors in Spain and the delight of seeing the poppies in the fields.

The following three-step, three-card prompt, “The Three Souls,” is by Kimberly Grabowski Strayer. Please go to https://prettyowlpoetry.com/2019/05/14/popcraft-the-three-souls/ for a complete description.

The words in boldface come from Kimberly’s prompt. The words in italics are my impressions of the cards.

1.Mind of the poem, Page of Pentacles: awe and childlike or youthful curiosity at the beginning of a journey. Finding a treasure in a field.

2.Structure (body)– The Ten of Wands: The burden of gathering all ten wands, leaning into the labor, struggling against the work. The poem is bunched together in ten lines of ten syllables each to reflect the number ten and also the bunched up wands the man is carrying.

3.Spirit— The Chariot: The future is an enigma (Sphinx) that draws the chariot. The stars above are his only guide. He is a messenger of the gods (caduceus, symbol of Hermes). He’s leaving the comforts of home behind, unafraid.

On the Way to Madrid 

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While waiting for my flight, I’m doing some gentle yoga and trying to learn what has happened with the former FBI director when a man with a long white beard in an orange turban gives me a mantra that he sings–“baba nam kevalam, todo es amor: everything is an expression of one infinite, loving consciousness.”

Today’s Walk

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I’m sitting at the top of Monument Mountain, the place where Herman Melville met Nathanial Hawthorne for the first time.

It’s a hot day for the Berkshires. I’m sweating in the muggy air, but a slight breeze refreshes my skin. This humidity is nothing like the pizza oven heat of Georgia.

While going up the mountain I took a picture of a log bridge–I’m a little afraid of crossing narrow bridges, even when there’s nothing but a creek below. So I took a picture to illustrate the obstacles I’m forever confronting.

  
When I went to look for my phone to take another picture, this time of the rocky ascent to the summit, I realized I had left my phone at the log bridge.

So back down the mountain I went. A couple had seen my phone in the ground where it must have slipped out of my backpack (or what is more probable is that I missed the pocket completely, dropping the phone silently on the pine straw and moss covered path).

While climbing back up to where I am now, I thought I would maybe start leaving my smart phone behind when I go on these long walks. I usually put my phone in airplane mode, and I don’t check email, but I do use it to take pictures.  

So here I am on the summit, thinking about Herman Melville and typing into a WordPress app. I read that the day he came here with a gathering of local literary types, it rained, and he spent a good while describing to Nathaniel Hawthorne the intricacies of manning a whaling ship.

The trail here is well maintained. The granite and schist stones form a staircase that allows the hiker to reach the top fairly easily, but I doubt the rocks were arranged so artfully when Melville walked here. 

The air was the same, the flora and fauna the same, and some of the views. From where I am now, I can see Monument Mountain high school, where someone has written the name Maia in large white letters on the lawn in front of the school. Even from this height I can see the heart over the letter i in place of a dot. Someone loves Maia. 

To enter the nineteenth century imagination, I think I would have to abandon iPhone technology for a while. I don’t even know how Melville would have traveled from his Arrowhead farm in Pittsfield  to Monument Mountain in Great Barrington. Horse and wagon maybe? I know he liked to camp and was an avid outdoorsman. 

He became depressed after Moby Dick didn’t sell, and he turned to alcohol. This is a lesson in not tying one’s ego to one’s art. I don’t blame Melville–he had to support his family, and he had wanted to do so by writing. Art and business don’t mix. Robert Graves said something to the effect : “There’s no money in poetry, and no poetry in money.”

   
 

Traveler, There Is No Path

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Today’s walk took me from Iron Ore Road in West Stockbridge to Lake Mahkenaac in Stockbridge, also known as the Stockbridge Bowl.

The plan was to swim across the lake once I got here, but lightning and rain rolled over the mountains, so now I’m huddled under a tree, waiting for SA to come get me in the car.

I had to walk along a highway to get here, not too busy with traffic, but the speed limit was 50 and there was no sidewalk. I tried to walk in the grass and face oncoming traffic whenever I could.

It was not a meditative walk due to the cars, but I did think about Antonio Machado’s poem, sometimes translated as “The Wayfairer,” other times as ” The Traveler.”

When I walk alone and set my own course, I sometimes feel lonely. My obstacles are at times tangible, like the cars on the road, but often the blockades are  mental. It’s a matter of summoning the motivation and finding the courage to make my own path, again and again.  

    
    
    
 

Day 3 of Camino 

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Today I walked 21 km from Roncesvalles to Zubiri, a small town in Navarra. Navarra is part of the Basque region of Spain and France, and all the road and street signs are in Spanish and Euskera, the Basque language. It has been fun speaking Spanish again and reacquainting myself with the culture.

The Spanish consider Roncesvalles to be the start of the Camino de Santiago. There’s a very modern pilgrim’s shelter there, modernized in 2011. 

The shelter is located in what used to be an Augustinian monastery, and it’s attached to a church that was originally built in the twelfth century.

Last night I attended a special mass for pilgrims to receive a blessing, the same blessing that has passed down through the centuries since medieval times.

There was a beautiful gold light illuminating the altar, and above hung a statue of the Virgin Mary made of gold-plated walnut. 

The priest spoke of the mystery of the faith, of the word of God, but the mystery that he spoke of that touches my heart the most is the mystery of nature. That’s where I go to connect with what it means to be free and at peace. 

                 

Pamplona, Before the Camino

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I decided to spend two days in Pamplona before heading to France to begin my walk. I’ve needed these last two days to adjust to the new time zone and to rest from the two days of travel.

When I landed in Madrid, I tried to connect to the free internet at the airport, and when I wasn’t able to, I panicked and bought a phone with a Spanish SIM card. My original plan had been to Skype with my husband through WiFi without needing a phone, and I hadn’t unlocked my iphone to use a new SIM card.

Long story short, I’ve found that I have no problem using WiFI as long as I enter a password. So now I have an android phone I don’t need. I’ll probably donate it to a women’s shelter when I get home. If I can figure out how to remove the SIM card, I’ll give it to one of the many people on the streets who are asking for money.

The other mistake I made was to purchase a bus ticket online for Pamplona. This would have been fine, except I bought a ticket for 1 o’clock in the morning when what I had needed was 13:00 h, international time.

The woman at the counter was obviously very sorry for me when she saw my distress. She offered to let me come to the front of the line if I couldn’t find a train ride up north.

In the end, I took a 3-hour train ride and made it to Pamplona at around 6:00 (18:00h!). I slept most of the way, exhausted after the eight hour flight and the mishaps at the airport.

Maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s my attitude, but I took these hitches as the Way once again teaching me patience and mindfulness. I’m on a pilgrimage, and if everything were easy, it wouldn’t be very meaningful.