Balanced On the Edge

Over Halfway Done … In

Today I’m wondering why I’m doing this Camino for a second time. News from home has been emotional, making me wish I were there to be a support.

My foot hurts, possibly from over use or from carrying too much weight in my pack. I’m hoping it’s not a stress fracture.

The mattress in this albergue is flat, and I can feel the metal bar from the bed frame under my back.

The sun at 7 is still very hot. It’s a searing, dry heat. After 10 or 11 in the morning, the sun is too strong to walk.

I want to quit!

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June 12, 2017

Camino de Santiago, camino de santiago 2017
La Meseta

Today I’m in Fromista, a town on the high plateau, known as the meseta. I’m staying at an albergue (a hostel) that’s behind the train station. It’s a quirky place run by a young woman named Tatiana who is giving me all kinds of advice.

I asked her for a lemonade and something small to eat, and she said no, if you snack now you won’t eat your dinner, and I don’t want you to waste food.

She also told the woman I’ve been walking with that since she was done in from the heat, she should save her health and take the bus to the next town tomorrow. She reasoned that you can’t buy good health, and if you over do it because of pride, you’ll never reach Santiago.

On the meseta it’s cool at night, about 45 degrees, and the cool air lasts through the morning, until about 11:00. The smart pilgrims wake at 5 am and finish by 11:00 or 12:00, but I’m so slow in the morning.

Often I’m the last person to leave the albergue in the morning. I need to put on sunscreen, make sure my phone is in my right pocket, passport and money in my secret pocket, and my pilgrim’s credential in the left pocket.

Once I begin walking, I take a while to warm up. I go slowly. I notice my surroundings, take pictures, and stop in almost every little town to have a cafe con leche or a snack.

But by late afternoon, when I’m one of the few people left on the road, the sun beats down. It’s a dry heat, but there’s no shade on the meseta, and the sun crisps the skin and the air.

The way is flat. If you stand still, all you can hear is wind rustling the wheat and birds singing, hidden in the grass and shrubs. If you look out at the fields, it feels like you’re on the edge of a vast ocean of wheat. In the far distance you can see the last curl of the Pyrenees as it rolls into the northern coast.

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June 7, 2017

camino de santiago 2017, camino the santiage, Spain, the meseta
Burgos

I’ve been staying in a hotel in Burgos for a few days to rest up. Right now it’s 10 am and I’m sitting in a cafe across from the municipal hostel.

People from all over the world are here having cafe con leche before they begin their day’s walk or start exploring the city. Others are having a coffee after putting their backpacks in a line to hold their place for a bed in the hostel. At eight euros a night, the spots fill quickly.

I had “café con leche grande con doble la leche,” a large latte with double the milk, and “tostada con tomate,” a slice of homemade bread toasted and served with olive oil and fresh tomato sauce.

The body’s needs come to the fore on the Camino. While walking, I often think about what I’ll order at the next small town–sparkling mineral water, fresh orange juice, espresso, potato omelette, empanada, bocadillo (a kind of sandwich served on a baguette or a small thin roll).

Two children from Ireland are sitting near me while their parents sit outside. When I asked them if they liked the Camino, they said that their favorite part was the breaks! I told them that many of us feel the same way.

But pilgrims’ bodies give us other messages besides hunger and thirst. Many of us hobble into towns with blisters, strange insect bites, swollen knees, sore backs or shoulders, and colds.

Today I’m resting and drinking tons of water. My nose is irritated from having a cold and being outside all day in the wind. It’s raining here, 48 degrees. A good day to write, sleep, and hang out at Babia.

June 4, 2017

Babia, Burgos, Camino de Santiago, camino de santiago 2017
The Camino Provides

This Camino has been a bit different than the last time I walked in Spain. Two years ago I thought I would write poetry or memoir about my experiences, but this time I’m just letting myself live in the moment.

I walk alone most of the time, but every once in a while I’ll meet up with someone who wants to talk, and so I listen. One girl from Canada shared a quote from Plato: “Be tender, because we all have battles to fight.”

There’s a saying on the Camino that “the Camino provides.” People refer to this saying as a way of accounting for the little miracles that seem to happen along the way.

For example, a woman whose hip was too sore to walk the last three miles to town happened to meet up with a young man who offered to drive her the rest of the way.

Another example happened with me and the Canadian girl, Miranda. She had passed me earlier in Cirueña ( a bleak town with zero charm). But after leaving the town and returning to the gravel road, I saw her sitting on the ground.

I recognized her black hair gathered in a top knot. Even though two other women had already stopped to help her, something drew me to her. She told me her feet were in pain, and I realized it was because she was walking in old trainers.

The day before, I had just mailed my boots back to the US because they were hurting my feet, but I kept the insoles for some reason. I don’t know why, because they wouldn’t fit the new shoes I bought.

Right away I pulled the orange shock absorbing insoles out f the bottom of my pack. My stuff was on the ground next to Miranda while she trimmed the toe part to make it fit. We walked together for about three miles and her feet felt great.

I don’t think the Camino has magical powers more than any other path in life, but when we are all walking together, we end up making the little miracles happen. It’s a matter of noticing, of caring for each other, wherever we are.

May 31, 2017

camino de santiago 2017
Murazabal, Camino Redux

I’ve arrived at Murazabal after five days of walking. I stayed here two years ago, and it’s just as beautiful as I remember–peaceful, birds singing everywhere, fennel growing wild.

A few images from the last four days

Griffin vultures soaring over the mountain pass

An Appaloosa pony shaking her blonde mane

Wind running across a field green wheat

May 23, 2017

camino de santiago 2017, camino frances
On the Way to Madrid

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.”

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May 16, 2017

amor, caminodesantiago2017, love, yoga
Account of a Comet: Redacted Poem

Wonderful story of how this poet reclaimed her creative impulse after grad school burn out. Plus this redacted poem is lovely.

tychogirl

William Herschel’s “Account of a Comet,” published in 1781 in Philosophical Transactions, redacted into a poem.

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April 25, 2017
Poet Profile: Beth Gylys

April 5, 2017
Awaken Me From This Mortal Dream

In this dream, the driver’s asleep at the wheel.

The dream won’t let the driver’s foot touch the brakes.

It’s night, and the headlights won’t turn on.

In this dream, highways loop in labyrinths,

deer clog the exit ramps. Wild fires

savage forests of magnolia, loblolly pines, mountain laurel.

Forecasters on the radio warn to stay inside,

shut the windows, don’t breathe the code orange air.

In this dream, police hose a circle of water protectors

in the subzero dark, spray rubber bullets

and tear gas at Black protesters on freeways.

In this dream a Syrian boy caked with bomb-blast

wipes blood from his eye with a tiny fist.

In this dream, men in three-piece suits with fashy haircuts

ink swastikas on concrete benches,

grab the vaginas of women with dragonfly tattoos,

snatch the hijab off a mother’s head.

In this dream a fevered white man in a church

shoots down nine Black worshippers.

In this dream a president sings Amazing Grace

with his whole heart in his throat.

In this dream a block-letter sign

outside a church with the tallest, whitest spire

shouts, “PRAY FOR DONALD TR**P.”

In this dream a shard of grief is lodged behind my breastbone.

December 17, 2016

poetry, Resist, resistance
“My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love”

“My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”

Dear Cosmos, Dear Gaia, Dear Aliens on Earth,
Something-there-is that doesn’t love a woman,
Something-there-is that doesn’t love a child
Something-there-is that doesn’t love a protest
Something-there-is that doesn’t love this wall of words.
Something-there-is that doesn’t love.
Grazing each other’s beards to kiss, my brothers’ love
makes quiver the mouths of phobic Earthlings.
Something-there-is piles on lies to wall themselves in.
Something-there-is loathes a woman’s
blood, her milk, her wide hips, her breasts bared in protest.
Something-there-is refuses the Syrian child
washed ashore, his cheek turned to one side, as if in child’s
pose, his death not stark enough to awaken love.
Something-there-is throws grenades on protesters,
Native Americans circled in prayer who touch the Earth,
who protect the water that sustains our life. Women
are the watery portals we all pass through, a porous wall
we penetrate from one life to the next. No brick wall
mortared with hatred us can contain our childlike
trust that “no lie will live forever.” Women’s
rights are human rights, but not unless we love
our blackness, the origin of humans on Earth.
Something-there-is cages black bodies, protests
Black bodies, stops, frisks, gasses Black protests,
beats and murders black bodies behind cell walls.
How much of our comfort will we risk to free the earth
from this machine of distortion? Will our children
forget the sky once reflected blue before we love
the planet enough to disobey the spray-tanned man?
His rattling Tic Tacs warn men and women
to flee the fetid breath no mint can mask. We protest
his code orange stink by committing ourselves to loving
even those who sting our eyes with pepper. The only wall
that divides us is made of fear and lives in us. A child’s
mind, a pure mind, is the force that binds us on this earth.

Chattahoochee River, Cochran Shoals, November 25, 2016

November 26, 2016

Black Lives Matter, NoDAPL, poetry, protest, Resist, resistance, sestina, Standing Rock